Over the last few years, the health of key skaters from the Colorado Avalanche has been a constant issue. Whether it's winning the Cup with Samuel Girard injured or Gabriel Landeskog's two-year effort to back to game action, it's not often we've seen Colorado with a full roster as they chase a Stanley Cup. That is why it's notable that after a quick absence, Mikko Rantanen seems poised to return:

Chris Wagner is no longer listed on the Avs roster. With Rantanen seemingly ready to return, would make sense that he could head back to the Eagles.

— Evan Rawal (@evanrawal) April 10, 2024

As always with these things, we'll wait for confirmation but it's good news for the Avalanche and fantasy owners alike.

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Jared McCann was back on the ice before Seattle's practice on Wednesday:

Good news… Jared McCann is on the ice in advance of #SeaKraken practice this morning. pic.twitter.com/A6phime0TA

— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) April 10, 2024

McCann has taken a step back goal-wise after scoring 40 last year, but if he can get back in the lineup, he has five games to get to 30 goals (he has 28 as of today). Not a bad season on a team that has one other 20-goal scorer in Oliver Bjorkstrand, who has 20 goals exactly.

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Big news for a Minnesota prospect:

#mnwild have recalled Liam Ohgren. So his first game will be his NHL debut. Minnesota in Vegas on Friday

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) April 10, 2024

A first-round pick from 2022, Liam Öhgren had 19 points in 26 games in the Swedish league this season. He figures to be a big part of Minnesota's future, but he'll need to develop quickly if they want to get back to the postseason during Kirill Kaprizov's current contract.  

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The game between Chicago and St. Louis was over before some Blues fans got to their seats as St. Louis scored four times on four shots through the first seven minutes of the game. They would end up cruising to a 5-2 win. Joel Hofer stopped 18 of 20 shots in a peaceful night in net for him.

Jordan Kyrou tallied twice on four shots with a hit while Robert Thomas and Zachary Bolduc each had a goal and an assist. Torey Krug also scored and added a blocked shot. Krug did leave the game after the second period and did not return, however. With St. Louis having three games left in the next seven days, his season may be over depending on the diagnosis.

Philipp Kurashev and Landon Slaggert replied for Chicago. The latter signed with the team a month ago after his college season finished so this was his first career NHL goal. Congratulations to the young man.

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Connor McDavid missed Wednesday’s game between Edmonton and Vegas but the team called him day-to-day and he was a gametime decision anyway. It seems whatever is bothering him isn't serious and fantasy playoff poolies shouldn't worry too much.

Edmonton won that game handily 5-1. The Oilers had a 3-0 lead halfway through the game and allowed just 18 shots overall, so a pretty good performance at both ends of the ice without the Hart Trophy candidate.

Both Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman had a goal and an assist, each registering a point on the power play. Hyman has 53 goals and 75 points now, and has five games to reach the 80-point mark for the second season in a row. However, Edmonton is likely to finish second in their division and has two back-to-back sets in the next week. Hyman is probably not going to play all five games.

Dylan Holloway, Cody Ceci, and Mattias Ekholm also scored for the Oilers. Ekholm had four total shots with a block and a hit in a solid multi-cat night. Ekholm now has 11 goals on the season, a career-high, and 44 points, which ties a career-high. He also has 36 points at 5-on-5 this season, more than Evan Bouchard's total of 34, and the seventh-most in the league. Quite the fantasy seasons from both he and Bouchard, honestly.

Stuart Skinner saved 17 of 18 shots in the win. Since Kris Knoblauch was hired as the new coach on November 12^th, Skinner has 33 wins in 45 starts (47 appearances) with a .915 save percentage and 2.41 goals against average. That is a stellar fantasy turnaround.

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The day it was rumoured (very strongly by many top reporters, including Frank Seravalli) that the Arizona Coyotes would be relocating to Salt Lake City for the 2024-25 season, the Coyotes went into British Columbia and beat Vancouver 4-3 in overtime.  Arturs Silovs got the start for the Canucks but saved just 14 of 18 shots faced in the loss.

It was a big game showcasing Arizona's future, which made this a very weird game in the context of the day's news. Dylan Guenther registered the first four-point game of his career with a goal and three assists in 21:29 of total ice time. Logan Cooley had a goal and assist, too, as those two have been excellent for the Coyotes since Guenther's call-up in January. Cooley needs one more goal to reach 20 on the season, which is pretty good for a 19-year-old rookie.

Sean Durzi had an assist, two shots, and three blocks in a solid multi-cat night. Josh Brown and Vladislav Kolyachonok both scored, too, with the latter adding an assist on Brown's goal.

Conor Garland, JT Miller, and Elias Pettersson (PP) replied for the Canucks.

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In Tuesday's Ramblings, we went over some preseason predictions among forwards in 2023-24. Today, we'll keep that theme going and look at defencemen. The list we're picking from was written about in the middle of September and can be viewed here.

Sean Durzi

We'll start with a miss that didn't end up as poorly as it could have as my 82-game projection for Durzi was around 35 points and he reached 36 points before the end of March. He also did that in 67 games as he missed a couple of weeks earlier in the season so a full year would have almost certainly seen him reach 40 points.  

What I noted in the preseason article was there was a wide gap in his outcomes predicted from various publications and it's not hard to see this season turning out much differently. The duo of Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz struggled to produce at even strength for the first five months of the season, and if they're at their usual levels all season, maybe Durzi pushes for 50 points in an 82-game season. But they didn't, so he won't, and here we are.

This is a nice reminder that young teams go through a lot of struggles as they grow together. We are seeing something similar in Buffalo this season and Arizona will have a couple more years of this as they wait for their prospect defencemen to get to the NHL. Durzi has been able to provide reasonable peripherals and skating 23 minutes a game will help in this regard, but the team needs their forwards to play well consistently before Durzi takes his next step fantasy-wise.

Noah Dobson

High levels of ice time is very helpful for boosting fantasy value and Dobson got a lot of that through the first four months of the season. Injuries kept some key defencemen out of the New York lineup earlier in the year and Dobson skated nearly 26 minutes a game up to the All-Star break. He had a preposterous 52 points in 49 games to that point largely skating under then-head coach Lane Lambert's high-paced system and already surpassed my preseason projection of 51 points before the end of January.

Things haven't gone nearly as well since the break as he's posted 18 points in 29 games while skating 22:51 per night, or a loss of roughly three minutes a game. The blue line has gotten healthier, the team has focused more on their defence since hiring coach Patrick Roy just before the break, and the results have been what they've been for Dobson.

All told, it has been a great fantasy season for Dobson as he returned to the high-end peripheral levels he had in 2021-22, even adding some penalty minutes to his profile, while managing a career-high power play point total. However, if he skates 23 minutes a game in a defence-focused system rather than 26 minutes a game in a high-paced, trading chances-type system, that will have an adverse effect on his fantasy value next season. Buyer beware.

Connor Clifton

My concern for Clifton was that moving to Buffalo was giving him a lot of competition for minutes as the team had Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, a then-healthy Mattias Samuelsson, and Henri Jokiharju. At best, Clifton would be the fourth defenceman and more likely a bottom-pair option. That has indeed been the case as his ice time declined by 1:22 per game from his final season in Boston and though the hits, blocks, and penalty minutes are still fantastic, the production and shot rate have both declined.

There isn't much to go on about here. With Samuelsson healthy and Bowen Byram acquired, Clifton is no higher than the fifth defenceman, more likely the sixth, and maybe even a healthy scratch at times. His per-game peripherals will always remain strong almost regardless of ice time, but that next level of fantasy value is not going to happen on this team unless half the blue line gets injured for an extended period.

Mike Matheson

My 42-point projection for Matheson looks hilariously low, in hindsight, but my overall value for him was a top-25 defenceman and it was very odd that many fantasy owners were staying away from him in draft season. This was a guy likely to play heavy minutes, including top power play time, and regardless of the team around a player, that's worth 40 points to almost any defenceman. What my projections didn't see coming was a top Montreal power play unit that found good levels of success with Sean Monahan (less so since his trade). I had Matheson projected for 14 power play points – he reached that total before the end of December.

There are two concerns for Matheson next season.

The first concern is that his individual points percentage is a career-high, meaning he's involved in more goals than he ever has. He does do a lot of neutral zone work, so it makes sense, but it seems likely there's a decline coming. However, it's worth noting that if he sits at 45% rather than the 54-58% of his last two seasons, he still pushes past 45 points and maybe cracks 50.

The second concern is that the blue line starts filling out. David Reinbacher has already made his way to the AHL and Lane Hutson could sign in the offseason. There are potential ice-time threats coming, but that seems more of an issue for 2025-26 and beyond rather than 2024-25.

Vince Dunn

Well, what do you know. The team with the highest 5-on-5 shooting percentage in the modern era saw a 5-on-5 shooting percentage regression and with a poor power play that splits time between two units, few players thrived offensively. It should be noted that Dunn's point pace is basically bang-on his pace for 2022-23, so the injuries were the real culprit here, but he also needed a 58% individual points percentage to get to this point where he was 50.7% and 45.7% in his first two seasons with Seattle. That is Cale Makar/Roman Josi territory, and I think Dunn is very good offensively, but not quite that good.

Looking at Dunn's AllThreeZones tracking data, he does a lot of leg work on zone entries and exits but he has struggled to exit the zone cleanly a lot this season:

Dunn has gotten great goaltending behind him – .942 save percentage at 5-on-5 – but it feels like he's playing with fire. Their coaching staff will know this, and it's a wonder if they change his role or approach for 2024-25.

Evan Bouchard

This is the windmill dunks of all windmill dunks. My projection for Bouchard was for 57 points in 82 games and that was with poor secondary scoring from the Oilers. That secondary scoring has actually thrived with 47 even strength goals from Evander Kane, Warren Foegele, and Ryan McLeod – they had 36 last season – and the power play has been a massive source of value. In drafts this past September, Bouchard was often a top-15 defenceman off the board and fantasy owners that believed have been rewarded. He has been much more involved in the power play than I expected – my projection was for 24 power play points – and that has made a big difference in his totals and fantasy value.

Not much to glean here; the young, high-end offensive defenceman with superstar forwards in front of him that was almost assured a top role thrived offensively.