Stop over by the Dobber Shop to grab your copy of the 2023-24 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide! Its contents hold everything fantasy owners need to get the leg up on their league mates including projections, depth charts, prospects, boom/bust, and a whole lot more. It is updated as we get more news – like the type we'll talk about in a second – so it's easy to stay current even with major roster changes. Help support what we do and help yourself at the same time!

*

Matt Dumba is off to Arizona, and I wonder how he fits. There aren't a lot of teams that still use the blue-line slap shot, but the Coyotes did with Shayne Gostisbehere and Jakob Chyhcrun around. They're gone, but Dumba's there, and that kind of profile is something the team can accommodate. It is unlikely he will reach prior career highs, but it's not hard to see him putting up far more than the 14 points he had last year.

*

Peter Harling covered the Ramblings yesterday and wrote about a lot of prospects for 2024 and beyond. There was a lot to cover from the World Junior showcase and the Hlinka, so check out Peter's thoughts on what stood out to him.

*

The intention of today's Ramblings was to start combing through regression candidates, but the biggest trade of the summer went down on Sunday. That has changed our plans and, instead, it'll be reviewing the impact of Erik Karlsson heading from San Jose to Pittsburgh.

First, the details of the trade, for anyone that was on vacation mode for the long weekend:

Per the Penguins, here is the trade. SJ retains $1.5M of Karlsson's salary…Pittsburgh retains 25 per cent of Petry's. pic.twitter.com/gxQSKSNZoi

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) August 6, 2023

There are a lot of moving pieces, and it all involves a third team. Let's start with the main attraction.

Ian gave his take on the entire trade here. Data will be taken from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick, unless otherwise indicated.

Erik Karlsson

I wrote a bit about Karlsson back in May and it mostly focused on his playmaking. Go read that to get a better idea of how he could help the Penguins in transition, which is something Karlsson does as well as any defenceman in hockey, Cale Makar and Roman Josi included.

The other point I want to make is about the team Karlsson had around him. Looking back through his days with Ottawa and then San Jose, there were good teams in the former, maybe one good team in the latter, but San Jose's last four seasons have been a huge drop off. Starting with the 2019-20 campaign, San Jose has finished 29^th, 25^th, 22^nd, and 29^th in the league. Overall, the only teams with a worse points percentage over the last four seasons were Anaheim and Detroit.  

To get an idea of how bad the team around him has been over the last few seasons, here's a chart. It shows Erik Karlsson's 5-on-5 on-ice goal differential by season, going back to his Ottawa days, and then in San Jose. The blue line is Karlsson, the orange line is his team without Karlsson on the ice (yellow line is the trade to San Jose):

Over the last three seasons, San Jose was minus-10 with Karlsson on the ice at 5-on-5, and minus-108 with him off the ice. The team around him was truly, truly terrible, and he still led all defencemen in points/60 in that span.

One of Pittsburgh's big issues last year was finishing. They ended the season 19^th in goals per minute at 5-on-5, 21^st after the All-Star break, and 23^rd over the final 21 games. The team was 9^th from 2020-2022, so it was a big drop from them. Karlsson can help their forwards get going offensively at even strength, so this should be a sizable offensive boost for their top stars. For example, over his last three seasons in San Jose, Timo Meier posted 2.62 points/60 at 5-on-5 when he was on the ice with Karlsson, and 1.94 points/60 without him. For Tomas Hertl, the drop was from 2.29 points/60 to 1.76, and Logan Couture's fell from 2.16 to 1.50. Those are jumps of 35%, 30%, and 44%, respectively. He will help the Pittsburgh forwards score a lot more, and the San Jose forwards should score a lot less as a result.

There are three pertinent questions for Karlsson's fantasy value. The first question is how the power play will shake out. Jake Guentzel is going to miss at least the first month of the season, so it could open a chance to run a 3F/2D power play early in the season alongside Kris Letang. It's still not a guarantee, though, as Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell could just stay on the top unit with one of Karlsson or Letang. Not to mention that they likely go 4F/1D once Guentzel is healthy. Letang is still a viable option, but Pittsburgh's 5-on-4 power play is 18^th by goals/60 over the last two seasons. That's not good enough with all their talent, so it's not hard to imagine them using Karlsson on PP1 and Letang on PP2 (maybe with Pierre-Olivier Joseph) for long stretches. Karlsson had 27 PPPs last year, which is a lot, but he had four seasons with as many (or more) PPPs back in Ottawa, and nine defencemen had higher totals in 2022-23. It wasn't abnormal for him or the current era of PP production.  

The second question is about his built-in regression. Some of his career-highs in 2022-23 were:

• Shooting percentage at 5-on-5 (10.5%, had never been higher than 8.6%)
• Overall shooting percentage (12%, had never been higher than 8.5%)
• Individual points percentage (IPP) at 5-on-5 (66.7%, had never reached 60%)
• Team on-ice shooting percentage (10.5%, had never been higher than 9.1%)
• Individual expected goals at 5-on-5 (8.4, had never been higher than 7.9)

It isn't if Karlsson regresses, it's how much, and that brings us to the final query…

The third question is about not being the focal point anymore. Tracking data from Corey Sznajder shows that in 2022-23, Karlsson had 9.9 controlled zone exits per 60 minutes. Of the four Sharks defencemen to play at least 50 games, no one else was over 2.1. That is not a typo – Karlsson's controlled zone exit rate was over four times higher than the next-closest regular Sharks blue liner. Going through the neutral zone, he had higher zone entry rates than Logan Couture, which is notable because Couture is a forward, and Karlsson is not.

A couple paragraphs earlier, Karlsson's IPP was mentioned. It was a career-high, but it also overshadows how it compares elsewhere. He registered a point on 66.7% of San Jose's goals scored while he was on the ice, and of the 148 defencemen with at least 1000 minutes at 5-on-5, no one else reached 55%, and only four other players reached 50%. There was a bigger gap between first-place Karlsson and second-place Nick Jensen than Jensen and 25^th-place Scott Mayfield. Karlsson was far-and-away the most offensively-involved rearguard in the NHL, and the point totals prove it.

As for the IPP, I looked at Letang's career in Pittsburgh. He has one season over 50%, and it was 53.9% in 2012-13, the lockout season. His average from 2020-23 was 41.4%. If Karlsson's IPP falls to just 55% – which would have still led the league – Karlsson drops from 101 points to 90 points immediately. That is just the first point of regression, too.

Given the season Karlsson just had, he'll have a more positive impact on the fantasy value of the Penguins forwards than they will have on Karlsson's value. Maybe some regression can be mitigated with a high-end power play, but the Swede played a full season for the first time since 2016, cracked 2100 total minutes played for the first time since then as well, and was clearly the engine in San Jose. In leagues with plus/minus, a huge improvement there can help balance out the fantasy value a bit. In leagues without plus/minus, it's hard to see Karlsson's fantasy value go anywhere but down, though that would have been the case regardless of where he suited up for 2023-24.

The Rest

San Jose grabbing Mike Hoffman and Mikael Granlund out of the deal isn't great news for some of the younger pieces there. Filip Zadina and William Eklund just got some more competition for second-line minutes, though any spot that isn't with Tomas Hertl is of marginal value anyway. The new additions are a pair of forwards with poor defensive value, though, so getting rid of Karlsson's bad defence may not improve the overall defensive ability of the roster all that much. Given Hoffman's status as a UFA after the season, he's a guy that should get minutes to pump trade value, and that means top PP slotting. Again, this may not be great for the short-term value of San Jose's young forwards, and losing the league's top puck-mover from the blue line creates a huge hurdle immediately. Good news for Henry Thrun, though.

Moving on from Hoffman and Rem Pitlick opens some roster spots for Montreal. Cap Friendly shows 11 healthy forwards with NHL contracts – though Rafael Harvey-Pinard is waiver exempt, and that's something to keep in mind for fantasy drafts – plus the injured Sean Monahan, Cole Caufield, and Juraj Slafkovsky. That makes 14 forwards, and if the team carries three goalies, that's one forward too many. It doesn't even count the prospects that'll push for a role like Owen Beck and Filip Mesar. The team will undoubtedly have injuries and the like, so it's not a huge concern, but even trading two forwards from the roster doesn't give us a completely clear picture. It does remove Hoffman from the power play picture, though, and that's good news for Alex Newhook's PP1 potential.

The last piece to discuss is Jeff Petry. There are rumours flying he'll be traded before the season starts, so we'll have to wait it out for a bit before digging much deeper. His shot rates have dipped over the last couple seasons and his tracking data shows a big drop in his playmaking last season. He is going into his age-36 season and it's fair to wonder if the age-related decline is really starting to hit. He can still bring good peripherals, but expecting more than 40 points, wherever he lands, is expecting too much. Even still, 35 points with 350-or-so hits+blocks is a solid multi-cat season.

Pittsburgh's forwards may be the biggest winners in the trade. Karlsson is unlikely to see his value rise given his unbelievable 22-23, Hoffman/Granlund are heading to a very depleted team on the downsides of their careers, Jan Rutta has never had fantasy value, and Petry's future is still uncertain. The Penguins offensive stars did get this era's best offensive defenceman to play with, though, and for a team that finished 30^th by shooting percentage at even strength, the additional playmaking from the blue line is a very welcome addition. There's still the matter of getting all the pieces to fit together, but Pittsburgh should be much better offensively at evens and on the power play. Everyone staying healthy again is another matter entirely, though.

*