Ahead of their game on Monday night in Philadelphia, the Nashville Predators announced forwards Jonathan Marchessault and Colton Sissons are day-to-day and week-to-week, respectively, according to the team. While it certainly looks as if Marchessault shouldn't be out too long, we are at the point of the season where a 'week-to-week' designation could mean the end of the season for someone. We will keep readers posted on Sissons' status.

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It is college prospect signing season, and Ryan Leonard was signed by the Washington Capitals on Monday:

As expected, Capitals announce they've signed forward Ryan Leonard to a three-year entry-level contract.

Leonard 's contract will carry an average annual value of $950,000.

— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) March 31, 2025

Leonard has 61 goals in 78 games across his last two seasons with Boston College and is now on his way to the NHL. We will see how/when they decide to use him, but this is the top team in the Eastern Conference that has been fairly consistent with which forwards are used on the top two lines. It would be surprising if Leonard can earn a regular top-6 role, so just beware of his usage here.

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On the topic of college signees, St. Louis prospect Jimmy Snuggerud was lines up on the team's second power-play unit in Monday's practice:

Blues power play units:
Neighbours
Thomas-Bolduc-Buchnevich
Fowler

Schenn
Kyrou-Snuggerud-Holloway
Faulk

— Matthew DeFranks (@MDeFranks) March 31, 2025

Snuggerud was also skating on the third line with Oskar Sundqvist so he's getting a fair chance to make an impact for a team that is steamrolling its way to the playoffs.

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One last one as Gabe Perreault was signed by the New York Rangers. While things can change, he may be in the lineup as soon as Tuesday night when the Rangers host the Minnesota Wild.

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A positive update on Boston defenceman Charlie McAvoy:

Charlie McAvoy is practicing in a regular jersey. Still no Mark Kastelic. https://t.co/0YoMPdeUxZ

— Scott McLaughlin (@smclaughlin9) March 31, 2025

There is no timeline for a return but a good sign as McAvoy looks to return from that brutal shoulder injury/infection.

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Still not much on New Jersey centre Cody Glass:

#NJDevils Cody Glass is not on the ice. He missed the team's entire three-game road trip.

Luke Hughes is not out there, either.

— Kristy Flannery (@InStilettos_NHL) March 31, 2025

Times are lean in the fantasy game and losing him for an extended absence likely has hurt some fantasy rosters. We will update his status when there is more to know.

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San Jose sent defenceman Luca Cagnoni back to the AHL. It was good for him to get a bit of NHL experience but things hadn't really gone to plan and there's no need for him to get run over night after night for the final couple weeks. It will be interesting to see what his role is in September.

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Matvei Michkov continued his hot streak on Monday night in Philadelphia's 2-1 home win against Nashville. Michkov had a pair of assists on goals from Ryan Poehling and Jamie Drysdale, adding two shots on goal along the way. That makes 10 goals, 14 assists, and 77 shots in his last 21 games. It seems very likely he breaks the 60-point mark (he sits at 58 now) and these last few weeks have taken a couple rounds off his eventual ADP in September.

Travis Sanheim had a solid multi-cat night with two shots, four blocks, two PIMs, and two hits while goaltender Ivan Fedotov stopped 28 of 29 shots in the win.

Zachary L'Heureux scored the only goal for Nashville.

Justus Annunen allowed two goals on 18 shots to take the loss.

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Luke Hughes had a goal and an assist on Monday night as New Jersey hosted Minnesota in a 3-2 shootout win. That gives Hughes two goals and 15 points in 13 games since Dougie Hamilton was injured, and that's a nice preview of what's to come next season when he has the top power-play role all year.

Nico Hischier had the other goal for the Devils, totaling two shots, a block, and three hits in the game. Hischier already has a career-high 34 goals and now needs just three more blocks for a career-high in that respect, too.

Jacob Markstrom stopped 27 of 29 shots faced, including both in the shootout, for his 25^th win of the season.

Matt Boldy and Vinnie Hinostroza had the goals for the Wild. Boldy racked up three blocks and a hit along with the goal, giving him 249 shots and 62 blocks in 75 games. The goal-scoring hasn't been as fantasy managers hoped for but the peripherals have largely been solid.

Filip Gustavsson allowed just two goals on 28 shots but allowed both shots he faced in the shootout to take the loss.

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The Calgary Flames had a big win on Monday night, erasing a 2-0 deficit with 10 minutes left in the game to tie things up 2-2 before winning in a shootout. This was thanks to a rarely-used fourth line that registered both goals, one from Ryan Lomberg and one from Adam Klapka (and they each had an assist on the other's goal). It was just their second and third goals of the season, respectively, but it the reason the team skated away with two points in a game they should have none, and keeps the Flames nominally in the playoff race.

Mackenzie Weegar also had an assist with two shots, four blocks, and six hits in a massive multi-cat night.

Dan Vladar stopped 28 of 30 shots, including all three in the shootout, for the win.

Cale Makar and Logan O'Connor scored the goals for the Avalanche as Makar finished with four shots, a block, and a hit in nearly 28 minutes of ice time. He has 28 goals on the season, tying his career-high from 2021-22, and has a real chance at being the first defenceman with a 30-goal season since Mike Green in 2008-09.

Scott Wedgewood allowed two goals on 27 shots, and one in the shootout, for the loss.

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Dallas took care of business in Seattle with a 3-1 road win. Mikael Granlund (20^th) and Wyatt Johnston (30^th) hit milestone marks for goals scored on the season while Matt Duchene tallied his 29^th of the campaign. One more goal gives Duchene his fourth career 30-goal season and his first since 2021-22.

Mason Marchment had a pair of assists, three shots, and two PIMs in the win, and Esa Lindell had a pair of assists as well.

Casey DeSmith was stellar again in net for Dallas, stopping 35 of 36 shots for his 14^th win of the season in just 21 starts. Among goalies with at least 20 starts this season, DeSmith is fourth by wins per start (0.667), trailing only Connor Hellebuyck (.768), Logan Thompson (.756), and Calvin Pickard (.72).

Kaapo Kakko scored the lone goal for the Kraken. He now has 10 goals in his 42 games with Seattle.

Philipp Grubauer took the loss, allowing two goals on 30 shots.

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We see it every year: Teams on the verge of a playoff position falter down the stretch and hobble into the postseason while others show very strong play over the final quarter of the season and look to be unstoppable. The question is how much it actually matters when the playoffs roll around. Let's look into that with an eye on fantasy hockey playoff drafts.

We are going to look at the previous three playoffs only. It cuts the sample down, but the prior two seasons/playoffs were greatly affected by COVID and going back to 2018-19 at this point feels like a different sport entirely. We are going to see which playoff teams slowed down late in the season, which surged, and how they fared. We are going to use a cut-off of around 60 games played for each team and data is from Natural Stat Trick.

The Declines

In the three recent postseasons, there were six instances of a team seeing their points percentage drop by at least 0.1 over the final quarter:

Oddly enough, all six of those teams were from the Eastern Conference, but that aside, the playoff results were still pretty good: Last year, the Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup; in 2022-23, the Tampa Bay Lightning were knocked out in the first round but the Carolina Hurricanes made it to the Eastern Conference Final; in 2021-22, the Pittsburgh Penguins were also knocked out in the first round while the Lightning made it to the Stanley Cup Final. In all, these six teams combined for one Cup win, two Cup Final appearances, and three Conference Final appearances. All else equal, the chances of a team doing any of those three things in a given year are 1/16, 1/8, and 1/4, so these teams with huge late-season declines fared much better.

Of course, not all else is equal. The thing to remember here is that if a team has a significant points% drop down the stretch and still makes the playoffs, then they were a really, really good team for the first 60 games of the season. If they weren't, that late-season decline would have likely pushed them out of a postseason appearance.

There are always exigent circumstances. For this season, the New Jersey Devils are on a late-season slide, but it's also because of injuries to Jack Hughes, Dougie Hamilton, and Jonas Siegenthaler. It isn't quite the same as a mostly-healthy team just going through a downturn. Keep that in mind when looking through Washington Capitals or Edmonton Oilers skaters for your playoff pools.

The Improvements

There are a lot more risers than drops in those three seasons so we're going to look at the very top. Here are the seven teams with the largest increase in points percentage over the final stretch run of their respective regular season from 2021-2024:

Out of those seven teams, there is one Cup winner (2022-23 Vegas Golden Knights), two Cup Finalists (Vegas and the 2022-23 Florida Panthers), four Conference Finalists (those two teams, the 2023-24 Dallas Stars, and the 2021-22 Edmonton Oilers), while two teams were knocked out in the first round (2021-22 Minnesota Wild and Toronto Maple Leafs). In all, over half the teams made it at least to the Conference Final.

A few notes on these teams.

The 2023-24 Dallas Stars had a brutal stretch to even get to the Conference Final, starting with a first-round matchup against a Vegas team that added Tomas Hertl and Noah Hanifin at the Trade Deadline and then Mark Stone returning from injury. Then they faced Colorado in the second round. Those poor Stars.  

That 2022-23 Vegas roster lost Stone to injury in mid-January but he made it back to the lineup for the first game of the postseason. Getting hot down the stretch seems to be a good thing; adding a top-10 winger for a playoff run also helps.

In all, these teams that saw big improvements down the stretch fared very well in the postseason with over half the teams (4/7) at least getting to the Conference Final. In fact, if we expand to the top-10 largest late-season improvements, we include the 2022-23 Dallas team that made it to the Western Final. So, even the 10 teams with the largest improvements saw half of them win at least two rounds, and the 10 teams averaged 7.2 wins each.

This isn't rigorous mathematics; it is just to demonstrate that we should keep in mind that teams faltering down the stretch were likely excellent teams for most of the season anyway. At the other end, getting hot at the right time can help with a deep run. We will see how the next couple of weeks go, but as of right now, St. Louis and Ottawa might be Cinderella targets as we get to the postseason.