Merry Boxing Day, everyone! I hope all our readers get that snowblower (or lawnmower) that they've had their eye on for a few months. It is truly that magical time of year where deep discounts on consumer products help bring together everyone across all demographics.

With the NHL still on their break, and the World Junior tournament starting today/tonight, there isn't a whole lot to talk about. What I want to do is look ahead to the unofficial second half of the season and things I'm keeping an eye on. It could be teams, players, situations, call-ups, or whatever else comes to mind.

San Jose's Prospects

It feels weird to start with the worst team in the league, but here we are. They went on a nice percentage bender but have come back down to Earth with a recent string of regulation losses and sit a distant last in goals per minute. It appears Logan Couture may be ready to return sometime soon, but that's not the lineup appearance that really matters for fantasy owners (it does, it's just asking a lot of him at his age and on this team).

What matters for fantasy owners is whether the Sharks decide to give a call-up to some of their young players. Daniil Gushchin has a few NHL games under his belt but he's largely been in the AHL over the last two seasons. This year, he is a point-per-game player in the AHL and has landed over four shots per game to start his second full AHL season. The third-round pick from 2020 has seemingly improved as he's starting to mature and he turns 22 years old in February. It might not be until later in the season but it is a wonder when (not if) he gets back to the NHL.

That goes for Leon Gawanke, too. He is a bit older, but is well over 2.5 shots per game in the AHL this year and is in the top-10 for points among AHL blue liners. There are a lot of defensive roster spots on San Jose’s NHL roster that need to be filled eventually, and if he can translate his offence to the next level, it'd be a huge boost for that franchise; probably more than adding a middle-6 forward.

Montreal's Top-Six Forwards

The high-ankle sprain that Alex Newhook suffered is going to keep him out until after the All-Star break, in all likelihood. Add that to Kirby Dach being done for the year and Rafael Harvey-Pinard also out of the lineup, and the team basically has their entire second line missing. It has been great to see the top line thriving with Juraj Slafkovsky there, but this has been a one-line team for a couple years now. That is largely due to injury, but not completely.

Harvey-Pinard is out until sometime in January, so he'll be back well before Newhook. With that said, when they are both in the lineup, I'm really interested to see what their top-6 forward mix looks like. If the new top line keeps playing as they are, the coaches would be hard-pressed to break them up, but there is also the consideration of a second scoring line here. I would love to see a Slaf-Suzuki-RHP top line with Newhook and Cole Caufield down on the second line. It probably won't happen, but I am much less opposed to breaking up Caufield and Suzuki than I was three months ago. When Newhook and RHP are healthy, and once the trade deadline passes and some of the veterans are on new teams, it will be interesting to see what their top-6 forward group looks like. There could be some sneaky fantasy value down the stretch as the younger players get more ice time in March.

Buffalo's Blue Line

Now that Buffalo's forward group is pretty much healthy, the focus now turns to the defencemen. Henri Jokiharju has quietly had an excellent season, and Owen Power has been better of late, but this is a group that has really struggled this season. That includes Rasmus Dahlin. His point and peripheral production has been great for fantasy, there's no doubt about that, but Evolving Hockey has his defensive rating taking a huge dive from his breakout 2022-23 season. If the number-one defenceman on the team is putting up poor defensive numbers, it's something that really hurts the goaltenders as they face higher-quality shots than the netminders in, say, Boston, Vancouver, or Dallas would face. The goaltenders need to be better, but so does over half their blue line, and whether they can improve will go a long way to helping Devon Levi regain (or just attain) fantasy value, not to mention push for a playoff spot.

One note on Power: his defence has also fallen off but he has genuinely been better of late. Off the top of my head, I think he's improved his Wins Above Replacement four-fold over the last couple of weeks, and while he can't keep doing that, just improving over his first 25 games will be key for the team (and his fantasy value).

Los Angeles's Third Line

Viktor Arvidsson was injured early in the season and the team considered him month-to-month since then. I haven't seen much in the way of updates, but with back injuries, it could be anywhere from a couple months to a couple years before he's back on the ice. Let's hope he's much closer to the former than the latter.

I bring this up because Los Angeles's top-6 forward mix has been exceptional this year, and that's with Pierre-Luc Dubois on the third line. He has struggled on the power play and that has killed his fantasy value. If the team gets good news on Arvidsson, maybe he gets a legitimate scorer on his wing, and gets regular PP minutes. If they don't, do they go out and trade for one? One of the advantages this team has (or had) was the ability to have three Actually Good scoring lines. The third line, as is, is not bad by any means, but there are always improvements that can be made. And if they do go add another depth scorer, what does that do to the power play units? I suspect the Kings may add another middle-6 forward between now and the trade deadline and that could change the equation for a lot of players both at even strength and the power play.

Thomas Harley's Usage

Keeping an eye on defencemen excelling with lower usage is something that has helped me identify rearguards that can break out in seasons to come. Over the last decade, guys like Torey Krug, Noah Dobson, and Rasmus Andersson all had good seasons with low usage and then great fantasy seasons with more usage in the years to come (Dobson being the most recent example). Harley stuck out to me during last year's playoffs and he's been great again this year: he’s among the goal-scoring leaders for defencemen while averaging around 1.8 blocks per game. He was down all the way to 16:25 per game in November of this season but has seen a lot of games over the 20-minute mark in December.

His shooting percentage is unsustainable, but AllThreeZones has his zone entry/exit numbers as great-to-elite so far this season. Harley helps the team in transition but still plays a high-risk game that can lead to a disproportionate number of chances against. How he finds the balance to tighten his game up will be interesting to see. He won't be the top guy as long as Miro Heiskanen is around, but it’s worth following how he handles heavier minutes.

Timo Meier's Play

I was willing to give Meier a pass for the end of last season because of the whole changing conferences/new team/developing chemistry thing. How injured he is right now is an open question, but his lack of point production this season has been a big concern. He has been missing the net a lot and that helps explain his shooting rate drop (in addition to fewer minutes) but when we combine all this issues this year with the stumble at the end of last year, well, it's hard to just hand-wave everything away.

Meier is clearly a very talented player but this is a New Jersey team that is fighting for a playoff spot and will be without their top defenceman for the rest of the regular season. Meier can't be a guy that skates 15-16 minutes a game on the third line. He needs to be a winger that can skate 18-19 minutes and, at the very least, score to a 30-goal pace with good two-way play. If he's not that, with Dougie Hamilton out and New Jersey's goalies looking like New Jersey's goalies have looked for several years now, this is a team that could miss the postseason and that is unacceptable for this franchise and their talent. Meier has shown some signs of life but it's fair to wonder just how much value he'll have over the next 40-something games. It could all turn on a dime, or it could just get worse (which doesn't seem possible but here we are). My money is always on talent winning out but fantasy owners should have a lot of reasons to be nervous.