In Friday's playoff pucks, Barclay Goodrow scored in 14:01 of overtime to give the Rangers a 2-1 win in Game 2, tying the Eastern Conference Final at one win each. The series heads back to Florida for Game 3 on Sunday.

FOUND A WAY! 🗽

Barclay Goodrow scores the @SUBWAYCanada OT goal to tie the Eastern Conference Final. pic.twitter.com/4vRrfAknbg

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 25, 2024

Vincent Trocheck scored the Rangers' other goal, which was in the first period. Trocheck now leads the Rangers in playoff scoring with 15 points, and he is tied with Chris Kreider for the team lead in playoff goals (7).

Carter Verhaeghe scored the Panthers' only goal, which was on the power play late in the first period. Verhaeghe leads the Panthers with eight playoff goals and is second on the team with 14 playoff points. If you haven't noticed, Verhaeghe has been a standout playoff performer these past few seasons.

Playoff goal scoring leaders, last 3 seasons:

1. Draisaitl 29
2. Hyman 26
3. Kreider 23
4. Verhaeghe 21
5. McDavid 21

— James Mirtle (@mirtle) May 25, 2024

Both goalies brought their A games and were thus deserving of quality starts. Igor Shesterkin stopped 26 of 27 shots he faced, while Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 28 of 30 shots. Shesterkin now has a .928 SV% in 40 career playoff games. Bob has been particularly difficult to beat lately, posting five consecutive quality starts.

With an assist on Trocheck's goal, Adam Fox's 5-game pointless streak came to an end.

Jimmy Vesey left Game 2 with an upper-body injury after being levelled by Ryan Lomberg in the second period.

6-7 Matt Rempe attracts attention whenever he's on the ice, so it wasn't lost on anyone that he was back in the Rangers' lineup for Game 2. He made his presence felt, leading all players in this game with nine hits. He skated for just 10 minutes in this game and his line was dominated at 5-on-5 (20% CF), but the Rangers felt better equipped to handle the rugged style of play of the Panthers with Rempe in the lineup. The Rangers responded after being punished in the physical department in Game 1, outhitting the Panthers 51 to 42 in Game 2.

Kaapo Kakko, who has just two points in 11 playoff games, was scratched for Rempe.

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Scott Arniel, who was an assistant under Rick Bowness, has been hired as the new head coach of the Jets. This might seem like an underwhelming choice considering some of the names that have been or still are available this offseason, but it's a sign that the team doesn't want drastic changes from its 110-point regular season. After all, Jack Adams finalist Bowness decided to retire and wasn't fired. Don't expect the Arniel hiring to change the fantasy outlooks for Winnipeg players a great deal, since he is already working within their system.

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Don Waddell has resigned as the Hurricanes general manager, with Eric Tulsky becoming the interim GM. Tulsky is well-known for his work in analytics, which the Hurricanes are already known for embracing throughout their organization. This could be a busy offseason for Carolina with some important decisions to make both from a UFA and RFA perspective, so they will need to firm up the GM role as soon as possible.

Waddell has also reportedly interviewed with Columbus about their vacant GM job. His work in building the Hurricanes into a contender should help him easily land another significant NHL role, although he seemed like a questionable hire for the Canes in the first place after some poor results with the Atlanta Thrashers.

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The Islanders and Blackhawks made a trade involving draft picks on Friday. Chicago acquires picks 18 and 50 from New York in exchange for picks 20, 54, and 61 – all from this year's draft. It will be interesting to see whether this is a trade made solely to draft players anticipated to be available at those spots, or if it has been made to set up something bigger.

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With the fantasy hockey season now in the books, I'd like to share my experience with Zero G this season. If you're not familiar with Zero G, it is the idea of deprioritizing drafting goalies on a fantasy hockey team. Nate of Apples & Ginos first coined the term, so you should read his manifesto on Zero G if you haven't already.

I have three different teams that I used Zero G to varying levels. I'll discuss one of those teams today, while the other two will appear in future Ramblings.

Team 1: Total Zero G

This is a 12-team Fantrax league that allows limited keepers based on rules, but no minimum number of keepers. The rules are too detailed to mention here, but free agents are drafted by slow auction during the offseason and can be signed to multiple seasons, then waiver-wire pickups are acquired by FAAB (free agent auction bidding) twice a week. It's a head-to-head league which scores by total points per week and not most categories won. Keep that scoring system in mind, as it is key for Zero G to work.  

I kept Ville Husso, Anton Forsberg, and Mads Sogaard for the entire season. I also started the season with Pheonix Copley and Cal Petersen (who were kept from last season) and James Reimer, all of who were eventually dropped.

The goalies I added during the season were Jonathan Quick, Joey Daccord, Scott Wedgewood, Nico Daws, and Anthony Stolarz. Wedgewood was the only goalie I dropped for good during the season, leaving me with a grab bag of 1A starters, backups, and minor leaguers. Underwhelmed yet? This seems like a goaltending nightmare if it happened to you, doesn't it? You might be wondering why I couldn't add anyone better than that. Maybe I should have attempted a trade for a goalie, but I didn’t. I just stuck to using the waiver wire.

Plot twist time. This team finished first during the regular season, losing only 3 of 23 head-to-head matchups over that span I was fortunate enough to have three of the league's top 10 scorers in Artemi Panarin, David Pastrnak, and William Nylander. Having my division wrapped up and a first-round bye with two playoff series to play in order to win the league, I decided to add Stolarz for my fantasy playoffs. Florida had secured a playoff spot and was resting Sergei Bobrovsky a bit more, which was enough to provide Stolarz with at least one start per week. Stolarz also had some potentially easy matchups.  

Stolarz was so-so during my semifinal, but my opponent had rough weeks from Casey DeSmith and Joonas Korpisalo, and I scored enough to win by a sizeable margin. In the final, Stolarz pitched a 26-save shutout against Ottawa, which helped me secure a title in this league for the sixth time. Also credit to Daccord, who I added in December after Philipp Grubauer was injured. Daccord turned out to be my most valuable goalie, and I got to see him play live a few days after I added him!

I'll stress my key point from earlier: This is a head-to-head points league – not a H2H categories league. That means I don't have a minimum number of goalie starts, and it's not critical for me to have better goaltending than my opponent. I have 20 roster spots that I need to fill each week, and 2-3 of them can be goalies. It doesn't matter how I obtain the points. I've just figured out that it's more beneficial for me to spend my auction dollars on the other 18 forwards and defensemen in my lineup because they can't generate the magnitude of negative points in this scoring system like goalies can.

I've used the Zero G strategy on this team for two seasons. I took it on kind of out of necessity after losing a long bidding war for Frederik Andersen. I certainly could have used Andersen during this time, as I narrowly missed the playoffs last season. The silver lining is that I was able to win my draft lottery tournament, draft Connor Bedard, and trade for Nylander, which set me up for success this season. Plus the Andersen contract has been expensive for the team that won the bidding war, as he was trying to shop Andersen this season.

I know that at least 1-2 of my league mates may be reading this and might try to use this strategy themselves. If more teams in this league adopt a Zero G strategy, the auction value for goalies will drop. If that happens, I'll be more inclined to add better quality goalies. To be honest, some teams in this league view adding expensive goalies or multiple elite goalies as a necessity – a security blanket, so to speak. I see it as a roster inefficiency, not only because of the potential for negative points but also because teams can only start two goalies per day and three goalies per week.

Over the coming days/weeks, I'll write about two more teams and their varying levels of Zero G, describing what worked and what didn't when it came to goalie management.

Ryan Brudner, our Geek of the Week writer, will be writing a future article on Zero G from a True Goalie Value stats perspective. For more on True Goalie Value stats, see his Geek of the Week from May 19. I've already sent my team transactions to Ryan for his analysis, but you can still send yours to him on his X account @fantasycheddar. I'm looking forward to what he has in store.

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Follow me on X @Ian_Gooding and Threads.