Key players missing from any lineup is something that can really derail the season of any team (look at New Jersey, goaltending aside). That had been happening to Colorado as Gabriel Landeskog is out for the season, Sam Girard went into the Player Assistance Program, as did Valeri Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen has been out for over two months with his neck injury, and Bowen Byram for the last couple of weeks. Kudos to the Avalanche for keeping it together, honestly.

The good news is that both Byram and Lehkonen returned to the lineup on Wednesday night. Lehkonen slotted in on the third line but we'll see how long that lasts. Either way, great news for the players, team, and fantasy managers.

Colorado pummeled Washington 6-2 in that game as Nathan MacKinnon had a natural hat trick, finishing with four goals (two PP) and one assist. MacKinnon is on a 12-game point streak where he has 11 goals, 15 assists, and 62 shots. He passed Nikita Kucherov for the point lead by landing at 82, so he's guaranteed a point-per-game status for the full season and it's still a week until the All-Star break.

Mikko Rantanen also had four points (1+4) while Cale Makar had a goal and two helpers. Lehkonen skated 16:12 with two shots, a hit, and a block. He remained on the third line and off the top PP unit all game.

Dylan Strome had two goals in the loss and is now up to 18 goals and 12 assists on the season. He needs six goals to surpass his career-high of 23 set a year ago. This is a guy teams in their Cup window for the next 3-4 years (Boston, Florida, Carolina, New Jersey, New York Rangers, Colorado, Vegas, Los Angeles) should be looking to acquire at the trade deadline.

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The police investigation into the sexual assault allegations against members of the 2018 Canadian World Junior team has wrapped up as five unnamed members were asked to surrender to London, Ontario police. Rumours are rampant as to the five names, but they were not officially offered yet so we'll hold off on saying much more until those names are made public.

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Good injury news for Ondrej Palat:

❗️Ondrej Palat has returned to #NJDevils practice!

He just stepped onto the ice, rejoining his teammates for the first time since Dec. 30.

— Amanda Stein (@amandacstein) January 24, 2024

New Jersey needs as many healthy bodies as they can get right now.

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Patrick Kane was at practice for Detroit:

Patrick Kane in first practice in close to 2 weeks. #RedWings pic.twitter.com/ZIwP23nXeU

— Ansar Khan (@AnsarKhanMLive) January 24, 2024

He didn't skate with the lines, so don't expect him back right away, but Detroit is one of the few teams that has a game next week (Wednesday against Ottawa). He needs to be cleared for contact but there may be a chance he returns before the break.

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Florida laid the wood to Arizona with a 6-2 win on Wednesday night. Aleksander Barkov was back in the lineup, but he didn't resume his normal spot on Florida's top line; they left the Eetu Luostarainen-Anton Lundell–Sam Reinhart line together and Barkov skated with Evan Rodrigues and Mackie Samoskevich. It was a different coach, but Reinhart and Lundell spent a lot of time together on the same line in years gone by, and if the team can get all three lines rolling (perhaps adding another winger for Barkov), it might be something they stick with for a while.

Matthew Tkachuk kept his hot streak going with two goals and an assist (PP) with three shots and two hits. That makes 10 goals and 26 points (nine on the PP) in his last 15 games, so the regression has been in full swing for a month now.

Lundell and Reinhart each had a goal and an assist while Carter Verhaeghe had three helpers, two shots, and a pair of PIMs. Lundell has five points in his last four games, or as many points as he had in his previous 22.  

Dylan Guenther had a goal (PP) and an assist (PP) with seven shots, two PIMs, and a hit. He also cracked the 19-minute mark for the first time on the season as Arizona had nine (!) power plays.  

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Auston Matthews played the overtime hero as his 39^th goal of the season lifted Toronto 1-0 over Winnipeg in a game that belonged to Ilya Samsonov. The beleaguered goalie saved all 32 shots he faced for his second shutout and best performance of the season. He needs to have more games like this to truly win the confidence back of fans, coaches, and fantasy managers, but it's a step in the right direction.

Morgan Rielly assisted the overtime goal, finishing with two shots, two blocks, and a hit. He has had a very good multi-cat season and the 92 blocked shots have him on pace for 164 in 82 games, which would pass his prior career-high mark by 42.

Josh Morrissey took a shot to The Bad Area and had to leave the game, not to return. It honestly looked very painful so hopefully it's not a serious issue.

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Spencer Martin stopped 26 of 28 shots faced in his Carolina debut as the Hurricanes skated away from Boston with a 3-2 win. Goals from Martin Necas (PP), Jordan Martinook, and Teuvo Teravainen (PP) helped the Andrei Svechnikov-less 'Canes get the two points. Teravainen added an assist, and three shots in a solid fantasy night.

Brad Marchand scored both goals for Boston in the losing effort. He had three shots, two PIMs, and a hit in a very good multi-cat effort. Marchand has 23 goals on the season and needs 10 more the rest of the way to set a five-year high.

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Twenty-Nine saves from Joel Hofer and an overtime goal from Brayden Schenn pushed St. Louis 4-3 over Vancouver in the extra frame. Jake Neighbours a registered a goal and an assist (PP) while Pavel Buchnevich (PP) and Alexey Toropchenko also scored. Buchnevich had three total shots and a pair of blocks. Though it was just his second goal in his last 14 games, Buchnevich had 45 shots in that span. The goals will come, and hopefully this is the start of the regression.

The Lotto Line was broken up for Vancouver with Pius Suter joining JT Miller and Brock Boeser while Ilya Mikheyev and Andrei Kuzmenko skated with Elias Pettersson. Suter had a hat trick (one PP goal) in the third period to push the game to overtime, so kudos to him on making the most of his top-6/top PP role.

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Oliver Bjorkstrand and Vince Dunn were in the lineup for Seattle as they thrashed Chicago 6-2. Tomas Tatar had his first two-goal game as a member of the Kraken while Jared McCann had a goal, an assist, and three shots. Dunn skated 20:45 in this easy matchup with an assist and a block.

Chicago received scoring from Joey Anderson and Nick Foligno. Seth Jones had two assists, three shots, two blocks, and a pair of PIMs in the loss. Chicago has scored more than two goals in a game just twice in their last 15 outings.

Jaden Schwartz left the game late in the third period after taking a shot to his ankle. More updates as we get them.

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It is fair to wonder how much runway Todd McLellan has left with Los Angeles. A 5-3 loss to a Buffalo team playing their second game in as many nights now means the Kings have just six wins in their last 22 games. Not only that, but the team was up 3-1 after the first period and allowed four straight for the loss.

Buffalo's old-new second line of Dylan Cozens (1+1), JJ Peterka (2+1), and Jack Quinn (1+2) did most of the damage for the Sabres. Alex Tuch had a goal on six shots as he was moved down to the bottom-6 for this game. He seemed to respond well. Devon Levi stopped 37 of 40 shots in a very big win; it was just his second since Christmas.

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The older I get, the more I think offensive success in hockey is driven by choices. That is a vague statement so let's break it down into two parts:

1. A player (and team) usually has to make a series of correct choices to create a goal: catching a streaking player for a stretch pass rather than playing it safe with a D-to-D pass; a few consecutive small-area passes below the dots that connect to create a chance; taking the correct steps transitioning through the neutral zone to end up with an offence-favoured zone entry, and so on.
2. A player (and team) usually has to have several options available at each step to keep the defence off-balance. Having the streaking player for a long stretch pass is nice, but that can only work if there is an open D-to-D pass option, an option boards option, a low-curling or supportive forward, and so on.

That second point is the focus for today. Specifically, players being able to create offence in a variety of ways as to not allow the defence to settle into comfortable defensive habits; creativity wins the day.

To that end, let's look at some dual-threat players that have emerged this season. For fantasy hockey purposes, we are simply going to look at shot attempts per 60 minutes at all strengths (iCF/60) and scoring chance assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 (SCA/60). The latter is taken from tracking data via AllThreeZones and describes players that are assisting on a teammate's scoring chance. Today, we will look at forwards and tomorrow we will look at defencemen.

This season, the average iCF/60 among forwards with at least 400 minutes played is 14.1/60. The average SCA/60 rate among forwards with at least 100 minutes tracked is 2.9/60. To try to give it some equivalency, all SCA/60 numbers will be multiplied by 4.0 to bring the raw number closer to par with the shot rates. It isn't very scientific, but this is just to highlight some players that require more digging. Alright, let's get to it.

The Top-10

When we look at the top of the board, we see a lot of the names we'd expect to see: Matthew Tkachuk, Connor McDavid, Artemi Panarin, Nikita Kucherov, Sidney Crosby, Auston Matthews, and Carter Verhaeghe (Nathan MacKinnon is further down the list and we'll get to him). There are a couple of wingers that are personal favourites in Travis Konecny and Nikolaj Ehlers. And then… Danton Heinen?

Obviously, ice time is a factor here. He has just over 100 tracked minutes, and by the time AllThreeZones finishes tracking their usual number of regular season games, that tracked ice time total will at least triple. So, we'll see where things stand when the sample grows, but Boston paying Heinen and James van Riemsdyk less than $1.8M combined this season is working out very well for the team.

Wingmen

Just outside the top-10 is Leon Draisaitl, who is just an incredible player, and then we have five wingers (Malkin excepted). The names on that list are interesting for a variety of reasons:

Seeing William Nylander, Filip Forsberg, and Kirill Kaprizov should not be surprising. Jordan Kyrou might be a bit of a shock because of his lack of production for the first two months of the season, but he seemed to be getting some genuine bad luck and has rebounded with 17 points (8+9) and 61 shots in 17 games under new coach Drew Bannister. He is an elite offensive winger.

Owen Tippett is the name that sticks out. It isn't because he's having a bad season or anything, it's quite the opposite; he's been phenomenal. Tippett landed on the injured reserve, which sucks, but he had his offensive breakout in 2022-23 and he's shown it wasn't a fluke with 18 goals and 12 assists in 46 games. For anyone wondering about his assists, consider that he's shooting 10.8% at 5-on-5 and his line mates are shooting 6.5% in aggregate. For reference, Forsberg is shooting 10.9% at 5-on-5 and his line mates are shooting 8.5% in aggregate. Add all that to an awful Flyers power play, and there are reasons why the assists are lacking despite good SCA/60 rates.

Nathan MacKinnon

To round out the top-25, MacKinnon ranks 25^th on the list by this crude dual-threat metric. It might seem counterintuitive given his 134-point pace, but it does make sense when we go through what is actually happening.

Going into Wednesday night's game, MacKinnon had 25 secondary assists on the season. He leads the league by four (Tim Stützle has 21) and has eight more than fourth-place Panarin. He has averaged 0.53 secondary assists per game, a number that was 0.34 over his prior three seasons. Growing a secondary assist rate by nearly 58%, while averaging over 23 minutes a night, is helping his production tremendously. MacKinnon is also seeing a five-year low in iCF/60 and it's led to a three-year low in shots per game. That his shooting percentage is the highest it has been since 2017-18 is what's helping to keep him with high goal totals.

None of this is to denigrate what MacKinnon is doing. He is one of the top players in the league, one of the top players in fantasy, and a Hart Trophy candidate to this point. It is just to contextualize his performance this season.

Notables

One standard deviation above average (roughly the top 14% of players) by this measure yields 51 forwards in our sample. Most of the rest of the list are players we'd assume to be there: Jack Eichel, Dylan Larkin, Mathew Barzal, Cole Caufield, Jason Robertson, and the like. There are a few interesting names that did pop up, though:

It is nice to see a couple veterans in Kevin Fiala and Nazem Kadri. Fiala has been a point-per-game player with the Kings and though he lags a bit this season from last season, consider that nearly half the shot attempts occurring with Fiala and Trevor Moore on the ice at 5-on-5 are going to either Phillip Danault or the defencemen; those are not great goal-scoring options to be taking 48% of the shot attempts. Kadri, meanwhile, has 16 goals and 21 assists with 131 shots in his last 39 games going back to late October.

Tommy Novak is interesting here. Samples over his last two seasons are small, but it is now up to 87 total games and he's showing very good playmaking in his two half-season samples. Eventually, we just have to admit he's a really good playmaker, even if his ice time makes him a difficult fantasy option to trust.

One of the biggest surprises of the season is Warren Foegele. This is a guy who usually had good offensive play-driving rates and good individual expected goals numbers at 5-on-5, but usually had trouble turning all that into actual goal scoring, either for himself or his teammates. That started turning last season and has rounded the corner in a big way this season. He is second among Oilers forwards in points/60 at 5-on-5 (honestly) and has been a solid depth fantasy option for much of this season.

Finally, we get to a pair of rookies in Connor Bedard and Adam Fantilli. As for Fantilli, his iCF/60 is the fifth-highest for any teenage forward since 2007 (ahead of names like Brady Tkachuk and Steven Stamkos). He alsohas an SCA/60 rate that is 29% higher than the average forward this season (all forwards, not just rookies), and is just ahead of names like Robertson, Aleksander Barkov, and Troy Terry. So, yeah, the kid is special.

Alright, that's it for forwards. Anyone stick out to you? Let us know in the comments.