New Jersey officially introduced former Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe as the Devils’ new head coach on Thursday. Yesterday, I wrote about how Keefe ran Toronto’s offence in 2023-24, how that contrasts to New Jersey’s approach, and why other factors are probably more important than any of that. Go read that for more on this change.

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Edmonton skated out of Dallas with a 1-0 series lead thanks to a 3-2 double overtime win. Connor McDavid redirected a pass from Evan Bouchard just 32 seconds into the second extra frame to push his team over the top and grab an important road win.

That goal was McDavid's second point of the game, having assisted on Zach Hyman's 12^th goal of the playoffs much earlier in the night. Leon Draisaitl had the opening goal for the Oilers, his ninth of the postseason, and he now has a point in every single Oilers playoff game thus far (9 goals, 16 assists).

Tyler Seguin scored both goals for Dallas, including a late game-tying goal with under four minutes left. He had six total shots and a pair of hits in a game where he was very noticeable basically from start to finish.

Stuart Skinner saved 31 of 33 shots for the win in arguably his best game of the postseason. If he can maintain this level of play, it drastically improves Edmonton's chances for moving on.

This was a game about blown opportunities for Dallas. They have five power plays, including a four-minute power play to begin overtime thanks to a McDavid high stick. Going 0/5 with 12 minutes of power play time cost Dallas the win. Kudos to Edmonton's penalty kill effort.

Game 2 is Saturday night back in Dallas.

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We are getting down to the end offseason reviews of the 16 non-playoff squads and today's team is a team at a crossroads with the Minnesota Wild. We have already gone over the San Jose Sharks, the Chicago Blackhawks, the Anaheim Ducks, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Montreal Canadiens, the Arizona Coyotes (now in Utah), the Ottawa Senators, the Seattle Kraken, the Calgary Flames, the New Jersey Devils, the Buffalo Sabres, and the Philadelphia Flyers. Let's go over what went wrong for Minnesota, what went right, and where they go from here, with all this put 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

Minnesota cannot be discussed without mentioning their cap situation. The buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter are still counting nearly $14.75M against the cap and will do so again next season. That eats up over 17% of the team's cap space and in a league where teams are trying to get $100M rosters into the playoffs, this handcuffs the franchise. This isn't a sport like baseball where a bunch of cheap, young pitchers can get an MLB team to the postseason; teams rarely have the chance to accumulate so much high-end young talent that it carries them to a playoff appearance.

That is what makes the injuries to Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin especially tough to manage. They can't trade for a high-priced defenceman when that happens, and they can't sign one in the offseason (either last summer or this upcoming one). They are basically stuck with the roster they have, and when your number-1 defenceman misses 66 games and the number-2 defenceman misses 20 games, it puts a lot of pressure on cheap, veteran depth (and one rookie, which we'll get to).

As for the team's performance, it's the penalty kill that stands out. In 19 games under head coach Dean Evason, who was fired at the end of November, Minnesota was dead last by goals against per 60 minutes on the PK and gave up the second-most shots against. Things got better under now-coach John Hynes, but the team was still 20^th by goals against and 27^th by shots against per 60 minutes while short-handed. Overall, they were a bottom-5 penalty kill on the season, and they struggled all over the place (brown is bad as it denotes allowing more shots than the league average, and the darker the colour the more shots they allow:

That poor PK absolutely killed the fantasy values of their goalies. At even strength, Marc-Andre Fleury had a .918 save percentage, the same as Igor Shesterkin and higher than Jakob Markstrom. Filip Gustavsson was worse, but had a higher even strength save percentage than Andrei Vasilevskiy and was only a bit behind Alexandar Georgiev. Fleury, in particular, had an even strength goals saved above average rate comparable to a couple of goalies that had a lot of positive fantasy value this season:

Anyone that plays in fantasy leagues that only count even strength performance would have been happy with Fleury, at least.

On the flipside, Gustavsson fared well on the PK with a save percentage in the top-third of the league, but Fleury was dead last by PK save percentage at .812 (minimum of 150 PK minutes). Overall, it led to an .899 save percentage for Gustavsson and an .895 overall save percentage for Fleury. It hurt one goalie more than the other, but the awful PK from Minnesota was an Achilles heel for the team overall.

Though he had 63 points in 69 games, it was a down year from Mats Zuccarello because of his goal scoring. He managed just 12 goals, scoring 0.17 goals per game on the campaign. That was his lowest goals-per-game mark since his rookie 2010-11 season and a lot of it was thanks to shooting 6.9%. From the 2020-2023 seasons, Zuccarello averaged 13.2% shooting so he could have doubled his goal total with a somewhat normal conversion rate. That would have been an excellent fantasy season, so there was some fantasy value left on the table.

While that 6.9% shooting is a bit low, there is reason for it besides just bad luck. Overall, Zuccarello's unblocked shot rate was 11.4 per 60 minutes, the highest mark of his career. It led to his highest shot rate of his career, finishing a shade below 8.0 per 60 minutes. However, he had 2.03 high-danger shot attempts per 60 minutes, which was a career-low. He had one high-danger attempt for every 5.6 unblocked shot attempts, which is the worst of his career. It put him in interesting company across the league:

This season, the player with the worst unblocked shot-to-high danger attempt ratio was Artemi Panarin. There were excellent performers in and around Zuccarello's range like Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Jack Hughes, and Nathan MacKinnon. A lot of that has to do with pre-shot movement and the pass that led to the shot, but it is also a volume problem: Kucherov skated 21:40 per night and had over 300 shots; Stamkos was top-20 in the league by shots per 60 minutes; Hughes and MacKinnon are big volume shooters in their own right. Those guys had either lots of minutes or a high shot rate (in some cases both) to help even out their percentage swings, but Zuccarello skating under 19 minutes a game and having a 66^th percentile short rate makes him a different player. He was also in his age-36 season, and we know that shooting talent falls off as players age.

From a fantasy perspective, there's not a whole lot else that went wrong. All the top skaters had very good seasons of varying degrees, Spurgeon was hurt, and the goalies suffered but a lot of the issue was the PK in front of them. For a team that was handcuffed before they stepped on the ice for training camp, missed the playoffs, fired their coach, and had an awful penalty kill, things could have been a lot worse fantasy-wise.

What Went Right

As has been the case for a few years now, this team's list of notable fantasy performances starts with Kirill Kaprizov. He had 96 points, but his 46 goals were one behind his career-high and it gave him three straight seasons with at least 40 goals. He is now 1 of 4 players with at least 40 goals in each of the last three seasons, and he's in very elite company (from Stathead):

Tracking data has Kaprizov with 5.7 scoring chance assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, or simply the rate at which he assists on a teammate's scoring chance. He also led the team by assists off the rush with 6.7 per 60 minutes and by percentage of zone entries he carried in (63.2%). When looking at players that were at least one standard deviation above average by chance assists and rush assists, with a carry-in percentage of at least 63% and over 10 shots per 60 minutes, the list is short and extremely distinguished:

Kaprizov shoots, passes, and transitions into the offensive zone at very high-to-elite rates at 5-on-5. Add that to his 41 power play points with heavy usage and we get the season he just had. Funny enough, if Zuccarello has anywhere close to a normal scoring season, or Matt Boldy doesn't struggle for the first 6-7 weeks (we'll get to that shortly), Kaprizov easily passes 100 points and may even get past his career mark of 108 points set in 2021-22. He is truly an elite talent and the only thing that can hold him back is the team around him.

Boldy is an interesting case. He struggled with Evason behind the bench with just one goal in 12 games while missing some time early in the season. He went off after Hynes was hired, though, posting 28 goals, 61 points, 23 power play points, and over three shots per game across the next 63 games. Those 63 games saw him average 19:05 per night, a slight increase over Evason and an improvement from 2022-23. As long as he continues to get this kind of usage, Boldy will continue to be productive.

Like Kaprizov, Boldy is a player that has across-the-board contributions that lead to good offence. At 5-on-5, his scoring chance assist rate was 36% higher than the league average, his total contributions off the rush (shots and assists on teammate shots) led the Wild (and in line with names like David Pastrnak and Sidney Crosby), and he led the team by zone entries.

If there is a worrisome part, it's Boldy's minutes without Kaprizov. Here is what the team did offensively at 5-on-5 with the two of them on the ice (red is good, and darker red is better):

And this is what the team did at 5-on-5 when Boldy was on the ice without Kaprizov:

That jives with the goal scoring, as the team's goal rate declined nearly 44% when Boldy didn't have the superstar on the opposite wing. It also jives with the point production as Boldy managed 2.85 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 with Kaprizov on the ice, and 1.65 points/60 with Kaprizov off the ice. It is the difference between Artemi Panarin-levels of production and Jordan Martinook-levels of production.

The reason that matters is the team is going to have to largely run back the same roster, but hopefully with healthy defencemen and an improved Marco Rossi. We will touch on that more later, and Boldy should be fine for fantasy because he'll remain on the top PP unit regardless, but just splitting time between the first and second lines, rather than a high usage rate on the top line, could easily mean a 10-point difference for Boldy.

It was another fantastic multi-cat season for Joel Eriksson Ek. He set career-best marks with goals (30), points (64), shots (267), hits (169), and penalty minutes (60). Add in 21 power play points and 55 blocks and he was just a high-end across-the-board fantasy performer. Like Boldy, a lot of Eriksson Ek's value is tied to playing a lot of offensive minutes with Kaprizov, but unless Rossi takes a big step forward, that should again be the case in 2024-25.

It is a weird thing for Rossi to finally get a full NHL season, reach 21 goals, 40 points, and over two shots per game, have it all be a successful rookie campaign, and still feel uneasy about his future.

Rossi was below the league average by scoring chance assists and contributions off the rush, didn't do the heavy lifting on zone entries (though he did have a good carry-in rate when compared to his team), and had a lower shots-per-minute rate than Zuccarello, who ended up with just 2.5 shots per game. In and of itself, it wouldn't be a big deal for a rookie. We will get to why this is a problem in a minute, but it's worth noting that the team didn't create that well offensively when Rossi was on the ice with Kaprizov (as compared to Kaprizov with Boldy earlier):

The red in the circles with not much around the net is something we're seeing more of from teams as they focus on seam passes for easier goals (think Artemi Panarin New York, Leon Draisaitl in Edmonton, or Nick Suzuki in Montreal). It is why the goal rate was fine, but Rossi doesn't skate all his minutes with Kaprizov, and Rossi really struggled to duplicate the type of high-percentage offence when skating with the depth forwards rather than the top ones.

Lastly, there is Brock Faber. Wherever people stand on him, he had eight goals, 39 assists, 16 power play points, 136 shots, 150 blocks, and 65 hits as a rookie. That is a great first-year fantasy season, even if he had to average nearly 25 minutes a night to get to those totals. Faber is a guy that will require his own breakdown so we won't go much further right now, but anyone that had Faber on their keeper/dynasty rosters cannot be disappointed whatsoever with that performance.

Where They Go From Here

This is a team with some hard decisions to make. The upcoming 2024-25 season has them with less than $6M in cap space so they're priced out of making a big addition, but with 12 forwards, five defencemen, and two goalies signed, they're in a position to make solid depth additions. They are unlikely to be changes that move the fantasy needle, but they can bolster the depth.

The real question is if they do anything in the trade market. They don't have a surplus in top picks and assuming Faber is untouchable, there isn't a lot for trade chips unless they consider shipping out prospects like Jesper Wallstedt, Liam Öhgren, or Danila Yurov. That is possible, but it brings us to the next issue.

That next issue is Kaprizov's contract status. He has two years left, but assuming this team doesn't make a miracle run in 2024-25 because they're largely going to have to run back the same roster thanks to their cap constraints, it leaves them a one-year window where they have Kaprizov under contract. Of course they can extend him, but he'll be 29 years old for the start of a new contract. At that point, they will need young players to fill in around the top of the lineup, so trading those prospects now without a guarantee that whoever comes back will have Kaprizov in two years' time is a very risky move. It will be interesting to see what Minnesota does this offseason because it could be anywhere from 'sign some depth and run it back with a healthy blue line' to 'start shipping prospects and try to make a push in the next couple of seasons'.

From a fantasy perspective, they need to figure out the penalty kill. Playing on a team that gives up among the most shots in the league while short-handed is a good way to kill a goalie's fantasy value and while the team is very good defensively at even strength, this is a league of special team performance now, and they need at least an average PK to have hopes of a Gustavsson rebound (or even Fleury, though I'm dubious about that at his age).

The big name is Rossi. If the team doesn't make significant changes (which could include trading Rossi), he needs to take a big step forward to give this team two good scoring lines. Two good scoring lines, a checking third line, a solid blue line, and a better penalty kill could have this team back in playoff contention. Likely not contender status (the West is still deep up top), but at least back in the playoffs.

Minnesota's top guys should still be good-to-great for fantasy; all of Kaprizov, Boldy, and Eriksson Ek are top-100 picks in multi-cat leagues. The questions revolve around Rossi's development, the health of their top defencemen, and an improved penalty kill. That all affects the fantasy values of the relevant players, and we won't know until well into next season whether any of those things are true.