It was a very busy Tuesday night schedule with 14 games, but I gather they are trying to squeeze in games before the Four Nations begins on February 12.

Miro Heiskanen is going to be out month-to-month after undergoing knee surgery on Tuesday. He was injured after being taken out by Mark Stone in a game against Vegas on January 28. It's a big blow for the Stars and fantasy owners as the original prognosis was week to week. This creates a long-term opportunity for Thomas Harley and might give Lian Bichsel more ice time.

Jeremy Swayman made 35 saves in Boston's 3-0 win over Minnesota for his third shutout of the season and 15th of his career. 

Jack Hughes went head-to-head with Sidney Crosby and the Devils came away with a 3-2 shootout win. Hughes had two goals to give him 23 in 55 games. His brother Luke played a career-high 29:45.

Nico Daws made 25 saves on 27 shots and picked up his first win in 2024-25 in his first start this year.

Buffalo beat an injury-riddled Columbus 3-2 to win their fourth game in a row. Alex Tuch was in on every Sabre goal and finished with two goals.

Linus Ullmark played for the first time since December 22 and made 34 saves on 37 shots but took the loss against Tampa Bay.

After going pointless in his first 12 games as a member of the Senators, David Perron has four points in his past four games.

Nick Paul left the game in the first period and did not return. He is listed as day-to-day.

Alex Ovechkin scored an empty-net goal with 0.1 seconds remaining to bag his 878th career goal putting him 16 goals behind Wayne Gretzky's 894. The Capitals beat Florida 6-3, the day after the Panthers visited Donald Trump at the White House to celebrate their Stanley Cup win.

Nic Dowd had three points, which gives him 21 in 53 games. His career-high is 25 points in eight prior seasons.

Logan Thompson made 30 saves on 33 shots and raised his record to 24-2-4. It is shades of Andrew Hammond's record of 20-1-2 with Ottawa in 2014-15. Albeit, Hammond won just 11 more games the rest of his career in the NHL.

Vegas lost to the Islanders 2-1 and have now lost four games in a row. The Islanders have now won eight of their last nine games and are now just three points outside of a wild-card spot in the East.

Brandon Saad scored his first goal as a Golden Knight in his second game with them.

Vegas dressed seven defenders, but Kaedan Korczak played just 3:34.

Ilya Sorokin made 33 saves on 34 shots to earn his 20th win of 2024-25 and raise his record to 20-14-4.

Edmonton tied the game with their goalie pulled and then won in overtime 3-2 over St. Louis. Connor McDavid had a goal and two assists which gives him 70 points in 48 games and ties him with Mitch Marner at 4th overall in the scoring leaders.

Stuart Skinner made 20 saves on 22 shots to earn his 20th win of 2024-25 and improve his overall record to 20-12-4.

Nick Leddy was back in the lineup for St. Louis after missing 49 games. He played 15:27 and had one shot on goal.

Jordan Binnington played well in the loss as he made 35 saves on 38 shots on goal.

The Winnipeg Jets shutout Carolina 3-0 with Eric Comrie making 29 saves for his first shutout of the season and raising his record to 5-7-1.

Carolina dressed seven defenders with Scott Morrow playing his first game of 2024-25 and the third of his career. He played just 10:42 and was minus-1 with two SOG.

Winnipeg scored three goals and won the game with Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Gabriel Vilardi, Nik Ehlers and Josh Morrissey all being held without a point.

Toronto beat the Calgary Flames 6-3 with William Nylander netting a hat-trick which gives him 33 goals in 53 games and puts him second in goals in the NHL behind Leon Draisaitl and his 37.

The Maple Leafs were without Mitch Marner and it allowed Matthew Knies to play 23 minutes and post a goal and an assist. The goal was the 20th for Knies.

Joel Farabee scored his first goal with Calgary while Morgan Frost was held pointless.

Calgary is now tied with Vancouver at 59 points for the last Wild Card spot in the West.

Rodrigo Abols scored his first NHL goal at the age of 29, but the Flyers lost to Utah 3-2 in OT.

Matvei Michkov went pointless for the seventh game in a row and is minus-5 with just seven SOG during that stretch.

Samuel Ersson made 39 saves on 42 shots and took the loss in overtime.

Dylan Guenther returned to the Utah lineup for the first time since January 8 and had two goals and an assist, including the OT winner with less than a second remaining.

Mikhail Sergachev had a goal and two assists and now has four points in the four games since returning from the five games he missed with an injury.

Josh Manson left the game with a lower-body injury and did not return in the Avalanche's 3-0 loss to Vancouver.

Drew O'Connor scored an empty-net goal to seal the deal for the Canucks which was his first goal with his new team in his second game.

Young Elias Pettersson (the D-man) led the Canucks with four hits and played 13:57.

Thatcher Demko made 25 saves and posted his first shutout in 2024-25 and the ninth of his career.

Detroit picked up their seventh straight win with a 5-4 shootout win over the Seattle Kraken.

Shane Wright scored two goals in a losing effort and now has 11 goals and 29 points in 52 games.

Anaheim broke the five-game winning streak of the Dallas Stars with a 2-1 win where John Gibson made 26 saves on 27 shots in his 500th NHL game.

Montreal beat San Jose 4-3 to improve to 25-23-5 and 55 points, which is five points behind Tampa Bay and Boston in the Wild Card race.

Patrik Laine went pointless for the fifth straight game and is minus-five with just eight SOG during that stretch.

Lane Hutson picked up his 40th point of his rookie season in just his 53rd game.

Collin Graf scored his first NHL goal in his 18th career game.

Fellow Calder Trophy candidate, Macklin Celebrini had a goal and an assist and now has 17 goals and 22 assists in 43 games.

Carson Soucy has been approached to waive his no-trade clause by Vancouver with the acquisition of Marcus Pettersson and the elevated play of defender Elias Pettersson. He did dress in Vancouver's game against Colorado but played just 13:45 after being a healthy scratch on Sunday.

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Rick Roos is looking for a few more mailbag questions to be answered in next week’s article. To get your questions to him, private message "rizzeedizzee" via the DobberHockey Forums or email admin@dobbersports.com with "Roos Mailbag" as the subject line.

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Elias Pettersson/J.T. Miller rift comes to a conclusion?

The last time I wrote in the Ramblings was in late December and I talked about the options for the Canucks with Miller and Pettersson. I stated that the Canucks couldn't win a trade that would help them in the short term and that they should work things out internally.

Obviously, that didn't happen, and now Miller is a NY Ranger and the Canucks have Filip Chytil, Drew O'Connor, Marcus Pettersson and Victor Mancini moving forward. They also dealt Danton Heinen and Vincent Desharnais to Pittsburgh.

This no doubt helps the dressing room in Vancouver, but the loss on the ice will hurt Vancouver this year and next. It's crazy that it came to this from a team that played Edmonton to seven games in Round 2 without Thatcher Demko in the playoffs last year.

Eastern Conference Player Valuations

Here is a post on X by PuckPedia with an article by Steve Werier, who is a former assistant general manager of the Florida Panthers. He talks about surplus of value which is something I'm trying to calculate.

🚨New🚨

Special to PuckPedia, former Panthers Assistant GM @stevewerier shares his thoughts on the Canucks two trades yesterday!

Read the insight provided by someone who was in a front-office faced with important roster decisions.https://t.co/3k3jq7Fqz1

— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) February 1, 2025

I wrote about Player Valuations in my Wild West column on Monday here, so thought I would present some numbers for the Eastern players as well down below. For a full listing of forwards and defenders, you can visit here.

These are just a few players who I thought were interesting. I'm always interested in how some of the higher contracts play out in terms of actual value the players have. Stats are as of January 31.

As we can see, Auston Matthews comes in with a value almost spot on with his cap hit of $13.25 million AAV with a value of $13.26 million. The valuation on this sheet is just for the 2024-25 season, so Matthews will need to maintain this value for the three additional years of this contract.

Mitch Marner's value comes in at $10.2 million compared to his actual cap hit of $10.9 million which is close to a $700k deficit. Marner is set to become unrestricted after 2024-25 and I suspect will be looking for something closer to $12 million AAV, but that might be a little expensive, so expect the Maple Leafs to come in somewhere between $10.5 and $11.5.

Sidney Crosby continues to amaze. His cap hit is $8.7 million which most players have a hard time justifying, but Crosby has played to a level at $10.2 million in 2024-25 which is a $1.5 million surplus.

I included Rantanen as he was dealt from Colorado to Carolina and is an impending UFA. His value this year is just over $11.3 million and he is coming off a contract at $9.25 million AAV. The question will be if he can maintain that value without Nathan MacKinnon and will another team be willing to gamble on it?

Kirill Marchenko is a complete bargain at $3.85 million for the next two years while his value has soared to over $9.6 million in 2024-25.

Mika Zibanejad is an example on the other end of the spectrum. He has a cap hit of $8.5 million for the next five years but his value in 2024-25 has dipped to just over $5 million. That is a deficit of $3.5 million just in this one year. Will he be able to raise his level for the duration of that contract?

Connor McMichael has one more year at $2.1 million AAV but has broken out in 2024-25 to a value of just over $6.3 million. His next contract should reflect that.

Brendan Gallagher is an example of an aging player who signed a pretty expensive contract and isn't the same player today. His contract has two more years at $6.5 million AAV and his value currently is around $2.8 million. He's probably not an option to buy out at this point as he still brings value to the table.

A year ago, Adam Fox would have been full value for his $9.5 million AAV contract, but has dipped just a bit in 2024-25 to around $7.45 million. He's still an excellent player but it's a small concern for the next four years of that contract.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or players you'd like me to look at please message or follow me on Twitter @gampbler15.