Every Sunday, we share 21 Fantasy Rambles from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s 'Daily Ramblings'.

Writers/Editors: Ian Gooding, Michael Clifford, Alexander MacLean, Brennan Des and Dobber

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1. Andrei Vasilevskiy made his season debut on Friday, stopping 22 of 24 shots he faced in posting a win. Vasilevskiy had missed the entire season so far due to back surgery that he needed just before the season started. If you haven’t already, get the Big Cat activated for next week, as he should still be considered a top-5 goalie in fantasy leagues.

The Lightning have back-to-back games early next week in Colorado and Arizona. That means you might not want to drop Jonas Johansson yet, particularly if he gets the start against the Coyotes. To make room for Vasilevskiy, Matt Tomkins has been placed on waivers.

You shouldn’t need us to tell you to start Nikita Kucherov, who exploded for six points (2 G, 4 A) in the Lightning’s 8-2 drubbing of the Hurricanes on Friday. With that performance, Kucherov has leapt into the scoring lead with 35 points in just 20 games, including 12 points in his last five games. (nov25)

2. Zach Benson is here to stay. Playing in his 10^th NHL game on Friday, the 18-year-old Benson won’t be returned to the WHL. However, he could still miss a few weeks if he plays in the World Juniors, which is something to consider if adding him in a single-season league. Benson's first NHL goal on Wednesday was a doozie. Check it out in case you missed it.

I think the Canucks missed out on an exceptional talent by picking Tom Willander two spots ahead of Benson, but there are several other teams that might also regret passing on Benson. I thought he might be a top-5 pick, but for some reason he fell in the 2023 Draft. (nov25)

3. The Hawks’ second-leading scorer is Philipp Kurashev, who with an assist has a five-game point streak with six points over that span. I’ll admit that I gave up on Kurashev too early in my salary cap league, as he has now solidified himself as a regular linemate to Connor Bedard. (nov25)

4. J.T. Compher has 12 points in his last 10 games. Coach Derek Lalonde has noticed, giving Compher an increase in both overall ice time (19:55) and power-play time (4:56, 67.9% of available power-play minutes). Both of Compher’s points on Friday were on the power play. Compher is getting a bit lucky in the shooting department, and he is still averaging just under a shot per game. Every season in his career, Compher has also never reached two shots per game and has averaged below 50% of offensive zone starts. Lalonde recently separated Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat at even strength, which seemed to help Compher with DeBrincat now on his line as opposed to Andrew Copp. (nov25)

5. Andrei Kuzmenko was a healthy scratch on Friday (as well as Saturday). That could have had something to do with his three goals in 19 games this season while mainly playing on the top line with Elias Pettersson, or the fact that he has no points in his last three games or no goals in his past nine games. Yet it sounds like the main reason is that Kuzmenko’s defensive play has been lacking, which was evident on at least one goal in Wednesday’s loss to Colorado. As much as that might be the reason, I don’t think Rick Tocchet is taking Kuzmenko out of the lineup if he had been scoring regularly.

Something else to keep your eye on: The Canucks went out of their way to state that Elias Pettersson is not injured. However, it looked like his wrist was taped up when they showed him on the bench at one point during Friday’s telecast. Pettersson has no points over his last three games, so something could be up. He did win 11 of 20 faceoffs on Friday, so it might simply be a minor issue. (nov25)

6. Conor Timmins was seen running a power play for the Leafs at practice on Thursday, so perhaps he’s very close to a return. John Klingberg is not, as he was sent to the long-term injured reserve.

For more good news on the injury front, Ottawa defenseman Thomas Chabot was in a non-contact jersey late this week. For all the consternation about Ottawa’s season – plus the injuries – they were tied for 16^th in the NHL in points percentage at time of writing. They had the fewest number of games played with 15, where three-quarters of the league had at least 18, so they’ll need to turn some of those games-in-hand to wins before any celebrating can be done, but they are firmly in the playoff race.

On the bad-news side of the injury stuff, the Blackhawks announced that Taylor Hall will undergo right knee surgery and is out for the season. Hall was a favourite deep-ish pick of mine this season, so mea culpa there, but this sucks for him. He had a few healthy years in a row, but the last couple years have not been that. For a guy that will be 33 years old for next season, it’s a wonder how much he’ll have when he comes back in 2024. (nov24)

7. Thanksgiving provides us with two cut-off points. The first is that the league is roughly one-quarter of the way through the regular season. Teams that had very poor starts – Edmonton, Minnesota, and Columbus, to name a few – are going to be in a slog to get to the postseason.

The second is that it gives us two halves to look at so far. With the vast majority of teams around 18-20 games played, it gives us two sections of anywhere from 8-10 games to look at player performance. We can look at things like drops in ice time, jumps in shot rate, players running hot/cold, and the like. Without any games on American Thanksgiving, let’s look at those changes and what fantasy managers can glean from it.

To start with, here are the 10 forwards that saw the largest increase in ice time, with a quick discussion about a few of them:

Top Forward TOI Risers
(player: TOI/GP Change)
Fabian Zetterlund: 4.04
JJ Peterka: 3.77
Michael McLeod: 3.76
Beck Malenstyn: 3.65
Logan O'Connor: 3.60
Pavel Buchnevich: 3.58
Mathieu Joseph: 3.16
Tommy Novak: 3.04
William Eklind: 2.88
Marco Rossi: 2.84 (nov24)

8. Young forwards being moved up the lineup dominate the list (above) with names like JJ Peterka, Michael McLeod, Tommy Novak, William Eklund, and Marco Rossi all appearing. Two names listed really stick out to me.

Injuries to Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes pushed McLeod, in effect, to a top-line role. Hischier was injured first, with Hughes going down early in a game in St. Louis on November 3^rd. From November 3^rd until Hughes’s return on November 18^th, here is what McLeod managed to do on the ice across six games:  

• One goal, two assists, 18 shots
• 69.4% of the expected goal share at 5-on-5
• New Jersey out-scored the opposition 3-1 at 5-on-5
• One goal against in over nine minutes of PK time
• Averaged over 17 minutes a game

In the two games since Hughes returned, McLeod skated 16:00 and 18:55, both higher than any of his first nine games with the full lineup. He won’t stay at that level once Hischier is back, but it’ll be interesting to see if he goes from 13-14 minutes to 15-or-more. It could limit the minutes the top centers play, and that’s not ideal for their fantasy value. [Follow the link for the complete analysis…] (nov24)

9. 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 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 players 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. (nov22)

10. On the flip side, there is 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. (nov22)

11. 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. (At time of writing) Nylander is playing more minutes, shooting the puck more, and is overall more engaged in the offense 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. (nov22)

12. Travis Sanheim meanwhile, is actually having his 400-game breakout, and his underlying numbers look surprisingly similar to Nylander's. More minutes (especially on the power play), more shots, and no overly concerning numbers except for a high IPP number (70% – high for a defenseman). He likely won’t keep up the 16 points in 18 games pace he was running at late this week, but 40 points in 60 games the rest of the way doesn’t seem unreasonable. (nov22)

13. 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. (nov22)

14. 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. At time of writing, Ekblad was up to nine shots in his first two games back. Meanwhile, Hischier had 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-center, 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. (nov22)

15. 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. (nov22)

16. And what about Patrik Laine? Last Sunday, he was a healthy scratch against the Flyers. At that point, the 25-year-old winger had just three points in nine appearances, but I’m hesitant to be too critical of his performance. After posting two points in his first four games of the year, he sustained a concussion and was sidelined for three weeks, posting a single point in five games after returning. Now, it’s not out of the ordinary for a player to struggle in their first few games back after an extended absence. The thing about Laine’s situation that’s concerning for his fantasy outlook is that he doesn’t have unlimited leash to find his footing. He saw his ice time cut down to 12 minutes in back-to-back games prior to this healthy scratch.

We know that Laine’s strength is his offensive ability, not so much his defense. When I saw he’d been benched and scratched, I assumed that first-year head coach Pascal Vincent was punishing Laine for poor defensive play. From a fantasy perspective, that would be concerning because Laine’s defensive shortcomings aren’t going to disappear 

overnight. So, if he’s being punished for bad defense, and that bad defense isn’t going to improve any time soon, then he’d be stuck in a limited role all year. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s how coach Vincent explained his decision to scratch Laine:

@JacketsInsider: “He's not happy about the decision, don't get me wrong. But right now I think Patty needs to take a deep breath, go back to the working lab and get his touches back, get his shot back, get his confidence back so he can be the No. 29 Patrik Laine we all know he can be.”

17. 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 (entering Wednesday) 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. (nov22)

18. One of the players I was personally high on heading into the 2023-24 was Montreal’s Rafael Harvey-Pinard. He seemed to mesh very well with Nick Suzuki after the injury to Cole Caufield last season. That, and an ability to land a lot of hits, made me think there was some sneaky banger value here. Things haven’t gone to plan this season as he’s yet to score in 13 games and had been injured for the team’s last couple of games. To that end, he was sent to the IR.

Neither he or Arber Xhekaj went on the team’s road trip that started Wednesday and goes to the end of November. That indicates to us it’ll be a while before either are back in the lineup, so it could be good news for someone like Jesse Ylonen keeping a full-time role at the NHL level. With the way the team has been mixing lines of late, though, it’s hard to say if it’ll be a top-6 or bottom-6 role. (nov21)

19. A bit of good news on Gabriel Vilardi: It looks like he’ll be back within a week, and that’s great news for Winnipeg fans and fantasy owners. He likely gets his PP1 role back – though which even strength line he ends up with remains to be seen – and that’s not good news for Cole Perfetti‘s fantasy value. (nov21)

20. Nashville scratched Luke Evangelista last week. The coaching staff thought he had a downturn in his play over his last half-dozen games, and that seems reasonable. Evangelista is one of the players that was impacted by the Tommy Novak injury. His ice time has taken a dive with Novak gone and the lack of playmaker to basically play catch in the offensive zone hurt Evangelista’s offensive upside. Hopefully Novak can come back healthy and the line, along with Kiefer Sherwood, can get back to creating some chances. Not that I’m a greedy fantasy manager or anything. Why would anyone ask that? (nov21)

21. Flames' 22-year-old rookie Connor Zary has nine points in 11 appearances for the Flames this year. He’s enjoying a power-play role and averaging 15 and a half minutes of action per game. So far, Zary has spent most of his even-strength minutes beside Nazem Kadri, injecting some life into the veteran center’s game. Since Zary entered the lineup, Kadri has 11 points in 12 outings. That stands in stark contrast to the two points he had through nine games before Zary was called up. (nov20)

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Have a good week, folks!

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