It was announced that Carolina defenceman Brett Pesce is likely to miss the first round of the playoffs. Carolina has a 2-0 series lead and has been in command of the game, if not the scoreboard, since the second period of Game 1. Pesce's loss shouldn't change a whole lot about that series, but it will bring Tony DeAngelo back into the lineup. He is still as bad defensively as he's always been, and that could mean a better chance for the Islanders to create offensively against Carolina's blue-line depth.

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There was also this update on Florida forward Sam Bennett:

Tidbits from Maurice on Bennett:

– Out at least a week, definitely the next two games.
– Not a "sinister" injury and better than they expected.
– He won't travel to Tampa for Games 3 and 4.

Since it's upper body, have to assume he'll be able to keep skating, which is great.

— Jameson Olive (@JamesonCoop) April 24, 2024

Florida, like Carolina, has that series under control but it sure seems as if Bennett has a shorter timeline than Pesce does.

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As has been the case a couple times already in the Boston-Toronto series, special teams were the difference. The Bruins went 1-3 on the power play with Jake DeBrusk scoring his third power play goal in as many games as Boston won 4-2, taking a 2-1 series lead. Boston is now 5-for-10 on the power play through the three games while Toronto sits at 1-for-11. Toronto's penalty kill struggled in the second half of the season and that has persisted thus far this series, proving the difference to this point.

Trent Frederic scored Boston's first goal while Brad Marchand was pulling some theatrics and then, very fittingly, Marchand scored the eventual game-winner with eight minutes left. He sealed the game with the empty netter, which was technically a power play goal.  

Matthew Knies and Tyler Bertuzzi scored for Toronto. Mitch Marner registered his first point of the series, and it was a very nice assist on the Knies goal:

TORONTO HAS THE ICEBREAKER 🧊

It's Mitch Marner (@Marner93) with a spectacular pass to Matthew Knies to open the scoring in Game 3! #StanleyCup

🇺🇸: @espn ➡️ https://t.co/Pp9X7OGP3W
🇨🇦: @Sportsnet or stream on Sportsnet+ ➡️ https://t.co/sEijvXhbA1 pic.twitter.com/abXulPTuF4

— NHL (@NHL) April 25, 2024

Toronto will need more of that if William Nylander remains out of the lineup. They need more of that regardless, but especially if Nylander continues to miss games as he has yet to dress.

Jeremy Swayman stopped 28 of 30 shots in a very, very good game where he made a couple key saves in the second half of the contest to keep things close.

Game 4 is on Saturday night.

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Vegas now has a 2-0 series lead over Dallas thanks to a 3-1 win in Dallas on Wednesday night. Jack Eichel and Jonathan Marchessault each had a goal and an assist while Noah Hanifin also scored. Eichel had five shots and a pair of hits while Hanifin had that one shot leading to a goal, one block, and one hit.

Jason Robertson scored the lone Stars goal on the power play.

Things are looking dire for Dallas. The team needs to win four of the next five against the defending Cup champs who are now at full strength and with both Mark Stone and Tomas Hertl up to speed.

Both Mason Marchment and Radek Faksa left the game due to injury. It is a wonder if this means it's time for Mavrik Bourque to get the call, though their AHL team is in the thick of their own playoffs now, too.

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Los Angeles scored a much-needed win 5-4 in overtime on Wednesday night to even their series against Edmonton. Their top line brought the heat as Adrian Kempe scored twice on seven shots with three hits, Anze Kopitar registered the overtime winner and had a couple of helpers, while Quinton Byfield had two assists. Byfield didn't spend the entire time on the top line, but he was there for most of the game, and that makes a lot more sense than what they did with him in Game 1.

Kevin Fiala and Drew Doughty also scored for the Kings. Dylan Holloway had a pair of goals, Zach Hyman scored (again), and Brett Kulak bombed home a Leon Draisaitl pass for Edmonton's tallies.

This series mirrors that of Toronto and Boston. At 5-on-5, Los Angeles is outscoring Edmonton 9-6 and is playing them somewhat even by other stats. On the power play, Edmonton has four goals to Los Angeles's zero. If the Kings want to keep winning, either vastly improving the penalty kill or just staying out of the box is paramount.

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On Tuesday, my offseason series of dissecting the non-playoff teams started at the bottom of the league with the San Jose Sharks. Today, we're moving up one rung to the Chicago Blackhawks and their 52-point season. Let's look at what went wrong, what went right, and where they go from here both short-term and long-term. All of this is through a fantasy hockey lens.

Data from Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, HockeyViz, and Frozen Tools with salary cap data from Cap Friendly. Any tracking data is from AllThreeZones unless otherwise noted.

What Went Wrong

It is hard to say anything went wrong because this is how it was supposed to go. Chicago spent a couple seasons tearing down the entire franchise to get the chance to draft Connor Bedard in 2023. In that sense, it was mission successful, but either trading, not re-signing, or just straight-up not qualifying all of Alex DeBrincat, Patrick Kane, Dylan Strome, Brandon Hagel, Kirby Dach, and Max Domi over the span of two seasons left this team utterly devoid of offensive talent. In fact, of all the forwards on the roster this season, only one had more than 40 points in either the 2021-22 or 2022-23 seasons (Taylor Hall had 61 in 2021-22) and none had more than 20 goals in either campaign.

One hope was that Hall would find chemistry with Bedard, but an injury to Hall limited him to just 10 games. He was skating with the team right at the end of the season, so it appears he'll have a full offseason to get back up to speed, but an ACL surgery for a guy who turns 33 years old in November is worrisome.

Another hope was that it would be the year Lukas Reichel took a step forward after finishing the 2022-23 season with 12 points in 19 games after his recall to the NHL. That clearly did not happen as he managed just 16 points in 65 games and was even demoted back to the AHL at one point.

It is tough to pin Reichel's season all on him. In his 137 minutes at 5-on-5 with Bedard, this is what Chicago's shot map looked like:

And this is what Chicago's shot chart looked like at 5-on-5 with Bedard on the ice without Reichel:

It was worse, but not wholly different, so while Reichel wasn't making the team's superstar better, he wasn't hurting him that much.

Reichel was also doing some things that we want to see from a talented forward as he carried the puck into the zone on 72.9% of his entries at 5-on-5. Of Chicago's 11 forwards with at least 125 tracked minutes (about 12-or-more games), it was just a shade behind Bedard's 73% carry rate, and second among Blackhawks forwards. The league average rate among forwards was 52.1%, so he was well clear of that, and these are the forwards he (and Bedard) compared to across the league by carried zone entry percentage:

There wasn't a high volume of entries because when he was with Bedard, it was Bedard doing a lot of that work, but it is a good sign. In fact, when looking at players with relatively low totals of entries by high carry percentages across the league, Reichel looks favourable to some other players that were the complementary options on their line:

There are the makings of a solid playmaking option here, but it's uncertain he'll have much fantasy value even if he does take a step forward in 2024-25. Reichel has 219 shots in 121 career AHL games, or 1.8 per game. He was last among Chicago forwards this season by shot attempts per minute at 5-on-5, and in the 3^rd percentile league-wide (not a typo). Being a good playmaker is nice for Bedard and the Blackhawks, but even if Reichel skated 18 minutes a game this season instead of 14, he'd be around 130-140 shots with about 45 hits. He would need a lot of points to be relevant in any multi-cat fantasy league so unless (or until) Reichel takes a Robert Thomas-like step forward, he could very well be much more valuable in real life than fantasy, even with offensive improvements. 

Other than Hall's injury and Reichel's stagnant season, it's hard to say anything else outright went wrong:

• They got 22 goals from Jason Dickinson (he had never reached just 10 in a season before, let alone 20).
• Phillipp Kurashev had a nice year with 18 goals and 54 points though a lot of that was skating next to Bedard for the vast majority of the season when Bedard was healthy.
• Nick Foligno had 17 goals in 74 games after scoring 19 goals over his prior 173 games.
• Tyler Johnson scored 17 goals in 67 games after scoring 15 goals over his prior 82 games. 

Chicago got Bedard in the Draft, got career years from Dickinson and Kurashev, and got three-year bests from Johnson and Foligno; they still finished last in the league by goals scored per minute. There is a long way for this roster to go.

What Went Right

Well, Bedard is as advertised. There has been so much coverage of him that we don't really need to go long here, but this is what's notable: with Bedard on the ice at 5-on-5, the team scored 2.11 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, a rate that fell to 1.61 with him off the ice. In other words, their goals-for rate went up 31% with Bedard on the ice. As a rookie, that is just preposterous, and he looks every bit the future of the league he's been made out to be.

As mentioned above, it was a good season for Kurashev with 18 goals, 54 points, 19 power play points, 128 shots, 48 blocks, and 27 hits. However, a lot of his production was done alongside Bedard, and he couldn't really elevate the offence whenever he was on a different line, or Bedard was hurt. We can chalk some of that up to a lack of talent elsewhere on the roster, but Kurashev will be 25 years old in October. Going into his age-25 season with 266 NHL games under his belt means he's not a young prospect. There is a Gulf of Mexico-sized gap between his fantasy value when he's next to Bedard and when he's not, and until the team depth fills out, it makes Kurashev a very fragile fantasy option. That he should keep a PP role – he earned over 65% of the team's PP time this season – can help stabilize that value, but this is not a reliable player for the 2024-25 season.

Moving to their defencemen, we'll call it a mixed bag for rookie Kevin Korchinski. As a 19-year-old first-year player on a Lottery team, the defensive numbers were awful, but it's hard to pin all that on him. Outside of the Dickinson line, this team was a porous defensively, and Korchinski is just not at the point where he could help plug those gaps.

The good news is that Korchinski denied Chicago's blue line on the opposition's zone entries 12.6% of the time. That is considerably higher than the team average of 9% and led their blue liners (minimum 150 tracked minutes). In fact, when looking at rearguards across the NHL with similar blue-line denial and scoring chance allowed rates, Korchinski didn't look too bad to some solid established veterans:

The problems came when the opposition did get into the zone because Korchinski's oppositional shot maps were a bloodbath in front of the net. A teenage defenceman struggling with preventing chances around the net is nothing new, so there's no concern there. The concern would be if it's still a crime scene in front of the net two years from now.

On the good-news front, Korchinski moved the puck very, very well. Chicago's defencemen exited the zone with possession 58.1% of the time; Korchinski's rate was 68.9% and led the team (again). When looking at comparable names for percentage of zone exits with possession, actual exit volume, failed exits, and the like, it's a pretty good mix:

That is what is meant by a mixed bag. Korchinski showed some flashes in areas where he can help defensively and was a very good puck-mover that would have fit in well on any team, let alone a team as bad as this. However, the in-zone defensive issues were very obvious. He had just 15 points, but was often used in a top PP role when Seth Jones was injured (and even at times when he was not). It is clear the team thinks he can be the power play quarterback of the future, it just might take a couple years before he's a reliable fantasy option because of how much improvement the non-Bedard parts of the roster need.

Very quietly, Alex Vlasic had a tremendous season on Chicago's blue line. He had the best overall expected goals impact at even strength of all their defencemen, had the best expected goals against impact, and the best goal differential. In fact, when looking across the league, the comparisons this season weren't bad at all:

Vlasic is more in the mold of Jake McCabe than Brent Burns, but Vlasic has 17 points, 157 blocks, and 61 hits over his last 82 games. Once the team fills out, he can be a 30-point guy that offers 250 hits+blocks, and that has value in multi-cat formats. His defensive play also helps his goalies a lot.

Speaking of those goalies, Petr Mrazek had a great year. His Goals Saved Above Expected rate was higher than Stuart Skinner, Ilya Sorokin, Adin Hill, and Juuse Saros while posting a .907 save percentage on a terrible team in a season where the league average was .903. Unless Chicago makes a lot of improvements in the offseason, it is hard to see Mrazek being a whole lot better in fantasy in 2024-25; maybe he adds some wins if the team's offence improves, but that's about it. He is more valuable to the team than to fantasy owners.

Where They Go From Here

Much like San Jose, the 2024 Draft Lottery could really accelerate the rebuild. Chicago had the third-best chance at Bedard in 2023, and won the Lottery; now, they have the second-best chance at Macklin Celebrini this season. If they win that Lottery as well, it gives them the best young 1-2 punch in the league. It could still be a couple years before they fully ascend offensively, but it would be a clear sign that better days are ahead.

If they don't win the Lottery, that's when the real work begins. They will still end up with a very good player in the Draft, but it's a matter of getting a potential Hall of Famer and a potential All-Star. Both are good, but one is great, and it's a big difference.

There have been comments from Chicago's general manager that they want to take a step forward next year. If they don't get Celebrini and their top pick either goes back to junior or college or whatever, there are a lot of returning forwards: only Tyler Johnson and Colin Blackwell are unrestricted free agents. It seems likely that Joey Anderson, at the least, will be brought back as a restricted free agent. If he does re-sign, it makes 10 returning forwards. Assuming no big splashes in free agency, nibbling around the edges isn't enough to really improve the attack. Steps forward from both Reichel and Frank Nazar and a healthy Hall would mean much more to the team's offence than any middle-6 forward they sign.

It is about the same on defence. Jones is around for the long haul, Korchinski just finished his rookie year, Vlasic will be re-signed as an RFA, and Connor Murphy has two years left on his contract. Ethan Del Mastro is an intriguing prospect, but how much impact he can have as a rookie is a very fair question. They won't sign a marquee blue liner, so it's either promoting internally or adding depth.

Therein lies the duality of Chicago, which mirrors that of San Jose. The Blackhawks have Nazar and Reichel, they have Oliver Moore developing, and they have a decent chance of adding Celebrini at the Draft. If Hall can play 75 effective games, Nazar and Reichel improve, and the team drafts Celebrini, on top of a full (and better) season from Bedard, this offence could be much better in 2024-25.

However, if Nazar is fine-but-not-explosive, Reichel doesn't take a leap forward in his development, Hall's injury issues slow him down, and they don't get Celebrini, it could be tough sledding offensively whenever Bedard is off the ice. We need to keep in mind that this team was dead last in goals and even a huge one-year improvement of 25% would take them from dead last to somewhere in the Philadelphia/Washington range, or still in the bottom 20% of the league. Bedard will be great, and Korchinski could rack up the power play points if they give him more run instead of Jones, but the supporting cast needs to be a lot better around them or goals will be tough to come by yet again.