Jakob Chychrun signed a big eight-year extension worth $9 million per season, which sets the Capitals up well for next season, and gives Chychrun the big payday he's been looking for. The Capitals will have about $11 million for their final three-to-five roster spots

Also, Chychrun did play last night after being questionable due to a skate cut to his wrist during Saturday's game. He picked up an assist to keep the excellent season going, and we're all hoping the contact doesn't cause him to take his foot off the gas.

Over the course of the season, we have seen teammate John Carlson's TOI numbers drop, and his PP ice time has been halved in Q4 compared to the rest of the season. There's a world in which Chychrun takes over the top power play full-time in the fall of 2025, but it might be more likely a fall of 2026 occurrence when Carlson is a free agent, and at 36 years old at that point, he would likely end up elsewhere.

In other Caps news, you can expect to see a few key players outside of Alex Ovechkin rest over the final few weeks. Ovie meanwhile did score last night to shorten the record chase to only six more goals.

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Marc-Andre Fleury made a "revenge" start against his former team, with the Golden Knights eventually taking the win because it's almost impossible for the Wild to create offence without Kirill Kaprizov.

This could be one of Fleury's last games as Filip Gustavsson has been stealing the reins with his excellent play, and the Wild are pressing hard to make it into the playoffs after a lackluster stretch of games the last month.

Let's just take a moment to appreciate what Fleury has done throughout his career of over 1000 games. He's second all-time in goalie wins, tied for 10^th in shutouts, three Stanley Cups, an Olympic Gold, and most of all, seemingly the most beloved teammate ever. Plus, he's still helping out fantasy teams at 40-years-old.

On the Vegas side, Shea Theodore returned last night and immediately notched an assist on the opening goal. He also took back the top power play unit, so if you’re looking for power play points as a Noah Hanifin owner, then you might want to have a backup option at the ready. 

Alex Pietrangelo was surprisingly the Dman who came out of the lineup with a lower-body-injury. Hopefully we get some news today. 

Tomas Hertl remains out as well, which means Victor Olofsson and Tanner Pearson are likely back in the lineup full time as long as that continues.

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The Cap league rankings were posted yesterday, and you can find them here.

The goalie rankings will be out today, so check back into the main site for those.

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With a 6-1 drubbing of the Penguins, the Lightning have found their groove at the right time, and they now lead the Atlantic division. On top of that, they may be the best pick for the team coming out of the East in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

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The Flyers are as tired as you are of trying to figure out which of their defensemen can get them some power play scoring, so they decided to just scrap the idea and run with five forwards for now.

In theory, it makes both Sean Couturier and Bobby Brink reasonable streams for deeper leagues, as the top power play exposure has been inconsistent through the year for both. Philly has a bottom-three power play, so anything is worth a shot for them at this point. However, the Philly power play hasn't scored in the month of March, so take that with a grain of salt.

On the whole, the Flyers might be the team that I’m most comfortable starting my goalies against at the moment. 

With that point made, we look at the average penalty kill, the putrid power play, and the inconsistent 5on5 numbers, and we start to wonder whether John Tortorella is going to be shown the door in the summer. He doesn't seem to fit the roster that has been put together, and that has led to a lot of ill-will from fans, and hand-wringing from fantasy managers about owning Flyers. If he does leave, then everyone gets an immediate (at least perceived) boost.

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I had a blurb all written out about Petr Mrazek's value the rest of the way, but he's going to be out for a little while which just neuters his value and makes anything I had to say obsolete. What it does change though, is that after the trade some managers may have dropped Alex Lyon and Cam Talbot, meaning there could be some goalie volume available on your waiver wire. I filled my Mrazek lineup spot with Cam Talbot yesterday afternoon, and then when Cam Talbot was noted as "out" for the game last night, I had to pick up Lyon as well just to get the start. After playing nearly a full game last night, it's tough to blame Lyon for the loss.

With the Red Wings playing meaningful games every night now, Lyon will be ridden as long as the other two are out, giving him a lot of volume value.

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Back before the 2021 draft, there was a public scout I was having a chat with (and I wish I could remember who it actually was) and I asked a bit of a throwaway question at the end, something along the lines of "which players would you be targeting for fantasy leagues ahead of their consensus ranking?". While I wish he had put me onto Wyatt Johnston, we can't always have the diamond in the rough handed to us. Instead, he named two players that I have kept my eye on ever since: Ville Koivunen and Artyon Martino. Koivunen developed well overseas, and has acclimatized very well in the AHL, as nearly a point-per-game player in his first year. He's perhaps best known for being the main prospect in the Jake Guentzel to Carolina trade, and he should be squarely on fantasy radars as someone that could contribute for the Pens in a full-time role next season.

However, it's actually Martino that I wanted to mention today, as he just signed his ELC with the Stars after his NCAA season ended a few days ago. His PNHLe out of the USHL in his draft year showed that he had the ultimate upside to be a top-line winger if he developed well. In the four years since at Clarkson University, Martino has slowly upped his scoring rate to the 51 points in 39 games he finished with this year, making him only one of seven players to accomplish the feat this season.

Now he's likely going to the AHL to see some games with the top team in the Central Division. He isn't needed yet at the NHL level, and could still use a little seasoning, but that works out well timing-wise, as over the next two years the Stars have five of their top-nine forwards coming up to free agency. That's on top of Thomas Harley only having two years left. There's going to be room for Mavrik Bourque and a couple others to make inroads into the big scoring minutes over the next couple years, and I like Martino as one of those still-under-the-radar prospects in dynasty leagues, that could pay some handsome dividends now that most of the wait time is gone.

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I know that I focus a lot more about H2H leagues or just pure point scorers than I do on Roto (Rotisserie) leagues. Maybe that's something I'll try to adjust a little, but for now we'll cover a couple of Roto thoughts to help you close out the year.

For those that don't know the difference, or the rules of one vs the other, here's a breakdown on H2H vs Roto.

I think part of why I cover Roto less, is because it feels like there's less day-to-day management and streaming. Get the best stat accumulators on your team, and then it's just set-and-forget.

In reality though, there's much more finesse to Roto, and if you have a smart league that you're playing with it can be a lot more competitive and interesting. I play in one yearly redraft Roto league with some of the best fantasy hockey opponents I have found, and it's a slog every year to even finish in the top half.

This year though I had a breakthrough (and a lot of good luck). Early in the year, between Kirill Kaprizov, Cale Makar, Jack Eichel, Lucas Raymond, Nikolas Ehlers, Martin Necas, and others, I had built an enormous lead in the scoring categories (it was something ridiculous along the lines of my roster hitting 600 accumulated points before any other team hit about 480) but was lacking in both peripherals and goaltending. My team was sitting within comfortable reach of a podium slot, bouncing between second and fifth depending on the day. I could have coasted away with points and tried to chip away at the peripherals, but the best approach ended up being to attack where I could gain the most points over the latter two-thirds of the season and end up giving up a lot of my lead in points.

At this point, with three weeks left in the season my team can now coast to the end as I'm sitting pretty with a huge lead over second place. That involved moving out three of those top six scorers mentioned above in order to bring in Brady Tkachuk and Pyotr Kochetkov, with a few other depth scorers moved for Darnell Nurse. My team is now not leading any single category, but across the board there are only two skater categories where I am not top-three (points where I'm fourth, and blocks where I'm sixth).

With Roto, the strategy isn't having the best players, the best team, or sitting on a good team and coasting to the end. It's about finding the right combination of players to be able to compete enough in every category. It's about the last place team still being able to strike a hit against the top team on the last day of the season by chasing them down in a specific category or two. There's always ground to be made up, and if every team is chasing down the top team in specific categories it's much easier to pull off a late season jump up the standings than other leagues.

At this point in the season I'm considering dropping some more single dimensional but still productive players in order to close off being chased down in specific categories like Hits and PPPs. I'm also trying to build up a few extra man games so that I can use the Yahoo Roto GP glitch, which feels like it's just part of Roto now instead of a "glitch".

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For any of you relying on Jason Dickinson for faceoff wins and maybe hits, then you'll have to find another source as Dickinson will miss the remainder of the season with a wrist injury. Big opportunity for Frank Nazar to stick on the top line.  

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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, as that's now my primary platform.