With the first round getting closer to being closed out, some of you have pools where you get to replace injured/lost players, or otherwise pick new players for round two (and potentially beyond). Let's dive into how best to do that.

At this point, most of you and your competition have tried focusing in on certain teams. If you're well in the lead, keep with your teams you already have, diversifying too much at this point will likely just guarantee that you get caught by someone who has loaded up on the teams that make it to the finals. Before the halfway mark of the playoffs the best way forward is to just keep plugging along with the teams that you initially hitched your wagon to.

If you're trying to replace players from New Jersey for example, then trying to jump on with the Canes will just put you behind whichever team(s) have those players, and then you're unlikely to catch up. On the flip side, you're also unlikely to win if your initial teams you got behind get eliminated in the second round, so backing them again for another round or two is a necessity of the playoff structure.

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The League's Player Safety branch continues to play dice with the punishment they are doling out, awarding Niko Mikkola a fine for his hit, while Aaron Ekblad gets two games for his flying elbow. Ekblad could now be done for the remainder of the series, and possibly even miss the first game of round two. Adjust accordingly if your playoff pools allow it.

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The NHL Draft Lottery is now officially scheduled for May 5th, though we don’t quite know the time as it will air around one of the Round 2 games. Winning either of the two Lottery jumps this year would be huge for a team, as there are a few players of similar level available to be picked. Any of Matthew Schaefer, Michael Misa, or James Hagens would help change a team’s fortunes. 

From a fantasy perspective there isn’t much to it, though I do find if you tie the standings of your league to the NHL standings, then it makes for a great automatic and unbiased draft lottery for your keeper leagues. 

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The Leafs continued to find new ways to disappoint in the playoffs, but boiling it down it just means they keep losing more than they win. That’s certainly the way it feels this series is going after the Sens skated out of Toronto with a 4-0 win. Linus Ullmark was fantastic for the Sens, and on the other end it begs the question of Joseph Woll, and whether the Leafs make a goaltending change with two tries left to close out the series. I think this is the time to give Woll a try, and if he loses too then you can always finish the series by turning back to Anthony Stolarz for game seven. 

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Pyotr Kochetkov was the story of the first period in the Devils/Hurricanes game, and not in a good way. His lack of consistency was frustrating for the Canes and fantasy managers alike this year. With Frederik Andersen a free agent this summer, some might be going that Kochetkov takes over as the volume starter. However, it’s much more likely that Carolina either brings Andersen back or brings in a replacement that can continue to split starts with Kochetkov. Don’t be in a rush to get excited about his shorter-term outlook. 

Sebastian Aho scored his second of the game in the second overtime period to push the Canes into the second round. They only played five games but their top guys all added quite a few points, so those of us loaded up on Canes are sitting pretty at the moment.

The only period I ended up watching from the game was the second period where five of the nine goals were scored (good timing eh?). It didn't cover Dawson Mercer's goal, or his double-minor in overtime that helped end the game, but I did find he was one of the most noticeable Devils in the middle frame. At 330 career regular season games he's well past his breakout threshold, but I do wonder if there's another offensive gear that we see next season as his comfort level grows. It won't be a huge jump into the 70s or anything, but building off his extra scoring and power play usage in Q4 (mainly because Jack Hughes was out) could give him a bump back into the 50s, nearing his previous career-high of 56.

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A sick Brett Howden scored in overtime against Marc-Andre Fleury who came in for a sick Filip Gustavsson, which gives Fleury's former team the 3-2 edge in the series. Interesting note, Fleury and Howden never overlapped with the Golden Knights, as Fleury left in the summer of 2021, right when Howden was brought in.

Kirill Kaprizov feels unstoppable in the postseason this year. After scoring in only one of the seven regular season games he played in since returning from injury, he now has five goals in five playoff games. Though he needs the rest of the team to pick up some of the scoring slack if they want to come out of this series with Vegas.

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In what might be the most entertaining first-round series so far, game five saw Edmonton again mount a come-back came back again to take a 3-2 lead in the series, and absolutely dominated the Kings by shots, peppering Vezina finalist Darcy Kuemper with 45 shots and only beating him twice. He has fit in well with the Kings and while he does turn 35 this summer, he should still have a couple good years left.

The Oilers had eight different players with a point in the 3-1 win, which is unlike their usual distribution of seemingly half of their goals coming from either Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl.

Evander Kane had one of the goals, and has been a big part of the lineup since returning, with three points in four games to go with 14 SOG and 17 Hits. His minutes have been all over the place, but it can be explained away by getting him re-acclimatized to the lineup. Don't forget about Kane as a top-tier multicat option for next season.

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The Canucks and Rick Tocchet parted ways yesterday in another show that the higher ups in Vancouver don’t seem to have much of a long-term vision. Instead it seems like they’re flying by the seat of their pants, uncertain which start player of theirs is going to be around in a few years and as a result uncertain about which to cater to. 

Tocchet heading elsewhere is not good news for any Canucks who played above their norm last year, as it’s now more likely they come back down. Luckily there weren’t many of them. Really only Kiefer Sherwood and maybe Jake DeBrusk up front that I would expect to drop, while Tyler Myers would be the worry on the back end. 

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Rick Roos' Fearless Forecast Recap column publishes this morning, and his first forecast and review touching on Anze Kopitar's ago and production had me wanting to dive into what we can expect from some other similarly-aged players.

I was expecting to see more of them tail off in the second half, like we did with Kopitar. However, of the group last season who scored at least 54 points and are now at least 33 years old, outside of Kopitar only three of them saw any notable decline in the second half, and two of which are explained away by changes in circumstance (Mats Zuccarello dropping off with Kirill Kaprizov's injury, and Mikael Granlund dropping off after the trade from plum minutes in San Jose to lighter usage in Dallas). That leaves Jonathan Marchessault as the only over-33 player of the higher-scoring group whose

point rate notably dropped in the second half. When there's a singular datapoint that you're looking at, it's an exception and not something we'll learn anything from.

What that means is that the players who are higher-level scorers and still in their mid-30s are able to keep up a pace all season, and still score at solid rates.

Looking at the next group down, those who scored between 40-53 points, there was a much bigger set of the group whose performance went down in the second half. There were still a few players who saw their performance rise, but those were all because of situational changes, such as Taylor Hall getting traded to Carolina and being put in a position to succeed there. Taking out those few names, then number of players who dropped notably compared to those who managed to hold at about their first-half scoring rate was eight to six. That kind of majority is notable with these middle-of-the-lineup players who are getting a little older, as it fits what we would anecdotally expect to see, and be repeatable as well as actionable in future years.

What I'm taking away from this, is that I don't mind going after a Sidney Crosby or Patrick Kane at the trade deadline in future years, but the likes of Jason Zucker, Evgeni Dadonov, and Anders Lee are the types of older guys who I am going to leave alone.

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See you next Wednesday, and if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments you can find me on BlueSky @alexdmaclean, as that's now my primary platform.