It is the midst of the All-Star break, and this is the perfect time to look ahead to the rest of the season. For a more in-depth look at the second half, be sure to grab a copy of the 2024 Dobber Hockey Midseason Fantasy Guide! It has projections, prospects to watch for, advanced stats reviews, players that can rebound, trade deadline targets, and a whole lot more. Help yourself out for the stretch run by ordering a copy for this weekend devoid of regular season games.

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Yesterday's Ramblings discussed some players that could have a big 10 weeks to close out the regular season. Not necessarily high-end fantasy options but players that are showing signs of life that can help fantasy rosters for a cheap acquisition cost whether through waivers or trade.

Today, let's continue looking at the second half and talk specifically about keeper/dynasty formats.

This is the time of the fantasy hockey season where owners are making the decision to go for the title/playoff spot or re-tool for the future. For managers in keeper and dynasty formats, this often involves making decisions on high-end names. Let's talk about some of the high-end names that are surely at the forefront of many trades in these types of leagues. As usual, data will be from Natural Stat Trick or Frozen Tools, unless otherwise indicated.  

Tage Thompson

It has not been a good season for Buffalo and Thompson is no exception. Figuring out what's gone wrong isn't as simple as one or two things, and that's what makes the stretch run very uncertain.

The first thing is how the team abandoned the rush offence that made their scoring prolific at times. Tracking data from AllThreeZones clearly shows a significant drop from one of the most rush-heavy teams to a below-average one:

As a trade-off, Buffalo is much better defensively at 5-on-5 than a season ago, but this is a genuine shift in how the team operates offensively, which doesn't bode well for a Tage turnaround. He has also been earning just 12:50 per game in 5-on-5 time since the Christmas break, about his season average, and down a fair chunk from the 13:40 a season ago.

The other problem is the power play. Thompson has three PP goals in 39 games and that comes one season after he had 20 PP tallies. Shooting 9.4% against a three-year average of 21.9% seems to underline the big problem. Here's the issue with that shooting percentage: just 45% of Thompson's PP shot attempts are making it on target. His three-year average prior was 60.8%. He is getting more of his shot attempts blocked, and more are missing the net, and that would indicate to me that teams are playing him tighter which forces him to be finer with his shots. The results haven't been ideal. Things should get better through natural regression alone, but it's hard to say they will approach last season's rates. These are problems that are fixable, so that's the silver lining here, but that feels more likely to happen in the offseason/training camp than the next 33 games.  

Timo Meier

Another down season in New Jersey is starting to make things look very shaky for Meier's outlook. The first note is the loss in ice time. He sits at 17 minutes/game this season where he was between 19-20 minutes in his final two seasons in San Jose. Even if everything was constant, he would lose about 10 points over an 82-game season through ice time alone. He would need to be much more efficient with his shots – and his line mates with theirs – to make up that difference; Meier is a lot of things, but being efficient with goal scoring has never been one of them. Considering New Jersey's wing depth, that doesn't seem likely to improve much.

The second part is the defencemen. Dougie Hamilton has been out since late November, and his loss has had a huge impact on the team offensively. In Meier's tenure, here's how the team has fared with him on the ice both with and without Hamilton at 5-on-5:

There is something similar with Jack Hughes as the team's on-ice expected goals and actual goals are league average (or worse) when he's been on the ice with Hamilton this season than without (and the goals-for were much worse last season in a much larger sample).

The bright side is that New Jersey's shots and expected goals are much higher for Meier this season when he's had Nico Hischier as his centre than anyone else (and by a lot). He may not be expensive to acquire via trade at this point and if he can stay with Hischier the rest of the way, his offence should improve. Until Hughes returns, New Jersey may not have a lot of options but to leave them together, just don't expect an offensive explosion.

Jack Eichel

Eichel's surgery update was January 18^th and the team said at least four weeks from that point. Moving 31 days from that point would take us to February 18^th. The nice thing about that is Vegas does not have a busy schedule returning from the break with just four games in 13 days. If he can be back after that 31-day mark, fantasy owners trading for him over All-Star weekend will not miss many games played.

Aside from Eichel, the team should be getting Shea Theodore back from injury in mid-February as well. To say that they miss Theodore would be an understatement: Vegas had 16 power play goals in 20 games to start the season but have just 16 goals in 30 games since. The top unit has one goal in eight games with both Eichel and Theodore missing, so both skaters returning around the same time is great news for scoring upside.

Fantasy managers may be hesitant to trade for Eichel given the injury to him and some other key members. William Karlsson was activated off LTIR once they hit their break and Theodore should be back sometime in the next couple of weeks, so things are looking up. The bigger concern is the schedule as Vegas is 1 of 10 teams that has 50 games played already. They have a two-game week in the thick of fantasy playoffs in early April, and from March 4^th through March 31^st, they have just three games that are not on a Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday. Not that Eichel would be benched, but it may force fantasy managers to bench a good player often. The (likely) positive trade value would have to be balanced against the loss in utility from another skater that may not get used very often.

Erik Karlsson

There is a lot of good news here.

First, the power play has genuinely turned itself around. After a brutal start that saw Pittsburgh's top PP unit manage a paltry 4.5 goals/60 for two months with the man advantage, that number has jumped to 8.1/60 over their last 20 games. It isn't elite or anything, but it's at least passable, which is the best we can hope for. Those 20 games have seen Karlsson post six PPPs, which also isn't elite but is still good. He has also registered a point on fewer than 55% of the PP goals scored; he has never had a full season under 60% and he was over 70% in 2018-19 on a very good San Jose roster. If Pittsburgh can maintain their current PP scoring rate – and that's a question mark – then Karlsson could easily nab 10 or more PP points the rest of the way (added note: we’ll see what PP units look like after the break as Kris Letang did get some run on the top unit heading into the break).

On the topic of positive regression, Karlsson had six goals in 20 games to start the season but just one in his last 26 games. That stretch has seen him shoot 1.7%; he had shot 10% over his prior 204 regular season games. Even just a rebound to 7% shooting the rest of the way would see him score 5-6 goals.

Acquiring Karlsson takes a bit of a leap of faith because trading for him would need fantasy players to believe Pittsburgh's power play turnaround is for real, and not a quarter-season blip. The good news is this recent upturn has seen the top PP unit shoot under 14% and that's not a high bar. It seems as if he's worth the risk, especially with Pittsburgh having 36 games left, the second-most in the league.   

Igor Shesterkin

What is confounding about Shesterkin is that this wasn't a goalie that just had one great year. From 2019-2023, he was third in the league by overall Goals Saved Above Expected (per Evolving Hockey). His worst season was the Bubble campaign and he finished 8^th out of 32 goalies that had at least 1000 unblocked shots faced. If his worst season was a 75^th percentile goalie, well, that he has the fifth-worst GSAx among regular starters in 2023-24 is confounding.

The problem is coming at 5-on-5. His high-danger save percentage from 2020-23 was .872, easily tops among all regular starters. Thus far in 2023-24, it sits at .794, and that's in the bottom-quarter of regular starters. What is curious is that Jonathan Quick's HDSV% is nearly identical, so it isn't as if this is solely a Shesterkin problem. To me, that looks like a team problem.

When looking at HockeyViz's charts for Shesterkin, two things stood out: he's struggling more on tips/deflections than normal, and a lot of the goal problems are to his left:

Interestingly, here is New York's defence with Braden Schneider on the ice, and without him:

Now, he's a right shot, but his two most-common partners have been Erik Gustafsson and Zac Jones, and both those players have better shots against rates without him than with him. It isn't all on Schneider, but the shot locations indicate there may be seam passes getting through with him on the ice that there aren't with other pairs/players. We would have to go through a lot of video to know for certain, but that seems a reasonable guess.

It seems very likely that of the upgrades the Rangers make heading to the trade deadline, an improvement on the bottom pair seems likely. There are other issues to clean up and expecting Shesterkin to rebound to 2021-22 levels is asking too much, but his value shouldn't get any lower than it is right now.

Joey Daccord

A lot of a fantasy goaltender's value is tied into the success of their team; Charlie Lindgren has just nine wins in 20 starts because Washington can't score while Semyon Varlamov's Goals Against Average has gone up when compared to 2022-23 despite a higher save percentage because the Islanders allow way too many shots. When looking for a fantasy goalie, especially in a small sample like the 10 weeks post-break, evaluating the team in front of them is critical.

All that is why it's not hard to buy into Joey Daccord's run. He has 13 wins in his last 24 games, a stretch that has seen him post a .930 save percentage. Among the 33 goalies with at least 900 minutes played in that span, Daccord is facing the fifth-farthest average shot distance at 37.9 feet (the median is around 35.5 feet). He also doesn't face heavy shot volume, either. In that sense, he's not being heavily tested, and the shots he does face are generally easier to save than most goalies. Seattle's 5-on-5 defence has improved after a rocky (for them) start, and they don't take a lot of penalties. That is all great news for Daccord. Goal scoring might be an issue for wins, but as long as the defence holds up, it'll make Daccord's job easier.

Can Daccord be a .920 goalie the rest of the way? That is lofty, and goalies are fickle, especially in small samples. With that said, he's in a position to succeed and when looking for a productive fantasy goalie in a small sample, it is hard to ask for much more than that.