The 2024 Dobber Hockey Midseason Guide was released last Friday! It has second-half projections, prospects that could be on their way, players that are set to rebound, players likely to be on the move at the trade deadline, and a whole lot more. Be sure to head to the Dobber Shop to procure your very own copy!

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Aleksander Barkov was not in the lineup for Florida's game last night against Detroit. He left their last game early and it didn't seem to be anything severe, so hopefully this is just taking things slow rather than a longer-term issue. Paul Maurice said Barkov won't play until he's 100%, so he may not be back this week, but it hopefully won't be much longer than that.

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A third-period goal from Robby Fabbri tied Detroit and Florida 2-2 but an overtime power play marker from Dylan Larkin lifted the Red Wings to a 3-2 win over the Barkov-less Panthers. That goal keeps Larkin over a point per game on the season, which would be the first of his career if he can maintain it.

Michael Rasmussen had a goal and an assist in the win, and he now has 10 goals on the year. That was as many as he had last season but in 12 fewer games played, so a good year from him thus far.

Alex Lyon stopped 32 of 34 shots for his 10^th win in 15 starts. He is up to a .923 save percentage as he's doing his best to help out fantasy managers that were vigilant on the waiver wire.

Sam Reinhart scored his 33^rd goal of the season in the loss. It was his fourth short-handed goal on the campaign, and he's now scored in eight straight appearances and has 16 in his last 13 games going back a month. There is a guy who is going to get a handsome contract in the summer.

Gustav Forsling also scored once, on four shots, adding a block and three hits. He may not reach the highs of last season, points-wise, but he's still been a steady multi-cat fantasy option this season with 100 shots, 60 blocks, and 50 hits in 44 outings.

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Good news on Carolina forward Martin Necas:

Brind'Amour said Kochetkov is progressing. Andersen has still not skated.

Necas could "perhaps" play Friday — Brind'Amour said it's up to Necas to say he's ready

— Cory Lavalette (@corylav) January 17, 2024

Necas hasn't played in over two weeks with an upper-body issue but his return seems to be around the bend. He has 26 points in 38 games this year, which is a big downturn from the 71 points he posted in a full season last year. With Carolina's power play rolling the way it is, it may be a while before he sees top PP time, so it's unlikely he sees much of an uptick in production anytime soon. Things (lines) change quickly in the NHL, though.

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Timo Meier was back in the lineup for New Jersey for their home game against Montreal on Wednesday night. Meier has yet to suit up in 2024 and has just 15 points in 28 games besides. His struggles since getting to New Jersey are well-documented, so hopefully when the team is fully healthy he can regain his form. He just turned 27 years old in October so it's not as if there should be much concern about age-related decline.

Montreal won that game 3-2 thanks to a strong effort from goalie Sam Montembeault. He stopped 28 of 30 shots he faced, including several chances from in tight, to lock down his 10^th win of the season through 20 starts. He has a .910 save percentage and a 2.85 goals against average. Not a bad fantasy season thus far considering his cheap draft-day investment.

Joshua Roy scored his first NHL goal, finishing off a 2-on-1 pass from Sean Monahan. Roy still isn't getting much ice time, so the fantasy value is nil in most formats, but it's a nice progression from a fifth-round pick three years ago. (Monahan finished the game with two assists and two shots.)

Cole Caufield had a goal and an assist while Juraj Slafkovsky scored off Caufield's impressive mid-air helper:

Juraj Slafkovsky has goals in back-to-back games.

1-0 #GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/0MxZDg3BN5

— Marc Dumont (@MarcPDumont) January 18, 2024

Luke Hughes and Alex Holtz scored power play goals in the loss. Holtz had just 8:07 in ice time but he's now tied with Tyler Toffoli for second on the Devils in goals per minute this season.

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Weather and closed roads forced a postponement in the Chicago/Buffalo game. It is set to go Thursday night at 7 PM ET instead.

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The Boston Bruins provided a number of injury updates:

Brandon Carlo, Derek Forbort, Matt Poitras, and Linus Ullmark are practicing.

📢 advertisement:

— Fluto Shinzawa (@FlutoShinzawa) January 17, 2024

Coach Jim Montgomery would go on to say that Linus Ullmark is good to go, though he may not start on Thursday. Brandon Carlo and Matthew Poitras are more touch-and-go, but they may be ready to return.  

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Columbus gave us an update on Boone Jenner:

#CBJ coach Pascal Vincent say expectation is that captain Boone Jenner will return to the lineup vs. #NJDevils on Friday.

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) January 17, 2024

Jenner back is a big deal for the Columbus goaltending in particular. The team's penalty kill was very poor with both him and Sean Kuraly out of the lineup. With Jenner back, and Kuraly having returned already, it should be a bit easier for the Blue Jackets's netminders on the PK.

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There were new lines for St. Louis at practice and the big swap was moving Jordan Kyrou to the second line and elevating Jake Neighbours to the top line with Robert Thomas and Pavel Buchnevich. Kyrou had seven goals and seven assists in his previous 14 games as his positive regression has kicked in. The downside of that production uptick is he's now being tasked to carry a second line offensively and is being taken away from better line mates. Such is the nature of fantasy hockey.

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Back in November, I wrote about how players were missing the net an awful lot when compared to recent seasons. Fellow fantasy hockey enthusiasts are encouraged to go see what was going on in the NHL through the first month, and the follow-up to that piece that expanded on things like hits and blocks per game played. For a brief summary:

• Through four weeks, just 50.6% of all shot attempts landed on target. Recent seasons had seen marks of 55.8% and 53.7%. That means for every 100 shot attempts taken, an extra ~five were not hitting the net when compared to just two seasons ago. The 2022-23 NHL season had 152 702 shot attempts so that change would result in thousands of fewer shots in a season.
• Blocked shots per player per game went up 20.8% between 2021-22 and the early portions of 2023-24.  

Now that most of the league has played at least 41 games, it's time for a check-in to see if (and how) that has changed. Again, data from Natural Stat Trick for this.

As of Wednesday afternoon, there was a total of 24 762 individual player games in the NHL thus far in 2023-24. Those 24 762 games have resulted in a total of 21 691 blocks, or 0.876 blocks per man game played. Here is how that compares to the recent seasons discussed in those earlier Ramblings:

So, yeah, that's a lot. It all depends on what the final total of man-games played is at the end of the season, but if this pace keeps up, it will add roughly 6000 blocks across the NHL when compared to just two seasons ago. That would represent an increase of ~17% in total blocked shots over the 2021-22 campaign. There are a lot of players throwing their bodies in front of a lot of shots.

The first impact for fantasy hockey, of course, is that abundance reduces value. Back in the 2021-22 season, there were just 26 forwards that played at least 60 games and averaged at least 0.66 blocks per game; so far in 2023-24, there are 79 forwards who have played at least 30 games and are averaging 0.66 blocks per game. When looking at forwards that were blocking at least one shot per game, there were zero such forwards two seasons ago and there are 16 such forwards this season. More forwards blocking more shots reduces the value of blocked shots from forwards in fantasy leagues.

It is also worth noting it's not just depth forwards blocking shots. Auston Matthews (1.29) Eeli Tolvanen (1.14), Alex Tuch (1.11), and Frank Vatrano (1.0) are all blocking at least one shot per game. When looking at forwards at 0.8 or higher, we can include Elias Pettersson, Joe Pavelski, Matt Duchene, Anze Kopitar, Mitch Marner, Nathan MacKinnon, Vincent Trocheck, Jack Eichel, and Sam Reinhart. (Many of those forwards kill penalties so that helps, but there are a lot of highly productive players blocking a lot of shots.)

Moving on to the team-wide numbers, things continue to change. As stated earlier, the first four weeks of the season saw 50.6% of all shot attempts land on target, and that represented a huge decline from recent seasons. That percentage has continued to decline as just 50.2% of all shot attempts are now landing on target, a drop of 5.6% from 2021-22:

A lot more blocked shots are leading to a lot fewer shot attempts hitting the net, and it's a discrepancy that just keeps growing.

The drop in attempts landing on target isn't just from blocked shots, though. So far in 2023-24, 30.3% of all unblocked shots are missing the net; just two seasons ago, that number was 26.7%. So, not only are players blocking more shots (or getting their shots blocked more often, however you want to look at it), but players are missing the net more often even when their attempts aren't blocked.

As for that last part, we'd probably need to parse the play-by-play data (which I don't have the coding skills for) and complement that with video tracking to find out exactly what's going on. My guess is that the prevalence of shot blocking has forced players to be a bit finer with their shot attempts, and that results in more pucks missing the net. There is likely also a shot angle aspect to this which, again, would need some data perusing.

Again, this has pretty big implications for fantasy hockey. Gone are the days when a forward racking up 50 blocked shots in a season would be a huge boost to their multi-cat value. It will depend on games played and injuries and all that, but at this rate, we should see somewhere in the neighbourhood of 75 forwards reach the 50-block plateau, or at least three times as many as the 2021-22 season.

It also impacts the goaltenders. The league-wide goals against average sits at 2.93. Two seasons ago, that was 2.92. This season, goalies are saving 27.49 shots/60 minutes, a number that was 28.47 saves/60 two seasons ago. So, goalies are giving up more goals per 60 minutes played but making 3.4% fewer saves per 60 minutes. That changes our benchmarks and what we should expect from our fantasy netminders.

It is a very interesting time in the NHL as it seems the game is changing every season. Staying on top of stuff like this helps find edges in the fantasy game that are harder to find.