Kirill Kaprizov is now scheduled to miss the next four weeks after undergoing surgery for a lower-body injury. Two of those weeks are covered by the break for the Four-Nations tournament, which is good news, meaning Kaprizov may only miss about two weeks, and less than 10 games.
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Your top scorer of the night was a tie between teammates Tage Thompson and JJ Peterka. Thompson recorded a hat trick and one assist, to go with a plus-six rating, six shots and four blocks. He’s now up to an 80-point pace, and should be able to be relied on for point-per-game numbers the rest of the way. Linemate Peterka added a hat-trick of his own, with Zach Benson adding a late tally to account for all seven goals in the game. One was an empty netter, meaning Jeremy Swayman was "only" in for six of them.
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Seth Jones notched two assists to keep his fantastic run going. Over his last six games he has eight points (five of them on the power play), four PIMs, 13 shots, 21 Hits, and 12 Blocks. It won’t keep up for very long, but it's nice to see that he still has that kind of production in him in spurts.
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What a drop off this year that Ross Colton has seen. He started off with nine points (eight goals) in 10 games, and then in 25 games since he has seven points. The two streaks are split by a sizeable injury layoff for Colton, which really seemed to ruin his momentum. The team around him changed a bit as well, getting back to full strength, which has really eaten into his minutes. In his first 10 games, he was getting 18:30 per game, and over three minutes with the man advantage. Both of those numbers have been moving steadily downwards, and now he's only seeing 14:30 per game, and one minute with the man advantage on the second unit. However, with the recent slump he's been in, his underlying numbers have shifted firmly into "buy" territory, and he should see some uptick in scoring the rest of the way, even with just his current deployment. If the minutes tick back up, then all the better.
Hopefully he also either gets moved away from newcomer Jack Drury, or finds some chemistry soon, as the new Colton, Drury, and Logan O'Connor line provided Colton's worst possession results of any of his line combinations that has over 10 minutes together this season.
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Mike covered the Scott Perunovich trade very well in yesterday's Ramblings. One point I did want to cover though was that the acquisition or Perunovich in the wake of also adding Tony DeAngelo, likely means that the Isles received some poor news on the injury timeline of Noah Dobson and/or Ryan Pulock. If you own either, be ready for a longer absence – tough to stomach especially as they have such great H2H playoff schedules, so you don't want to ship either off your roster in an effort to replace them.
In case you were wondering whether DeAngelo would be the PP1 guy, he played over five minutes with the man advantage in his first Isles game, and because of Pulock leaving the game early, he saw over 25 minutes overall.
Both Perunovich and DeAngelo recorded their first assists as Isles last night. Colorado didn't take a penalty though, so we'll have to wait on see with what usage Perunovich has with the man advantage.
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The Blues placed Brandon Saad on waivers yesterday. The two-time Cup winner was pacing for only 30 points so far this year, and carries another season and a half with his $4.5 million cap hit. It would be surprising to see another team claim him, so odds are that he would be sent down to the minors. That could make room for someone like Dalibor Dvorsky to be recalled. Dvorsky is a recent first round pick who has 26 points in 36 games through his first AHL season. He would be worth watching as a waiver stream if he is recalled.
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Somehow Jackson Blake is the one who comes out of the Mikko Rantanen trade with the biggest glow-up. He's lining up with Rantanen and Sebastian Aho, playing 17 minutes a night at even strength alone. The rookie winger was brought along slowly with fourth line and PP2 duties to start the year, but could be a big breakout candidate in the second half if this deployment keeps up. He registered a helper last night on Andrei Svechnikov's second of the game, just as a power play expired.
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Anthony Duclair has one of the most fascinating sets of underlying metrics from the last number of years that I have seen. He had four straight seasons of absurdly high PDOs, has settled into a very consistent IPP of 57%, but despite very similar underlying numbers year to year, he dropped from being a 60-point player from 2020-2022, to being a 40-point player ever since. The interesting thing is that it appears that Duclair is an excellent complementary player, and his scoring rate fluctuates greatly based on his linemates. Within the 2023-2024 season, Duclair split time between San Jose and Tampa Bay, and while playing alongside Mikael Granlund and Fabian Zerrerlund he scored at a 40-point rate, but once he moved to Tampa and played with Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point his scoring rate shot up to the 60-point pace he was producing on the top line in Florida.
This year, Duclair is playing on the second line with the Islanders, but unlike previous years, there's actually some room for improvement with his previously stable underlying numbers. His PPIPP and secondary assist rate both indicate that he has had some bad luck and should probably have four or five more points than he does, which would bring him from a 33-point pace all the way up to a 50-point pace, which jives with playing on line two, instead of line one. I would expect him to get closer to that as the season moves along. We'll also have to see what the Isles do around the trade deadline, and what impacts that has on lines, as Duclair's production the rest of the way could be greatly impacted.
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In my 24-team Salary Cap dynasty league, I made a trade recently to shore up my goaltending in a run towards the top of the standings, moving Noah Ostlund and Otto Stenberg for Joey Daccord. Depending on your leagues, experience, and preferences, you might see that as an expensive price to pay, or perhaps view it as a huge win for me.
To me, the price was fair, but maybe a bit high when you just look at the three pieces involved. However, I like to take a bigger view of these things, and I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret advantage you can give yourselves to make trades like these ones easy to stomach, and oftentimes having them turn into repeatable wins for you.
Simply put, do your research!! Knowing which prospects are trending up or down, which players in your free agent pool should actually be owned, and what the team needs are of your own and your opponent's team are, makes a giant impact in being able to properly evaluate the fair value of a player. If I own a solid prospect, but can trade him for a roster upgrade and then add a similar prospect to my minors as a replacement, the net value of my team goes up substantially.
Along with using FrozenTools a lot, for the schedule planner, report generator, line combos, advanced stats, and other info all in one place, some of my favourite resources include the NHL Rank King app for prospect evaluation, the Dobber Forums for player debates and fantasy takes on the latest news, and the general "Hockey Twitter" community (which has since mostly moved over to Bluesky) and provides insight into new prospects, updated line combos, and more if you're following the right people.
Once you're doing your own research, you're in a better spot to trade or add/drop your way through buying low and selling high, as well as sorting out when having to add the extra prospect really doesn't move the needle against you, as you could replace that player very easily through the waiver wire. I've done that recently with moving out Ostlund, Stenberg, and Adam Jiricek, and then replacing them off the wire with Luca Marelli, Sasha Pastujov, and Jesse Kiiskanen. All three are putting up fantastic statistical seasons, and while they don't have the same name value or pedigree as the ones I traded away, the upsides are nearly as high.
On the flip side, the certainty of these replacement prospects making an impact is lower, but that can be counteracted by finding players closer to the NHL (e.g. Pastujov who is 22 and playing in the AHL) and then knowing that if he doesn't make the jump over the next 18 months, I can replace him with another 21-year-old in the AHL who might make it the year after, giving a similar timeline to an NHL player as I would have had with Ostlund or Stenberg anyways.
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It’s not often anymore that someone older than me makes their NHL debut, but that's what 31-year-old Dominik Shine did on Monday night with the Detroit Red Wings, seeing 10 minutes of ice time on the fourth line. His stat line was only two hits and one block, but he has 32 points in 40 AHL games this year which is a great story for him and the Red Wings. There's no fantasy value here, but sometimes you just need a little feel-good tidbit thrown in too.
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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.