With no games last night, and also none on the docket for Thursday (wouldn't want to compete with American Thanksgiving football), this seems like a good time to take a look at the state of the league, upcoming schedules, and how to set yourself up the rest of the way.

Ottawa's only game of the week comes in on Friday, so hopefully you don't have too many Senators, and are able to stack around them.

If you're a solid team that seems to be in a good spot moving forward to the playoffs, then maybe now is when you start looking at the Head-to-Head schedules for playoff times. The more you can load up on man games there, the better, as you can have your high-quality team also loading up the quantity in those weeks, giving you a big advantage. I took a bigger look at it in the summer here, but I'll review the key points again.

It would be best for you to look at your own team and see what days you might not be able to fit players in, or which players have better/worse schedules to fit your needs. The best team to target player from for those final few weeks of the season is Edmonton, and then secondarily Washington and coincidentally Ottawa. This week's lagging schedule gets made up for at the end of the year, so now might be a good time to buy in on a player like Josh Norris, Jake Sanderson, or Drake Batherson from a GM that is scrambling for inches.

On the flip side, there's a large number of teams with below-average schedules, and the teams change depending on what weeks you need to target:

Targeting from March 18th to the second-last week of the season, teams to minimize your exposure to are: Arizona, Boston, Calgary, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Minnesota, Vancouver, Vegas (nine games over the three weeks).

Targeting from March 25th to the last day of the season, teams to minimize your exposure to are: Boston, Buffalo, Carolina, Dallas, New Jersey, Philadelphia (10 games).

Aside from the above, and managing around the lighter segments over Christmas and the All-Star break, there aren't too many more large-scale schedule notes to be made.

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In looking back to the schedule outline article I wrote over the summer, I feel like there was a higher number of hits there than I expected. Happy with that on the whole.

Now that we actually have some data to go on for the 2023/24 season, let's check in on a few over- and under-achievers, plus a few goalie fluctuations.

William Nylander is having a career year just in time for his big contract. Stop me if you've heard that one before. The funny thing here is, none of his underlying metrics are high. Nylander is playing more minutes, shooting the puck more, and is overall more engaged in the offence with an IPP^ of 85% (higher than his career norm, but not at a concerning level). He just seems to have taken a step forward, and there's no indication of things receding from here (at least this year while he's still playing for the extension). There is no "sell-high" here. Rick Roos has a deeper dive on Nylander coming up later this morning as well in the Forum Buzz article.

^IPP: Individual Points percentage – the percentage of points that a player factors in on out of the total goals scored that they are on the ice for.

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Travis Sanheim meanwhile, is actually having his 400-game breakout, and his underlying numbers look surprisingly similar to Nylander. More minutes (especially on the power play), more shots, and no overly concerning numbers except for a high IPP number (70% – high for a defenceman). He likely won't keep up the 16 points in 18 games pace, but 40 points in 60 games the rest of the way doesn't seem unreasonable.

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On the flip side, if you're looking for unsustainable numbers, Frank Vatrano would like you to step into his office. A high PDO (luck metric) buoyed by a high 5on5 shooting percentage, a high personal shooting percentage, a high secondary assist rate, and an unsustainable 100% IPP on the power play. Zooming out a bit, he has added two minutes of overall ice time (one minute of that being power play time), and suddenly he is scoring at double the rate of his previous career high. He's shooting more too, along with higher rates of Hits, Blocks, and PIMs, and has been a great fantasy own so far. But it's all going to come crashing down sooner rather than later. He might be just the kind of piece you look to flip to a very fed-up Patrik Laine or Johnny Gaudreau owner in a one-year league.

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Jaden Schwartz's cold streak is already here, so I'm a little late to the party on this one since he has gone with only one point in his last five games. He's still at 15 points in 20 games overall though, and his underlying numbers are still a little high. If you end up holding him, don't expect a 60-point-pace or better the rest of the way, but you would probably need that kind of value in return to bother moving him at this point.

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Mike Matheson has seen a big jump in shot volume the last two years with Montreal, but really it's a similar per/60 rate, it's just he is getting a lot more minutes. This year he's added a full minute of power play time as well, and his scoring has climbed in line with that. His underlying numbers are all out of whack, with some saying regression is coming (IPP & Secondary Assist %), while others say he has more to give (5on5Sh%). I would expect him to fall back to somewhere a little below last year's 58-point-pace, so somewhere in the 50-55 range the rest of the way.

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On the other side of the coin in Montreal, we have Josh Anderson, who just can't buy a goal – and can hardly buy an assist for that matter. He's so badly overdue that I actually bought him in a cap league. Not because he's great value at his cap hit anymore, but just because he's due for some serious positive regression, and he's about as cheap to acquire as someone can get right now.

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While we didn't have games yesterday, there was still a fun trade in one of my leagues. Nico Hischier was traded for Aaron Ekblad (only a small sweetener on top of Hischier – likely for the positional value difference). Both are returning from extended injury absences, and both are worthy of rostering on just about any fantasy team. Ekblad is up to nine shotsi n his first two games back, and while he doesn't have a point yet, that will change soon. Meanwhile, Hischier has only two points in six-and-a-half games, and doesn't have the shot share that helped turn him into a point-per-game player last year. If he's a two-shot-per-game player then he's a 70-point-centre, which is good but ultimately replaceable in standard-sized leagues. However, if he's back to playing nearly 20 minutes per game and racking up more than three shots per game, then he should put up closer to an 80-point-pace. Regardless of his actual scoring numbers in the few games upon his return, keep an eye on the ice time and the shot rate as indicators for what kind of production he should even-out towards by the end of the year.

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Like the rest of you, I'm trying to figure out what happened to Johnny Gaudreau. He has twice been a 100-point player, in-between been a 65- to 85-point-player (a fairly reasonable 20-point-range for a career), but is now only pacing for 30 points.

The first thing is that his shooting percentage is half of what it was last year, and last year's was unlucky compared to his career norm. He's shooting a little less than usual, which adds up too, more so when they aren't going in the net in the first place. On top of that though, his team just can't score while he's on the ice, and even less so when Gaudreau is a part of the play. His IPP has dropped off, which is concerning considering all the other factors, and especially since it's been so damn consistent the last eight years, ranging from 72-78%. No one is ever that consistent with their IPPs, so for him to drop down to 47% this season is concerning. Maybe it's an injury, or a complete loss of confidence, or just not gelling with the coach/rest of the team, but it's not good regardless.

Circling back to the comment about the Blue Jackets not scoring while Gaudreau is on the ice, his teammates are shooting under seven percent with Gaudreau on the ice, a career-low, and only about two-third of his career average. I would say that if you normalize all his numbers, then he's somewhere in the range of 16-22 points so far through 19 games. However, the problem is figuring out how much things are going to normalize, considering he's now in Columbus and has been underwhelming fantasy GMs here for 100 games now.

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I'm still an Anton Forsberg believer in Ottawa over Joonas Korpisalo. If you look at Korpi's numbers and take out the dozen games he played in LA, under a much better defensive system (one that has made Cam Talbot and Phoenix Copley look fantastic the last two years), then his numbers this year fall right in line with his usual career set. All to say, I'm not expecting a big surge in the second half from him despite having the larger contract of the two goalies. Forsberg has the higher upside, and Korpi is out right now with a "tweak". I think this could be where we see Anton pull away with at least 60% of the starts the rest of the way.

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Adam Fox has resumed skating in a non-contact jersey, but isn't eligible to come off IR for another week. Keep an eye on his status though because his return (and the subsequent downshift from Erik Gustafsson) is coming sooner rather than later.

Maybe a update on him later in the Injury Ward, as well as a bunch of Pittsburgh injuries including Rickard Rakell and Bryan Rust. Keep your eyes out for it, and add Alex Nylander to your watchlist again – and prepare to be disappointed by him for the 452^nd time.

* See you next Wednesday! You can find me on Twitter/X here, or BlueSky here if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments.