The shine on Leevi Merilainen looks like it has finally worn off. He allowed two goals before being pulled in the first period. Anton Forsberg came on in relief and gave up three, including one to Matt Rempe of all people. I would expect Merilainen to be the goalie sent down once Linus Ullmark is healthy, despite outplaying Anton Forsberg for a stretch of games. Merilainen is still only 22 and has lots to work on. We’ve seen flashes in the pan like this before, and he still has a long way to go in his career. 

Igor Shesterkin recorded his second shutout of the season, stopping all 20 shots he faced. He has five wins in his last six starts, and looks to be back to his usual self. The blank skate for the Sens means Brady Tkachuk‘s pointless streak reached eight games. His percentages were a little high from a hot start, but they have overcorrected and are now hinting that a hot streak is coming with the eventual rebound. Buy in now. 

Arthur Kaliyev now has two goals in his last four games with the Rangers. It remains to be seen whether he can be more effective as a depth RW scorer than Kaapo Kakko was, despite seeing even less minutes. For those of you keeping track at home, Kakko is now a point-per-game player with the Kraken. 

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Two starts in a row for Alex Lyon, who allowed four goals on Sunday to the Dallas Stars, but followed it up with allowing only one in regulation before losing in overtime to the Flyers. The Wings are sliding, and whomever of Lyon and Cam Talbot strings together two wins first is going to get a run. 

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In looking through the Midseason Fantasy Guide (get yours here, it's not too late!) it was shocking to me how high the Capitals' PDO metric was. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it's simply a combination number of a team's overall shooting and save percentages – NHL average is 100 on the nose, so anything that deviates higher or lower is an indicator that the team has been lucky or unlucky. 

The Canucks set the recent standard with a PDO of 1.050 at the midway point, fifth highest of all time – with all four teams above them either rostering Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, or Mike Bossy. They ultimately finished the season at 1.027 – the fourth-highest season total since the 2013 lockout-shortened year. All that to say, the Capitals with a PDO of 1.032, are due for some regression. To a lesser extent, the Jets, Lightning, and Kings (all above 1.02) are as well.

Now, though there will be some regression, it does feel like there is something special about this Caps team as they have come together, orbiting around Alex Ovechkin and his chase for history. At this rate, Ovechkin would pass Gretzky's all-time goal scoring record sometime in early-mid March. With a playoff spot likely locked up by that point as well, I wonder if the adrenaline that might have been carrying them on this run doesn't just fizzle out until the playoffs, with no more record to chase. This thought is going to make me a bit more hesitant about owning Capitals for the stretch run, including fantasy playoffs. 

Last night they came out on top against the Connor McDavid-less Oilers, earning the 3-2 victory. With McDavid out, Leon Draisaitl notched two points to lead the offence.

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On the flipside as we look at overall team production, one team that many may expect to fall off in the second half is the Columbus Blue Jackets. However, I think they finish the season strong. They have been treading water well the last few weeks despite a few key injuries and are still in the thick of the playoff race. Justin Danforth just returned on Monday from a multi-week absence, with both Sean Monahan and Boone Jenner possibly returning after the Four-Nations Faceoff. Yegor Chinakhov could be back even sooner, though his injury timeline is a little murkier. That's a third of the team's forward roster for any given game that the Blue Jackets will be upgrading from AHL players to solid NHLers. 

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Fabian Zetterlund has been mired in a slump recently, and it has lined up with him missing a lot of practices for "maintenance" telling us that he has been nursing something. Well after the last two nights it seems like he is feeling a bit better. Between the back-to-back games on Monday and Tuesday night he had two points and eight shots, but most of all he just looked more like his usual energetic self out there. He could be an excellent buy-low heading into the second half, as the 26 points he had in 38 games (56-point pace) is closer to where he should be than pacing in the 40s as he currently is. 

Fabian Zetterlund's most frequent linemates Mikael Granlund and William Eklund have also gone cold of late, but hopefully for their fantasy owners, having Zetterlund going again will get the other two back on track as well. It should at minimum give Granlund a boost, maybe even back up to his point-per-game pace from the first quarter. However, William Eklund has been moved alongside Macklin Celebrini, and while that may be the best future spot for him, it might not be the most productive slotting at the moment. Especially considering Ty Dellandrea is the one playing third wheel. 

Eklund notched an assist last night on Celebrini’s marker a minute into the game, while Will Smith joined Zetterlund and Granlund, with the trio connecting for the third goal. Granlund added a power play marker from Eklund and Celebrini as well.

Jonathan Marchessault fueled a comeback for the Predators with his four points, while Justus Annunen looked great in relief, stopping 15 of 16 shots after Juuse Saros was pulled in the first intermission, having allowed four goals. We could see Annunen grab a few more starts the rest of the way, but still not likely more than one every four.

Filip Forsberg and Tommy Novak each added three points, as the Preds ultimately showed that they probably shouldn’t be a basement dwelling team with the Sharks this year.

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It sounds like Noah Dobson is going to be missing some time, though it's not yet clear on a timeline. Hopefully we have an update tomorrow. 

In the meantime, one of Dennis Cholowski, Adam Pelech, or Ryan Pulock will take over power play duties. In the last game, Pulock and Pelech had the rest of the power play time left over from Dobson. If it is one of them, then extra power play production on top of peripherals would make for an excellent fantasy asset in the meantime. Cholowski is likely to draw into the lineup though, and has had some time on the top unit already this year. The Isles don't play until a back-to-back set on Thursday and Friday. Keep an eye on practice lines in the meantime. 

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The NHL salary cap is rumoured to be jumping even higher next season than the initial estimate of $92 million, perhaps even up to $97 million. This isn’t just conjuring ideals out of thin air either. This is based off information that the players are not paying any more escrow the rest of the season, and in top of that they’re getting an extra percentage because of higher-than-expected revenues. As the revenues climb, so too does the cap, so if there’s a big jump in revenue, it follows that the league is poised to soar past a $92 million cap. 

For most fantasy leagues, there’s not a huge impact. Maybe your stack of good players on a good team can all stick together a little longer as there’s enough pie to go around for all, but really there isn’t much in the way of repercussions. However, for salary cap leagues, this is massive news. Now, if you were paying attention over the last year or two as we excited the flat cap era, you stocked up on a few longer-term deals like Tage Thompson, Jack Hughes, and others signed to reasonable cap hits now, but still with seven years or so of term left. These are the deals that become similar to what Brad Marchand and Nathan MacKinnon‘s deals were a few years ago. Those are the ones that help you win leagues, as everyone of their quality starts making one and a half times what they are. Do yourself a favour and buy in on some of those longer-term deals today.

If you're instead looking at contract projections, I don't have my own out at this point, but there's another solid resource here if you want to start your planning:

2024-2025 Midseason Extension Projections are now live! Check out the 289 different projections (some RFAs having a long & short term projections) at the link below👇 #NHL

— AFP Analytics (@afpanalytics.bsky.social) 2025-01-21T15:30:12.623Z

(Note that this is projected with a $92.5M cap, so if it does rise all the way to $97M or so, then you might have to add 5% to the projected numbers as well.)

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See you next Wednesday, and if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments you can find me on BlueSky here, or Twitter/X here.