In Vladimir Tarasenko's debut with Florida, he started on the top line with Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart, skating on the left side. That moved Carter Verhaeghe down to the second line and Nick Cousins to the fourth. We will see how long this lasts but it's a very good position to be to start out his quest for a Stanley Cup (and good fantasy value).

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Staying with Florida, Gustav Forsling signed an eight-year extension with a cap hit of $5.75M. He has 31 points in 62 games this season for Florida, pacing for over 40 points/82-games for the third season in a row. He won't ascend in the fantasy game without top PP time, and that's not coming anytime soon, so fantasy managers will have a decision to make next season about whether this price bump is worth his production.

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A couple of lesser trades happened Thursday as Joel Edmundson was sent to Toronto from Washington while Anthony Beauvillier was traded from Chicago to Nashville. Both are depth options for their new teams and while Beauvillier might find some chemistry with Tommy Novak, the way Nashville runs their depth lines is unlikely to lead to much (if any) relevant fantasy value. For more on that trade, and the one that sent Yakov Trenin to Colorado, I wrote this yesterday. One thing I didn’t mention is that Nashville has just five games in the next two fantasy weeks, so it’ll be tough for Beauvillier to rack up any fantasy relevance for the time being.

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Montreal sent prospect Jan Mysak to Anaheim in exchange for prospect Jacob Perreault. Both are 2020 draft picks, the former 48^th overall and the latter 27^th, but neither has found much footing with their former teams. With both teams in a rebuild, it's a chance for both players to make headway on rosters that would make room for them if they can find their footing.

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In one of those games that makes you say "yeah this team is cooked," Washington went into Pittsburgh and laid waste to the Penguins 6-0. Dylan Strome had a trio of assists (one PP) with two shots and three blocks while both Sonny Milano and Alex Ovechkin had a goal and an assist. Ovechkin's goal was on the power play, and that makes 12 goals in his last 25 games.

John Carlson had one assist (PP), one shot, three blocks, and a hit in a very good multi-category night. Charlie Lindgren was spectacular in net, saving all 40 shots for the shutout.

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Florida showed off their revamped lineup on Thursday and managed to lose to Philadelphia 2-1. Garnet Hathaway scored with fewer than 30 seconds on the clock to get the team the two points after Ryan Poehling scored early in the second period. Gustav Forsling had the lone Panthers goal, his 10^th of the season, and a nice showing from him with three shots and a pair of hits after signing his contract extension.

Travis Konecny returned to the Flyers lineup after missing six games. Samuel Ersson stopped 29 of 30 shots faced for the win.

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New Jersey held Tyler Toffoli out of the lineup on Thursday night but pulled off a 4-1 win against St. Louis thanks to a Timo Meier hat trick (one PP). Meier added an assist on an Erik Haula goal for the four-point night, totaling seven shots, two blocks, and a hit. Meier now has goals in four straight games and eight tallies in his last 12 contests with 37 shots. That's a hot streak, but this is the Timo that New Jersey needed in the first 60 games of the season.

Brandon Saad and Pavel Buchnevich swapped spots in the lineup and Saad scored St. Louis's only goal. Jordan Binnington allowed three goals on 32 shots while Nico Daws stopped 23 of 24 in the win.

Nico Hischier had two assists (one PP), five shots, and two blocks in a great multi-cat effort.

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A pair of goals from Brady Skjei was enough for Carolina as the Hurricanes beat the Canadiens 4-1 on Thursday. Skjei now has 10 goals on the season, his second season in a row with double-digits after the 18 he scored last season.

Andrei Svechnikov had a goal and an assist, two shots, and two hits in a very good fantasy night while Stefan Noesen scored while taking Michael Bunting's spot (who was being held out for a pending trade which hadn't yet materialized at time of writing).

Frederik Andersen returned to the Carolina net for the first time in four months following his blood-clot scare and saved 24 of 25 shots in the feel-good win. Sam Montembeault allowed three goals on 39 shots in the loss.

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Both Jack Roslovic and Alex Nylander scored once again for the Blue Jackets as they took a 4-2 win at home against the Oilers. Dmitri Voronkov and Mathieu Olivier also scored for Columbus, while Cole Sillinger had an assist, five shots, a block, and a hit in a stellar fantasy effort. Roslovic, Sillinger, and Nylander have been carrying this team for a couple weeks now, as we all predicted.

Daniil Tarasov stopped 29 of 31 shots he faced for the win.

Zach Hyman scored his 43^rd goal of the year and managed four total shots with a block.

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After trading Elias Lindholm, Chris Tanev, and Noah Hanifin, having Connor Zary injured, and Martin Pospisil suspended, Calgary went into Tampa Bay and pounded the Lightning 6-3. Yegor Sharangovich had a monster night with two goals and two assists, registering four shots and a block. Blake Coleman had a goal with two shots, a block, two PIMs, and three hits while Jakob Pelletier, Dryden Hunt, and Andrew Mangiapane all scored for the Flames. Hockey is hilarious.

Anthony Cirelli, Mikey Eyssimont, and Conor Sheary all scored for the Lightning with Eyssimont having two shots, two PIMs, and four hits.

Andrei Vasilevskiy has now given up at least four goals in five of his last eight starts and has held the opposition to one goal or fewer just twice in his last 25 games.

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Filip Forsberg had a hat trick on Thursday night, his first of the season, registering eight shots and one hit in Nashville's 4-2 win over Buffalo. Since returning from the All-Star break, Forsberg has 9 goals, 7 assists, 57 shots, 5 PPPs, and 21 hits in 13 games. He has been an outstanding fantasy performer all season long.

Gustav Nyquist had a trio of helpers (one PP) while Luke Evangelista scored the fourth goal (PP), his 12^th of the season.

Tage Thompson was a game-time scratch due to injury for Buffalo so this team is starting to run out of forwards to use.

Bowen Byram had a goal and an assist with three shots in his Sabres debut while Owen Power scored the other goal. Byram skated 24:58, too, which was about three minutes more than Power (21:57) though a lot of that was top PP time as Buffalo ran a 3F-2D top PP unit due to Thompson's injury.

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Joel Eriksson Ek had a goal and an assist with three shots and two hits while Kirill Kaprizov scored a power play goal, posting a couple of hits of his own, in Minnesota's 5-2 win over Arizona. Brock Faber had a big fantasy night with a goal, an assist (PP), one shot, and five blocks. Faber had just one point in his previous 10 games so he might be regaining his production groove. Fantasy owners can only hope.

Michael Carcone and Clayton Keller scored for Arizona in the loss. Carcone now has three goals and four points in his last four games, and is up to 18 goals on the season. Everyone who had Carcone leading the Coyotes in even strength goals at the Trade Deadline: raise your hand. Liars.

Karel Vejmelka gave up three goals on 26 shots. Arizona is now 31^st in the league by save percentage since the Trade Deadline (only Tampa Bay is worse).

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Quinn Hughes had a power play goal, five total shots, and a block in Vancouver's 3-1 win in Vegas on Thursday night. Conor Garland also scored, his second goal in three games after going eight straight without a tally.

Thatcher Demko stopped 27 of 28 shots faced for the win. That win gives him 33 on the season, putting him back on top of the league's netminders in that regard. One more win will set a career-high for a single season, and his 33 wins in 2021-22 was with 61 starts; he has 48 this season.

Anthony Mantha skated on Vegas's second line with Chandler Stephenson and William Karlsson, skating over 14 minutes at even strength. He may have a consistent second-line role until Mark Stone returns, so keep an eye on that.

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An overtime goal from Kevin Fiala pushed Los Angeles over Ottawa by a 4-3 margin. Quinton Byfield scored his 19^th of the season while Pierre-Luc Dubois and Jacob Moverare also put one in the goal column. Byfield had three shots and four hits while PLD had three shots and three hits. Dubois now has eight points in 14 games since the All-Star break, which is an uptick for him, but still short of what fantasy managers were hoping for.

Fiala is on quite the tear of late with seven goals and six assists in his last nine games, registering 31 shots and six power play points. They need it, too, with all their winger injuries.

Matt Roy had two assists, four blocks, and four hits in a great multi-cat night. Thomas Chabot did not dress for the Senators with a lower-body injury.

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The New York Islanders pounded San Jose 7-2 in San Jose on Thursday night, something that will be a common refrain for the Sharks from here on out (and much of the season, really). Bo Horvat had a goal and two assists with four shots while Brock Nelson had three helpers and three shots. Mathew Barzal chipped in with a goal of his own, too.

Anders Lee had a goal and an assist on three shots. He now has five points in his last three games.

It was a productive night for the Islanders blue line as Noah Dobson, the Other Sebastian Aho, and Alex Romanov all scored. Romanov had four shots and a pair of blocks in a very good fantasy performance.

Magnus Chrona was in net for San Jose and allowed all seven goals on 33 shots.

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Wednesday was a busy day on the trade front as all of Vladimir Tarasenko, Alex Wennberg, Casey Mittelstadt, Bowen Byram, and Noah Hanifin found new homes. To see what Alex had to say about those deals, just click through here.

In yesterday's Ramblings, I touched on the Tarasenko trade and what it means for Florida. I wanted to give thoughts on the Byram-Mittelstadt trade because they are two interesting players.  

There had been rumours that Mittelstadt was on the trade block but it seemed as one of those "believe it when we see it"-type of rumours. It came to fruition, and both players get fresh starts in new franchises.

As I've often stated, Mittelstadt is a player I thought did not have the next gear to be an impact NHLer. He has very much turned his fortunes around the last couple of seasons with high-level playmaking; he is 1 of 15 regular forwards averaging north of 1.0 primary assists/60 at 5-on-5 over the last two campaigns, and he has a higher overall assists/60 at 5-on-5 than names like Matthew Tkachuk, Kevin Fiala, and Robert Thomas. He has helped elevate the scoring of the players not on Buffalo's top line and that, along with passable defence, is what made him appealing to Colorado as they push for another Stanley Cup.

That playmaking should translate well to the Avalanche. With Valeri Nichushkin's return around the corner, Mittelstadt is likely to see one of Nichushkin, Artturi Lehkonen, and Mikko Rantanen on his line (most likely one of the first two names). If Gabriel Landeskog can return healthy, Mittelstadt will have two good wingers to create offence with.

The problem for fantasy is everything else. Mittelstadt doesn't hit or shoot much and can't be relied on for more than 20 goals in a season unless he starts getting regular top PP time with Colorado. Given the depth of their top-end forwards, and their use of Jonathan Drouin on that quintet, it seems unlikely. Despite an improved roster to play with, it's hard to see Mittelstadt's production getting much better, especially if Colorado's top line keeps earning 22-24 minutes a night.

Bowen Byram is kind of in the same boat. While he was never going to get top PP time in Colorado with Cale Makar around, the same can be said for Buffalo with Rasmus Dahlin. He was playing behind Devon Toews, ice time-wise, with the Avs, and that will likely be the case in Buffalo with Owen Power around. When Mattias Samuelsson is healthy next season, he'll likely get shutdown minutes, too, so it's hard to see Byram any higher than third on the depth chart right now, and he'll be fourth at times next season. Very few defensemen can have relevant fantasy value in non-deep leagues being the third-or-worse option on their blue line.

There is also the play of Byram this season. Tracking from AllThreeZones had Byram with elite scoring chance creation numbers at 5-on-5 in 2022-23, with good-to-elite zone entry numbers:

The same was true of the 2021-22 season, so despite his concussion history, it seemed he turned a corner health-wise, and was ascending as a high-end offensive defenceman.

That came to a screeching halt this season as nearly all his tracking metrics have fallen off a cliff:

I am in the camp of "if we've seen it twice before, including a great Stanley Cup run, he can do it again," so this isn't a death-knell of any sort for Byram. But he is going to a Buffalo team that has abandoned what made them so successful as an offensive team in 2022-23, so if he's asked to reign in his aggressiveness, maybe things don't get a whole lot better. That, combined with his expected usage, is cause for concern in the fantasy realm in the short-term.

In a nutshell, this seems like a good trade for both sides in real terms as Colorado gets the second-line centre they've been missing since Nazem Kadri left (and I'm a huge Ross Colton guy) while Buffalo bolsters a blue line that needed it, even with Dahlin and Power present.

For fantasy, though, it's hard to see Mittelstadt being a high-value guy the rest of the season, especially in multi-cat formats. Not only because of the lack of hits/shots, but because he's not likely to see much better usage with the Avalanche that he did with the Sabres.

Conversely, this could be the change of scenery that Byram needs, but there are big usage concerns with him. It is one of those cases where he could be a very good addition to the team in real life but his fantasy value is either static, or even lower, than it was 48 hours ago. Considering he was only on pace for 30 points this season, that says a lot about what fantasy owners can expect for now. I am still a believer in his skills and think he'll be just fine, but I don't think this helps his fantasy value in any regard. With that said, 30 points and solid peripherals will play just fine in banger formats.