As far as stat adjustments go, this is a big one. The NHL announced that they have performed an audit of hit totals this season and adjusted as necessary. This won't change anything for prior fantasy weeks for head-to-head leagues, but hopefully this actually is an improvement to how they count hits moving forward. We will have to wait and see.

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We got a big injury update for Tampa Bay's blue line heading into their game Wednesday night against the New York Rangers:

Mikhail Sergachev and Erik Cernak are both in tonight, per Jon Cooper.

— Chris Krenn (@Chris_Krenn) February 7, 2024

Mikhail Sergachev had missed seven weeks of action while Erik Cernak had missed four. In a cruel twist, though, Sergachev got tied up in the corner with Alexis Lafrenière and was writhing on the ice grabbing at his left leg. Sergachev was stretchered off and things did not look good. More updates as we get them but it’d be a surprise not to see another extended absence.

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The Lightning lost that game 3-1, too. They only tested goalie Jonathan Quick with 19 shots and he saved all but one for the win. Jimmy Vesey scored a pair of goals and that has pushed him to 11 on the season. He now has as many goals as he did last season but in 32 fewer games played.

Jonny Brodzinski scored the other for the Rangers, totaling three shots and a block. For a team that has had trouble getting consistent scoring through the lineup, it was the type of game they needed.

Brandon Hagel scored the lone goal for Tampa Bay, managing three shots, two blocks, and two hits in the loss. Cernak had an assist, a block, and five hits in a solid multi-cat night. Andrei Vasilevskiy allowed two goals on 23 shots in the loss.

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It was a night featuring several big (some illegal) hits and lots of goals as Toronto skated away with a 5-4 win over Dallas. Third-period goals from Mitch Marner and William Nylander (PP) 20 seconds apart gave the Leafs a 5-3 lead, and it ended up being enough for the two points. Nylander had two power play goals on the night, actually, an assist on a John Tavares power play goal, and four shots total. Nylander now has 25 goals on the year, his fourth straight 82-game season with at least that many. He also has 26 power play points and just needs six more to set a career high.

Auston Matthews also scored with the man advantage to give the Leafs four power play goals on the night. It was his 41^st goal of the year in his 48^th game, passing his mark of 40 from last season in 74 games played. A rebound season, to say the least. He also had an assist, five total shots, a pair of blocks, and a hit in a great multi-cat effort. Tavares had two assists to go with his goal and had four hits of his own. As I said, a few big checks laid in this one.

Evgenii Dadonov scored twice, Jamie Benn (PP) once, and Wyatt Johnston added a late tally. Johnston had three total shots and two hits in the loss.

Miro Heiskanen had an assist, two shots, two PIMs, and a pair of hits of his own. Morgan Rielly had an assist (PP) as well to go with three shots, two blocks, and a pair of hits.

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Calgary signed winger Martin Pospisil to a two-year contract worth $1M per season. Though he has just 11 points in 34 games, he's done that skating just 11:32 per night. With his 87 hits, he has the look of a good middle-6 option in banger leagues but we'll have to see what the team's roster looks like come September.  

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Boston announced that rookie Matthew Poitras will be out five months due to a shoulder surgery. That would put his timeline well ahead of training camp so hopefully he’ll be all set to go when September rolls around.

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Whether it's the reduction in fighting, increased mobility of defencemen, emphasis on special team improvements, or whatever else comes to mind, the NHL game has been evolving rapidly.

One area that has come to the forefront over the last 4-5 years is generating off the rush. Being able to create offence off things like an opposition turnover or a quick transition game seems to have more emphasis. The question is how much it matters for us in the fantasy game.

Let's take a look at rush offence at 5-on-5. For this, we will go back to the start of the 2022-23 season, look only at 5-on-5, and see how it has related to production. For this, we will use tracking data from AllThreeZones and production data from Natural Stat Trick. These are the parameters:

• This is for forwards only.
• Must have played in both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, so no current rookies.
• Must have at least 500 total minutes at 5-on-5 between the two seasons.
• Must have at least 100 tracked minutes at 5-on-5 in each season.
• Must have at least 250 tracked minutes total.
• We will be looking at rush shots/60 minutes, rush assists/60, and the total between the two labelled as rush contributions/60.

The 250-minute track total is arbitrary, but it gives us 317 forwards, or roughly averaging 10 per team. Let's look at what it has meant.

Goals

As for goal scoring, this was the weakest component. For reference, the correlation between Natural Stat Trick's individual expected goals/60 at 5-on-5 and goals/60 actually scored by the forwards is 0.307. Considering how random hockey can be, that's not too bad. When we look at the correlation between rush shots/60 and goals/60 over the last two seasons, though, we see it's even worse than that:

When we look at the names at the top of the leaderboard, there are names we'd expect like Jack Hughes, William Nylander, David Pastrnak, and Nathan MacKinnon. However, there are some lower-end scorers like Michael Eyssimont, Mikael Backlund, and Carl Grundstrom:

On balance, it still seems useful to look at, but relying solely on rush shots to highlight top-end goal scorers doesn't give us the whole picture.

Points

This is where things get a bit more interesting.

We will stay with rush shots for a second. As we can imagine, if rush shots don't correlate all too well with goal scoring, they don't correlate too well with point production:

There is no real need to go a whole lot further here.

When we look over to rush assists/60 rather than rush shots/60, and see how those types of assists correlate to point production over the last two seasons, we get a much better result:

Unlike the rush shot portion that had a few names stick out that didn't fit with the rest of the list, the rush assist portion is loaded with the top offensive stars in the fantasy game. The only one that sticks out is Sam Bennett:

Bennett often skates with Matthew Tkachuk, and he's right above him. Even Carter Verhaeghe isn't very far down the list after where it cuts off, so that's just a line where all three players feed off each other very well. Even after this top-15 portion, names like Connor McDavid, Aleksander Barkov, Travis Konecny, Mark Scheifele, Kirill Kaprizov, and Roope Hintz are on the board. By and large, all the names at the top are top producers.

It doesn't end there, though. Just because these rush shots don't seem very useful when compared to a public measure like individual expected goals doesn't mean they aren't useful at all. In fact, when we combine rush shots with rush assists to 'rush contributions', we get an even stronger correlation than with the assist portion alone:

And when we look at the top-15 for rush contributions/60 at 5-on-5 over the last two seasons, it's a who's-who of elite fantasy producers:

Again, just outside the top-15 is Backlund, but then we have Mathew Barzal, Konecny, Leon Draisaitl, Tim Stützle, Nikolaj Ehlers, and so on. There are a few players like Backlund, Bennett, and Nazem Kadri who aren't truly elite producers, but it's worth noting that two of those three players are on the same team and the third is on an elite line. Even Kadri's 2.17 points/60 at 5-on-5 over the last two seasons is in the 80^th percentile of regular forwards.

So, how does that help for this season? Well, let's look at some of the top rush contribution/60 options from this season alone. These are some highlighted portions of the top-50 players, which is the range that would put these names at least one standard deviation higher than the league average of 8.4/60. We will start with the top five, which is being presented just to show off Owen Tippett's performance:

Konecny isn't much further down this list, but he's established himself as a star winger in the league by now. Tippett is the next to do so and after showing well in 2022-23, he's even better in 2023-24. The Flyers are developing a very dangerous core of forwards that should add Matvei Michkov in 2-3 years.

This next list is the back half of the top 25 names, or those from 14-25. They aren't among the elite, but they've been very good, and it features a couple of Seattle Kraken forwards, a personal favourite in Brandon Hagel, the next generational talent in Connor Bedard, one Connor we should expect and one Connor we should not:

Connor McMichael is an interesting player. After a full-ish season at the NHL level in 2021-22, he was sent back to the AHL in 2022-23. He has been in the NHL all season this year but has just one secondary assist at 5-on-5 while shooting 6.1%. Those areas have kept his production low, but there are signs of life, and it just may be hard to thrive on an aging Capitals roster on its clear downswing.

Three other names stand out among the top 50.

The first is Tommy Novak. He has developed into another personal favourite and though his rush contributions are down a bit from last season, they're still very strong. Of the 328 forwards with at least 1000 total minutes at 5-on-5 over the last two seasons, Novak's 2.37 points/60 is higher than teammate Filip Forsberg (2.24/60) and also exceeds names like Konecny (2.34/60), Mark Stone (2.32/60), Kevin Fiala (2.3/60), and Mikko Rantanen (2.27/60). Until he earns more than 14-15 minutes a night, and gets to the top power play unit, his fantasy value will be sparse, but it will be hard for Nashville to keep treating him like a third liner if he keeps doing this.

The next name is Warren Foegele, who has a rush contribution/60 rate this season of 11.71 and that's higher than Stützle, Forsberg, Ehlers, and Rantanen. It is easy to hand-waive this as playing in Edmonton's top-6 forward group, but the rush contributions of both Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are below average, so that can't be it. Perhaps there is a good reason why Foegele's points/60 at 5-on-5 this campaign is higher than all regular Edmonton forwards besides Connor McDavid.

The last name is Leo Carlsson, whose 11.4 rush contribution/60 rate is higher than Ehlers, Rantanen, and Hintz. His points/60 rate isn't good, but it comes from a lack of shot volume and secondary assists. For a rookie to rate this well is a good sign and hopefully portends great things to come as he matures in the league.

This will be something to look into more at the end of the season because in-season correlation and future-season predictability are not the same thing. Also, when it comes to fantasy value, peripheral stats and power play production are vital. Regardless, there are some gems that may explode offensively with a bigger role, and we'll be sure to highlight those players once the offseason starts.