Last night saw many teams restart after the All-Star break, and after a couple trades leading up to the festivities, we get to start seeing the fallout in game action now. Elias Lindholm and Andrei Kuzmenko each made their debuts with their new teams, and each made an excellent first impression by scoring in the first period. Lindholm then added a second power play tally for good measure.

Lindholm ceded power play faceoffs to J.T. Miller, who won 11 draws compared to Lindholm's five. That was a worry by many who own Miller as a heavy FOW producer from the wing. Not to worry there.

Lindholm did indeed take Kuzmenko's spot on Pettersson's line at even strength, shifting Pettersson to more of a winger role. It will be interesting to see whether stylistically that ends up being a net positive by allowing Pettersson to focus more on offence, or whether it ends up being a drag on his numbers because he isn't as often the 'centre' of the play.

Mikael Backlund had to carry some heavy minutes without Lindholm, playing nearly 19 minutes, and taking 20 faceoffs, though Kadri stole all the offence, with three assists. Yegor Sharangovich took over as the other top-nine centre, lining up with Jonathan Huberdeau and Andrei Kuzmenko – notably playing a few seconds more than Kadri. That would be a huge boost to his value if that sticks and if he can hold down the centre position well enough. For someone with less faceoff wins than career NHL games, it's not always an easy transition.

This could also be what finally gets Jonathan Huberdeau going… who knows. Maybe worth buying low on him now to see what he can do with less pressure and different linemates the rest of the way. Three primary points last night.

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Sean Monahan's debut didn't go quite as well with the Penguins getting the jump on the Jets and shutting out their-look lineup. Tristan Jarry made 23 saves for his league-leading sixth shutout. Despite all the blank slates though, Jarry is still only 12^th in the league in save percentage, with Really Bad Starts about 18% of the time (a little higher than we like to see).

Jesse Puljujarvi played his first game for the Penguins, mostly lining up with Rickard Rakell and Lars Eller on a new third line. He did see a little bit of time with Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby as well, so we may have some lines shaken up over the next couple of weeks. Puljujarvi had two shots in just under 10 minutes of ice time. Not a ton of fantasy relevance yet, but it also depends on the size of your league.

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Coming off of the break, typically teams are a little rusty, and those that have gotten underway already and have shaken off that rust have a much better record. The only game last night we had of that sort was the Avalanche on the second night of a back to back – playing Justus Annunen in his second game of the season – against the rested/rusty Devils who hadn't played since January 27^th. Funnily enough it was the Devils who jumped out to the early lead, and the Avalanche who had to come back in the game, before the Avs just ran out of gas with their second game in two nights. Annunen let in four goals in the loss.

Zach Parise, Ryan Johansen, and Artturi Lehkonen are a new second line for the Avalanche that is actually their third line behind Ross Colton, Logan O'Connor, and Miles Wood. Not get for the fantasy value of that RyJo line, if they're only playing 11 minutes a night.

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Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin contested hard to see who could rack up the most shots last night, the pair of them or the entire Dallas team. It was tied through two periods, but then Dallas fought back a bit on the shot sheet with 18 in the third. It's the score sheet that really matters though, because one of the big differences between the Stars and the Sabres is that the Stars have some guy by the name of Jake Oettinger, who stopped 47 of 48 last night on route to the win.

Kyle Okposo was up on a line with Thompson and Jeff Skinner last night. As a Thompson owner, hopefully it's a quick showcase for a trade and not something that sticks the rest of the season.

The Dallas Stars have a loaded top power play too, but it was the second unit with Tyler Seguin and Matt Duchene that scored their only man-advantage goal of the night. The duo recorded the primary points on the play to bookend the All-Star break with a few productive games – four points in the last three games for each. Despite playing on the second unit, Duchene already has a whopping 10 power play points, which has helped boost his production. Seguin meanwhile only has four power play points on the year, which is pacing him for easily his lowest total since joining the Stars a decade ago.

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It used to be noteworthy when Alex Ovechkin didn't score, but the fact that I saw last night that there was an Ovie goal and I was genuinely surprised, tells you all you need to know about how different this season has gone for him. On the bright side, last night's tally makes it two straight games with a goal (and also two straight games with four shots) for Ovie, with four points in his last three to boot.

It's very possible that his final 40-goal season is already behind him, but by racking up 3.4 shots per game, even a lowly 10% shooting percentage would see him approaching 30 goals. There could very well be another 15 in him through the remaining 30-odd games that he plays.

Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsy each had two goals for the Habs, who are literally only going to go as far as their first line carries them the rest of the season. When you have players than most fantasy managers have never heard of playing 15 minutes a night in the middle of your lineup, you know you're still deep in the rebuilding stage.

Mike Matheson also played 27 minutes and picked up two assists, bringing him to 36 points on the season. Those two assists marked a new career high for him, passing the 34 points he racked up in an injury-shortened 48-game season last year. He's again pacing for just shy of 60 points, which seems to be a new normal.

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The Detroit Red Wings don't come off the All-Star break until Saturday, but I wanted to highlight that picking up a slumping Jeff Petry as of this coming weekend may pay off. They have a fairly heavy schedule through the rest of February, and Petry's peripherals have seen an uptick of late with some added minutes. The shot and hit rates aren't what they once were, but the cross-category coverage is still excellent. The puck bounces will come, and he should be able to post somewhere in the 30- to 40-point range the rest of the way.

One fun note I did want to make on him, is that if Petry doesn't decide to retire this summer, then it's very possible that he gets bought out. It would save the Red Wings a bit of cap, and free up a spot on the roster for Simon Edvinsson to take over a full-time role in the fall. As Petry has salary retained by Pittsburgh and Montreal, the resultant cap hits would be spread across the three teams, meaning the impact in 2025-26 would be negligible for each.

One other option for those of you looking to boost your second-half peripherals, would be Ryan Pulock. He returned on Monday to play his first game in nearly two months. He played over 20 minutes, mopped up some late power play time, and added two Shots, three Hits, and two Blocks along with a plus-one rating. He's still available in over 80% of Fantrax leagues, and 97% of Yahoo leagues.

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In planning for the upcoming trade deadline, I was looking at Mark Stone in one of my leagues, and it's really interesting to me that after a full summer of hearing snippets that his back might never get fully healthy, and that we might see load management, and that it would be Vegas gaming the system with the LTIR again, we have instead seen Stone play in every single one of Vegas' 51 games this year. He has been nearly a point-per-game player, has his highest average ice time since joining the Golden Knights, and has both produced more, and played more as the season has gone on.

I would imagine in the stretch run now we probably see his minutes dialed back a little as a minimum. The production will still likely be good regardless, but it's something to keep in mind as a potential buyer or seller GM in the second-half.

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The New York Rangers agreed to mutually part ways with Nick Bonino, who decided that he did not want to report to Bridgeport after clearing waivers. With Filip Chytil out for the season, the Rangers were already shallow at the centre position down through the organizational depth chart, and this just makes the need to add a bottom-six centre that much more pronounced. A team with real cup aspirations does not go through the trade deadline content with Johnny Brodzinski centring their third line. They should be hard after someone like Adam Henrique. Any third-line centre upgrade would be big for Kaapo Kakko's rest-of-season value.

Notably they also have a five-game week in fantasy week 20 in (mid-March). Five games is the most we ever get in a week, and this is the only occurrence we have of it this year. Take advantage of streaming it where you can.

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See you next Wednesday. In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter/X here, or BlueSky here if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments.