Anaheim announced that forward Jakob Silfverberg is going to retire at the end of the season. The 33-year-old winger has over 800 regular season games to his name where he's amassed 168 goals and 205 assists, and 69 playoff games with 18 goals and 26 assists in that time. He hasn't had much fantasy hockey relevance over the last few years, but had a couple of good seasons earlier in his career. All the best to him in retirement.

Staying with the Ducks, they also announced Sam Colangelo signing with the team:

NEWS: We have signed Sam Colangelo to a two-year entry-level contract. #FlyTogether | @EandELaw https://t.co/E4y1WnqazL

— Anaheim Ducks (@AnaheimDucks) April 11, 2024

Colangelo went 36^th overall in the 2020 Draft and then spent four years in college. He's had a few AHL games with the team but now has a two-year entry-level deal as part of the team's young talent core. Expect him to be in the lineup before the end of the season.

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Bowen Byram missed Buffalo's game Tuesday night due to a personal matter:

#Sabres say Byram out today with a personal matter.

— Mike Harrington (@ByMHarrington) April 11, 2024

The team did say they expect him to be back for the final two games of the season. Given all the players entering the Assistance Program this year, having family health issues, or just getting arrested, the clarification is a welcome one.

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Connor McDavid not at practice on Thursday and is day-to-day. The team says he would be playing if it were playoffs, but who knows when coaches are actually telling the truth. For now it's no big deal, but we'll wait until practices over the weekend to see where he stands.

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Noah Hanifin has signed an eight-year extension with Vegas worth $7.35M per season. Good for him but that's a hefty price tag in cap leagues for a guy who will be fighting for prominent offensive ice time.  

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In one of the most important games of the NHL season, Pittsburgh and Detroit had an absolute barn-burner of a matchup that ended up a 6-5 overtime win for the Penguins. The teams traded a pair of goals in the first period, Pittsburgh had a 4-3 lead after two, and it went to overtime as a 5-5 game on a night where both sides were desperate for a point.

Erik Karlsson tallied his 10^th goal of the season in overtime, registering five blocks in total to lead the team to victory. Sidney Crosby had a goal and two assists with his helper on the OT winner being his 1000^th career assist. He managed five total shots, two PIMs, and two hits in a great multi-cat night.

Bryan Rust also had a goal and two assists while Kris Letang got in on the scoring as well.

All this overshadows a great offensive night from Detroit's top line as Lucas Raymond had a hat trick (with an assist), Alex DeBrincat had three helpers and seven shots, while Dylan Larkin had a goal, two assists, two blocks, and three hits in a wonderful fantasy performance. I've said it a few times this year but I'll reiterate: Raymond is a player I've come completely around on from his first couple seasons and he has all the makings of a high-end offensive winger for the next decade.

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Washington's playoff hopes took a big hit on Thursday night thanks to a 4-2 loss in Buffalo. Alex Tuch, Zach Benson, Dylan Cozens, and Jack Quinn all scored for the Sabres with Connor McMichael and Tom Wilson replying for the Capitals. That was Quinn's eighth goal in just 25 games played while averaging under 16 minutes a game. For a guy that has had brutal injury luck over the last year and just cracked the 100-game mark at the NHL level, he still looks like he's going to be a special player.

Tuch finished the game with that one goal on three shots with two blocks and a hit. He now has 78 blocks and 70 hits in 73 games this season. He still has a good chance of reaching 60 points, too. For a guy that missed a few games and saw his team decline offensively in a big way, not a bad multi-cat fantasy season.

With Byram out of the lineup, Henri Jokiharju had a pair of helpers, one block, and three hits in a very good multi-cat night. He now has 19 points, which ties a career-high set in 2021-22.

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Florida cruised to a 4-0 win over Columbus on Wednesday night. Sergei Bobrovsky saved all 25 shots he faced for the shutout, his sixth of the season. Bobrovsky now has more shutouts in 57 starts this season than he did across 180 starts in his first four years with the Panthers (5).

Sam Reinhart and Evan Rodrigues both scored once on five shots with E-Rod adding a hit to his stat line. Vladimir Tarasenko and Matthew Tkachuk also scored for the Panthers. Tkachuk had three shots, a block, and a hit for a solid multi-cat effort.

Oliver Ekman-Larsson had two assists, a shot, and a block in the win. He now has 32 points on the year, his highest total since 2018-19.

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Philadelphia rebounded well from their embarrassing loss in Montreal with a 4-1 win in New York. Cam York, Bobby Brink, Noah Cates, and Travis Konecny all scored for the Flyers with Konecny adding an assist, a block, and a hit to go with three total shots. That makes 32 goals for Konecny, a career-high, and he's done it with more short-handed goals (5) than power play goals (4). Imagine his season if the Flyers had even a competent power play.

Samuel Ersson stopped 24 of 25 shots for the win, turning in a very solid effort to keep Philadelphia's fading playoff hopes alive.

York had two shots and three blocks with that one goal . He has now reach the 10-goal and 30-point plateaus on the season while also posting well over two blocks per appearance.

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Timo Meier kept his great post-All Star streak going with two goals and an assist, four total shots, a block, and four hits in a great multi-cat night as New Jersey took a 6-5 win from Toronto. Meier went into the All-Star break with nine goals in 34 games, and now has 27 goals in 67 games on the season. He has crested both the 200-shot and 100-hit mark on the season, too.

Jesper Bratt also had two goals and an assist with both his goals coming on the man advantage. He now has tied his prior career high with eight power play goals and has surpassed the 80-point mark for the first time (he has 82 as of today).

Luke Hughes had a pair of assists and now has 47 points on the year. He needs three points over the final two games to be just the fourth rookie defenceman this century to reach 50 points (Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar, and Moritz Seider).

Auston Matthews scored twice on four shots with two PIMs and a hit. Those two goals push him to 68 and make the 70-goal mark a very realistic possibility.

John Tavares also scored twice and needs four more tallies for a 30-goal season. He finished the game with six shots, two blocks, and four hits in a great multi-cat night.  

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Laurent Brossoit managed a 24-save shutout as Winnipeg went into Dallas and skated out with a 3-0 win. Winnipeg got goals from Mark Scheifele, Nikolaj Ehlers, and David Gustafsson while Mason Appleton had a pair of assists, a pair of shots, and a pair of hits in a solid multi-cat performance.

The win keeps Winnipeg within striking distance of first place in the division as they are five points behind Dallas with three games remaining (the Stars have two).

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Kyle Palmieri played overtime hero as the Islanders managed a 3-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens. Pierre Engvall and Casey Cizikas both scored as Cizikas continues to hold down a top-line role. That win didn't lock a playoff spot for the Islanders, but they're now four points clear of Washington and the Capitals have just three games remaining. Anything can happen, but it does look like they'll be back in the postseason for the fifth time in six seasons.  

Palmieri had three shots and a block as his solid multi-cat season continues. He is up to 28 goals on the year, the second-highest total of his career and highest since 2016-17. That goes with his 18 power play points, 85 hits, 40 blocks, and 204 hits.

Noah Dobson left the game in the first period with an injury and did not return. He is still being evaluated.

Cole Caufield and Jordan Harris replied for Montreal. That makes it a 25-goal season for Caufield, doing so while shooting 8.3% against a 14.1% three-year average before this season. It'll be fun to see what he does when he gets back to 12% or so.

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Viktor Arvidsson scored twice, Kevin Fiala once (PP), and Akil Thomas scored his third goal in five games as Los Angeles took a 4-1 win over Calgary. That win clinches a playoff spot for the Kings, and now it's down to seeding for them. Not sure the seeding really matters as they're going to start on the road and (likely) face one of Edmonton, Vancouver, or Dallas.

Fiala started the season fine enough with 29 points in 30 games, but he had just six goals in that time. He has just 42 points in his last 49 games, but 22 goals in that time. He has cracked 70 points for the second season in a row and has a chance for his second career 30-goal season. A good year for a player who has been moved all around the Los Angeles lineup.

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It's the end of the workweek and we have less than a week left in the regular season. The Eastern playoff race is still tight but for fantasy purposes, this season is basically over. I just want to discuss a few things that have surprised me this season without digging too deep into the stats. We have a whole offseason for that. Here are some things that really caught me off-guard this season.

Buffalo's Power Play

One of the reasons to be high on Buffalo's offensive threats for fantasy in 2023-24 was the fact that their top PP guys had on-ice power play goal rates over 10.0 in 2022-23. With the team growing up around them, it seems\ed likely they'd have a top-10 power play yet again, and maybe even top-5 if things went well.

Things have not gone well.

No player on the team has an on-ice goal rate over 10.0 goals per 60 minutes with the man advantage this season, and depending what happens over their final few games, they won't have any over 9.0 and maybe have just one (Tage Thompson) over 8.0. They won't have a forward reach 20 power play points after having three of them reach that mark a year ago with Thompson breaching 30. There is plenty of time in the offseason to break down what happened but there's a chasm of difference in fantasy value if a player puts up 20 power play points instead of 35.

Ottawa's Power Play

Staying with Eastern Conference power plays that fell on their face, the Ottawa Senators! One season after finishing eighth in the league in goals per minute with the extra man, the team sits 26^th, and they won't have a single player reach 25 power play points. Last year, they had six players reach 20, four reach 25, and one reach 30. The drop in scoring is part of it, but so is drawing fewer power plays (even if they still lead the league in this regard).

Not long ago, I had a Twitter thread about what was going on here and it boils down to this: they shifted from a power play that focused on giving their top shooters the shots to one that gave their defencemen the shots. When we look around the league, the top power plays – Edmonton, Toronto, Colorado, Tampa Bay – do not have their defencemen constantly bombing shots from 60 feet away. The hope is whichever coach they hire recognizes this but banking on the Ottawa Senators to make good decisions is like banking on 20-Year-Old Me in the club at 1 AM making good decisions.

Gustav Nyquist

Let's go back to September of 2023. Let's say we assume Filip Forsberg has a 40-40 season, Ryan O'Reilly rebounds, and Roman Josi pushes 80 points again. Even if we assume all that, do we think that Nyquist gets to the 70-point mark for the first time in his career? Even then it would still feel like a big stretch, and yet here we are.

Not a whole lot to say about this right now. That Nashville top line has stayed together basically all season, they've all been healthy, and the fantasy rewards have been what they've been as a result. A great coaching job from Andrew Brunette and this is a fun team to watch.

Quinn Hughes

If someone told me that Hughes was going to push for 90 points, I would have believed it. If someone told me that Hughes would lose a minute per game in ice time and still push for 200 shots, I would not have believed it. And yet, here we are.

Hughes's shot rate was much higher in the first couple of months of the season than it has been since, but he added a big dimension to his fantasy profile that had been missing his entire career. If he can maintain that, great. If he can ever add some blocked shots, that'd be even better, but progression is still progression.

Minnesota's Penalty Kill

Since hiring coach John Hynes, the Wild have arguably been a top-10 defensive team in the league at 5-on-5. However, the penalty kill was still easily in the bottom-half of the league and though there were improvements in that area, their defensive prowess at 5-on-5 has never been reflected on the PK. It isn't the sole reason they failed to reach the playoffs, but it is a big part of it, and is also a big part of their goalies largely being unreliable for fantasy.

I didn't expect the Wild to be a top team in the West, but that they'd still be good defensively seemed likely, but that penalty kill was atrocious. Injuries to Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin are likely a part of it, but that also speaks to a lack of defensive depth beyond them. Maybe things will be better if everyone is healthy for 2024-25.