Wayne Simmonds is set to retire as a Philadelphia Flyer as it was announced he will sign a one-day contract with the team to officially end his NHL career. At his peak in the 2010s, Simmonds was one of the premiere power forwards in the league who would upon for 25-30 goals, 50-60 points, and a heavy dose of hits and penalty minutes. By all accounts, he was a good teammate, and he was a fantastic fantasy option for several years. All the best to Simmonds in retirement. Perhaps we'll see more of him on NHL broadcasts.

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Montreal announced that prospect defenceman David Reinbacher has been assigned to their AHL team in Laval. Reinbacher had 11 points in the Swiss League this season, though it was a rocky year for the franchise, as outlined in this piece from Arpon Basu back in January.

There is a month left in the NHL season so it seems very possible Reinbacher spends a few weeks in the AHL but he should get some time in the NHL eventually. What that portends for next season remains to be seen.

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Good news on the injury front for Tyler Seguin:

Seguin looks good. We'll know more about possibly playing Wednesday as we get closer

— Mike Heika (@MikeHeika) March 18, 2024

Seguin has been out for nearly a month with a lower-body injury. He really helps round out Dallas's top three lines and makes them that much deeper up front. If he does come back on Wednesday, he'll have three games this week with two against Arizona.

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Jacob Markstrom may be back this week as well. It may be next week, and they may not push things if Dustin Wolf keeps playing well, but fantasy managers should have him back in the lineup for next week.

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Viktor Arvidsson was back at practice on Monday for Los Angeles. We will see how long it takes for him to get into the lineup, but it may be as soon as Tuesday night.

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Alex Ovechkin scored twice, Tom Wilson and Dylan Strome both had a goal and an assist (with each having a PPP), and Charlie Lindgren stopped 34 of 36 shots en route to a 5-2 Washington win in Calgary. With 23 goals, Strome has already equaled his prior career-high set last year in 81 games played, so he should break that over the final month of the season.

Kevin Rooney and MacKenzie Weegar both scored in the loss for the Flames. Weegar had six shots, five blocks, two PIMs, and a hit in a great multi-cat night.

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Buffalo went into Seattle and took a 6-2 win from the Kraken. Jeff Skinner had a hat trick on six shots, Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch each had a goal and an assist, and Owen Power also scored once in two shots, adding five blocks and a hit. Despite Skinner's ice time getting destroyed over the last 10 games (13:28 per game) he still has nine points in that time, so fantasy owners can't complain too much.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stopped 32 of 34 shots in the win while Joey Daccord was pulled less than six minutes into the game after allowing three goals on four shots.

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At the end of February, a pair of Ramblings posts reviewed how certain defensemen improved or declined by their rush contributions at 5-on-5 from 2022-23 to this season (Part 1 and Part 2). Today, we're going to keep using data made available by the tracking at AllThreeZones and look at improvements or declines in other key areas from blue liners. For now, that means failed exits, so let's look at some improvements or declines by failed exit percentage from 2022-23 to 2023-24.

This will all be at 5-on-5 and we are going to limit the sample to blue liners with 250 tracked minutes last season and 180 minutes this season. For a reference point, the league average failed exit percentage in 2022-23 was 24.4% and this season it is 26.2%. Relatively speaking, that is a 7.3% increase, and needs to be factored in. Keep in mind that 'improving' your failed exit% is a bad thing.

The Top-10

To begin, here are the top-10 just by lowest failed exit% overall this season:

The first thing that sticks out is we have carryovers from last season including Charlie McAvoy, Adam Fox, Shea Theodore, and Cale Makar. Fantasy value varies among those four players, but all are very productive either in points-only or multi-cat formats and all have shown the ability to be reliable year in and year out (health permitting).

The second thing that sticks out is we have three Nashville blue liners on the list. Last season, they had zero defencemen in the top-15 and only Roman Josi in the top-20 (though Dante Fabbro wasn't too far outside of that). Regardless, Andrew Brunette is clearly having a big influence on how the team transitions from defence to offence and it's no coincidence that Josi, Fabbro, and Jeremy Lauzon are first, second, and fourth among Nashville blue liners for on-ice goals-for per 60 minutes at 5-on-5.

Artem Zub

Outside of Lauzon, the defenceman with the largest relative change in failed exit% is Ottawa's Artem Zub. He is not relied on heavily to do the transition work – the league average rate of retrievals/60 is over 20 and he's much lower than that – but the Senators are scoring 3.0 goals/60 at 5-on-5 with Zub on the ice this season, and that's the highest mark of all their blue liners. Ottawa has their issues, and neither Zub nor Jake Sanderson are elite defencemen (yet), but they've formed a solid pair on a team that is having another poor season. There is a good reason why Zub has 23 points in 53 games after having just 10 points in 53 games a year ago.

Six Pack

After Zub and Lauzon, Brady Skjei and Braden Schneider saw the third- and fourth-largest relative decline in failed exit%. After those four names, there is a group of six blue liners that all vary wildly by fantasy value:

It is hard to know what to make of Seth Jones appearing here. Chicago can't score unless Connor Bedard or Jason Dickinson is on the ice and even then, the goal rates are not good for fantasy. It is nice to see improvement, but this roster will need a few seasons to come together, and Jones will be 30 years old for next season.

Colorado's goal rates aren't that high with Girard on the ice but it's worth noting he has skated just 21.1% of his 5-on-5 time with Nathan MacKinnon where MacKinnon skates nearly 36% of the team's 5-on-5 time overall. Colorado is scoring 5.6 goals/60 in their time together but Girard is charged with other duties and that will keep his on-ice goal rates (and his point totals) modest.

Seeing Morgan Rielly here makes sense when looking at Toronto's scoring. With Rielly on the ice at 5-on-5, Toronto is scoring 3.3 goals/60; no other defenceman on the roster is over 3.0/60. It should be noted that he is the opposite of Girard's usage where Rielly is skating 37% of his 5-on-5 time with Matthews, and the scoring star skates just 31.2% of Toronto's 5-on-5 time. The team's goal rates are still very good when Rielly is on the ice without Matthews (3.1 goals/60), so it's not all on the superstar, but that is worth noting.

It has been a resurgent year for Travis Sanheim in Philadelphia. He is easily one standard deviation below the league average failed exit% and that's one season after being roughly league average. The Flyers aren't scoring much with him on the ice, though, as the only roster defencemen with a lower on-ice goals/60 than Sanheim are Cam York and Marc Staal. Funny enough, the Flyers score a lot more (and create a lot more expected goals) when York and Sanheim are separated than when they're paired together.

The Drops

At the other end of the spectrum are the players who are failing to exit the zone a lot more often. Rather than the top-10, here are the eight largest relative drops by failed zone exit%, meaning they're failing to exit the zone a lot more often this season than last:

All of Brett Pesce, Matt Dumba, Justin Holl, and Brett Kulak are not tasked with doing their team's retrievals, so we'll exclude them, but something to keep an eye on as all are on potential playoff teams.

TJ Brodie has been paired with Rielly the most often and with them on the ice, they skate nearly 40% of their time with Matthews. So, there is a reason Toronto still has a strong goal-scoring rate with Brodie despite how often he fails to exit the zone, and a lot of the slack has been picked up by Rielly.

Buffalo was absolutely crushed with Erik Johnson on the ice this season as he was the only Buffalo defenceman under a 47% goal share (42.71%) and a 46% expected goal share (43.7%). It is fun to think about where the Sabres might be had they decided not to play a clearly declining defenceman for 50 games.

Nikita Zadorov is riding pretty good percentages in Vancouver – as a lot of players have – but Calgary got crushed offensively in his time there this season; just under 2.0 goals/60 at 5-on-5 with him on the ice and no other regular defenceman was below 2.6.

The Next Three

The next three rearguards by largest relative increase in failed exits is a very fun mix:

Evan Bouchard plays a lot with Connor McDavid at 5-on-5 – around 60% of his 5-on-5 time. That helps his offence look really, really good. They are also better together than apart, so this is a symbiotic relationship, but something worth noting.

Carolina has changed their offence somewhat so it's not a big surprise seeing Burns's name on here. Regardless, the team is scoring well with him on the ice and just as well in his minutes with Sebastian Aho (3.25 goals/60) as without the top center (3.29) so it's not a line mate factor. Burns is having another great season, but declining ice time is starting to really cut into his fantasy value.