Every Sunday, we share 21 Fantasy Rambles from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s 'Daily Ramblings'.

Writers/Editors: Ian Gooding, Michael Clifford, Alexander MacLean, Brennan Des, Grant Campbell and Dobber

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1. I'll say without reservation that I’m really looking forward to the upcoming 4 Nations tournament . Because it is now an international sport, hockey has a real opportunity for more of these types of tournaments. Is Canada still the best in the world at hockey, or does their lack of star goaltending make them inferior to the United States? Sweden and Finland should also make this a competitive tournament.

There are always gripes about these best-on-best tournaments. For example, it will interrupt the regular season for over a week, which I don’t particularly mind if an 82-game season will be played eventually anyway (COVID made me adapt).

In addition, this tournament won’t be as long as the Olympics usually are. As well, many star players will not be included, such as Leon Draisaitl, Nikita Kucherov, and David Pastrnak. Yet between injuries, players opting not to play, and players simply snubbed, the All-Star Game is never a complete collection of the very best anyway.

What about injuries? Sure, I’ll take that chance. I had multiple fantasy teams burned by Dominik Hasek’s Olympic injury back in 2006. Entertainment comes with risk. (feb8)

2. Need help planning the extended fantasy week following the 4 Nations? The Frozen Tools Schedule Planner now has that option. When selecting your date range, choose “2024-25 4 Nations Extended Fantasy Week” and even “Remaining 2024-25 4 Nations Extended Fantasy Week” once the week has started. Frozen Tools is always on top of things.

3. Update: Sidney Crosby was not in the Penguins’ lineup for either of the weekend games due to an upper-body injury. According to head coach Mike Sullivan, the team is "taking it one day at a time,” so there’s still a decent chance he is able to play at the 4 Nations tournament. Canada’s first game is on Wednesday against Sweden. Mark Scheifele has been told to be on standby in case Crosby can’t go. Scheifele, who is tied for third in goals with 31, seems like more than an adequate replacement. (feb9)

4. Alex Nedeljkovic has five consecutive quality starts. He posted a shutout in one of those starts and allowed two goals in each of the other four. After a rough start to the season, Ned has a .934 SV% over his last eight games, stabilizing the Penguins’ goaltending situation. Nedeljkovic seems like a decent waiver-wire pickup for fantasy teams needing goaltending assistance. (feb8)

5. Alex Ovechkin has goals in four straight games entering Sunday action. He has 26 goals in 38 games this season and 49 goals in his last 74 games dating back to last season. At time of writing, only Leon Draisaitl had a higher goal-per-game number than Ovechkin (0.68 G/GP) this season. Ovie is now 16 goals away from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s record. Now it’s not a question of if, but when, whether it be late this season or early next season. (feb7)

6. Zach Werenski returned to the Blue Jackets’ lineup this week after a one-game absence and is now running a home point streak of 21 games. He also had 27 points in 21 games and is right in the mix with Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar for the scoring lead among defensemen. Perhaps those three are your Norris Trophy finalists this season. While we're on the subject of the Blue Jackets, GM Don Waddell has stated that they will be buyers at the trade deadline, so it looks like Ivan Provorov will be staying put for the rest of the season. (feb7)

7. The Wild entered Thursday’s game having been shut out in their previous two games. Although they won 2-1 over Carolina, not having Kirill Kaprizov in the lineup seems to be trickling down to their other scorers. Entering Saturday, Brock Faber and Jake Middleton were each without a point in their last eight games, Matt Boldy was without a point in his last five games, and Joel Eriksson Ek and Mats Zuccarello were each without a point in their last four games. Kaprizov can’t return soon enough. (feb7)

8. Since the trade, Martin Necas has eight points in seven games, including three multipoint games. He can’t ask for a better linemate than Nathan MacKinnon, so we shouldn’t be surprised if Necas recaptures some of his early-season success while he was in Carolina. Necas has averaged nearly 23 minutes per game in Colorado, which is a huge jump from the 18 minutes he averaged in Carolina. Necas was a sell-high earlier this season, but the value boost of a real-life trade was a sudden turn that didn’t seem to be in the cards. (feb7)

You can read about how I thought this trade would affect the Hurricanes and Avalanche fantasy-wise here.

9. Anthony Stolarz made his first start in nearly two months, returning to the Leafs’ lineup on Thursday from a knee injury. He has 13 quality starts in 18 games, so he should help give Toronto a strong 1-2 tandem with Joseph Woll, who may not start as often as he has been while Stolarz was injured. Get him back into your lineup. (feb7)

10. Gabriel Vilardi already has a career-highs of 24 goals and 51 points in 56 games, and he is on pace for 75 points if he can remain healthy all season. Vilardi owes much of his success this season to his linemates Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele, who are both on pace for 90+ points. (feb8)

11. Update: Quinn Hughes missed Saturday’s game, which was his fourth consecutive game missed with an oblique injury. His status for the 4 Nations is still unknown. Oblique injuries are painful, and Hughes looked like he was in a lot of pain when he was injured, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he sits out at least the first game of the tournament. (feb9)

12. Elias Pettersson has looked like a shell of his former self, and you already know why unless you don’t follow NHL hockey. Crazy thought, but is Pettersson droppable in a shallow league? I’d say wait until after the 4 Nations. Perhaps he has a strong tournament. Maybe the time away from the Canucks gives him the reset he needs. That might be the case for any struggling player on your roster. We might see some interesting trends following the tournament. (feb7)

13. Leon Draisaitl has 83 points on the season, which leads the league, and his 40 goals leads the league by a wide margin (William Nylander, 33). Heading into the Four Nations break, he seems to be the front runner for the Hart Trophy. (feb6)

14. Players go through cold streaks, and it sucks for fantasy managers because these are often productive players who are just killing the week-to-week upside of a fantasy roster. It makes it hard to keep them on rosters, but it’s important to distinguish between “cold streak and playing poorly” and “cold streak and a bit unlucky”. Let’s try to look for some players who’ve not found a lot of success since the Christmas break and whether they can snap out of their funk. (At time of writing:) (feb6)

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15. 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. (feb5)

16. Logan Thompson's record: 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. (feb5)

17. 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. (feb5)

18. 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. (feb5)

19. 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.

Let's look at 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. (At time of writing:)

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. (feb5)

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20. The injuries that the Columbus Blue Jackets have endured to their forward group has been extensive: Boone Jenner hasn’t played all season, Yegor Chinakhov hasn’t played since November, Sean Monahan is coming up on four weeks with his wrist problem, and last Monday it was revealed that breakout star Kirill Marchenko suffered a broken jaw after being hit by a puck while he was on the bench for Sunday’s game against Dallas. With the Four Nations Cup break, it may have come at the best time (if there ever is a good time to break your jaw) to miss the fewest games possible. He had 21 goals and 34 assists in 52.5 games before the injury, and was in a range with Mark Scheifele and Artemi Panarin on a points-per-minute basis. (feb4)

21. I like to check in on role changes from time to time, so let’s use the Ice Time Report over at Frozen Tools to see which players have seen the largest increase in what I call Useful Fantasy Minutes, or even strength and power play, since the Christmas break. It can help us identify players who might be of use down the stretch, especially if they’re on a team that might be looking to trade some key pieces by the Trade Deadline. This is expressed by the percentage of the team’s ice time (%EV and %PP) and, for now, we’re going to exclude players who’ve changed teams. (At time of writing:)

Noah Cates (Philadelphia Flyers)

The biggest riser among all forwards by percentage of even strength and power play time added is Cates, and it’s been across the board. He has climbed from 22% of the even strength time to 26.8% and has had a regular power play role. The overall jump is large.

The Flyers recently traded Morgan Frost and considering Sean Couturier‘s role has been minimized over the last calendar year, Cates sure seems to be the team’s top centre now. In the Flyers’ first game after the Frost trade, Cates skated 20:31, the first time he cracked the 20-minute mark all season. Back in 2022-23, he averaged 17:46 per game and had 38 points in 82 appearances. If he’s anywhere around the 19-minute mark, and skating with Travis Konecny as he did on Sunday (or at least he started the game there), he can easily be a 40-point/82-game player with upside for more. Considering he was averaging over a hit per game while skating under 15 minutes a night, there is some solid multi-cat upside for him, even on a low-scoring team. (feb4)

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Be sure to also grab your copy of the 2024 Dobber Fantasy Hockey Prospects Report!

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Have a good week, folks!

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