Nashville Predators reporter Alex Daugherty had video of defenceman Roman Josi participating in team practice on Wednesday following their return from Europe. Josi has missed four weeks with an upper-body injury but indications are that he may be ready to go in the next few days, if not next week. A great sign for a guy who has had some injury trouble over the last couple of seasons.

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The Florida Panthers announced that forward Eetu Luostarainen is going to miss some time due to burns suffered during a BBQ accident. Hopefully this is nothing too serious, though it's a bit absurd that he and Jack Hughes both suffered freak off-ice injuries within a week of each other.

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Edmonton forward Zach Hyman was down on the third line to start the team's game in Washington on Wednesday night, though this was something they often did last year. To me, it's about getting Hyman up to speed following his return while also giving the bottom-6 forwards a bit of a boost.

Washington absolutely put the boots to Edmonton in that game by a 7-4 margin. Both Ryan Leonard and Tom Wilson had a pair of goals while Alex Ovechkin, Anthony Beauvillier, and Aliaksei Protas scored once. Wilson finished with three blocks, two PIMs, and four hits in another great multi-cat night from him

John Carlson posted three assist while Jakob Chychrun had a pair of helpers in the win. Chychrun also had three blocks and a hit to go along with it.

Logan Thompson allowed four goals on 30 shots but it was enough for the win.

Leon Draisaitl posted a goal (PP) and an assist, Darnell Nurse scored twice, and the fourth goal was registered by David Tomasek. Nurse ended the game with four shots and a block and now has as many goals (5) as he did all of last year. He is also up to 133 total shots, hits, and blocks in 22 games played.

Stuart Skinner allowed five goals on 19 shots. His save percentage this season is down to .881.

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Calgary went into Buffalo on Wednesday night and absolutely crushed them by a 6-2 score. Joel Farabee scored twice, Matt Coronato and Morgan Frost each managed a goal and an assist, and Mikael Backlund also scored in the win. Coronato now has four goals, seven points, and 38 shots in his last eight games.

Rasmus Andersson wound up with a goal, two assists, three shots, and three blocks in the win. He has seven points, 15 shots, and 12 blocks in his last five games.

Devin Cooley held the Sabres to two goals on 30 shots in the win.

Mattias Samuelsson had a multi-point night with a goal and an assist while Tage Thompson scored his 10^th goal of the year. Goaltender Colten Ellis gave up six goals on 35 shots.

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Carolina fought back from a 3-1 deficit with under 14 minutes remaining to tie their game in Minnesota 3-3, but the Wild were able to take the extra point in the shootout, escaping with the 4-3 win.

Mats Zuccarello had a good fantasy night with a goal, an assist, two shots, and two PIMs while Matt Boldy and Brock Faber also scored.

Jesper Wallstedt had a great performance for the Wild with 42 saves on 45 shots for the win. He may have just wrested the starter's job from Filip Gustavsson.

Jackson Blake scored twice for the Hurricanes while Sebastian Aho scored one on five shots with a hit. Goalie Frederik Andersen gave up three goals on 18 shots for the loss.

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Anaheim's depth was their key to success on Wednesday night as goals from Jansen Harkins, Ryan Strome, Ian Moore, and Radko Gudas lifted them to a 4-3 win over Boston. Harkins also had four blocks, two PIMs, and four hits in a great multi-cat effort.

Mason McTavish tallied a pair of assists with one shot in 17:27 of ice time. That is a six-game high in TOI for McTavish, so maybe he's working his way out of the Ducks' doghouse.

Lukas Dostal had a great performance with 36 saves on 39 shots for his 10^th win, just the second goalie this year to reach 10 wins (Scott Wedgewood, 11).

Morgan Geekie scored twice on the power play while Mikey Eyssimont scored his fifth goal of the year. Geekie finished with three shots and seven hits, and he's up to 14 goals on 56 shots with 39 hits in 22 games. That is a great start to his multi-cat fantasy season.

Joonas Korpisalo took the loss with four goals against on 33 shots.

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At the end of October, these Ramblings covered declining fantasy production from defencemen last season and to start this season. It was an effort to look at how fantasy production has been changing, where the points and shots are going, and how it can inform our valuations of fantasy blue liners. 

Digging around a bit of data on Wednesday (data from Evolving Hockey and current as of the morning of Wednesday, November 19^th), something curious popped up. It was the fact that defencemen were assisting on a lot of goals. In fact, so far this season, defencemen are assisting on 31.1% of the goals scored with them on the ice, the highest mark in the last five years:

Of course, we're not quite at 25% of the way through the season, so this will change, but being able to assist on just 1% more goals throughout an entire season would mean somewhere roughly 125-150 extra assists from defencemen in the NHL when compared to last year's assist percentage. That depends on where goal scoring goes from here, but it gives us a rough idea of what might be coming for blue liners.

On top of that, this season has 24 rearguards who have assisted on at least half the goals scored when they're on the ice. When looking at defencemen from each of the last three seasons grouped by percentage of goals they've assisted on, the upper end of defencemen is clearing the previous two years:

See the bars on the right, the ones with the blue boxes poking out the top? That is because the number of defencemen at the high end by percentage of goals they've assisted on is higher than either of the last two years. Notably, to the left, the bars with the orange/brown poking out the top is the 2024-25 campaign, which has a higher count than this year or two seasons ago.

Being that it's still so early in the season, we're not drawing any conclusions off this just yet. There are still a handful of defencemen with a high assist percentage who've played fewer than 10 games – injuries or scratches – so we need a bigger sample before saying there's been some sort of trend league-wide, but it's something to keep in mind as we evaluate defencemen for the rest of the year.

There are three defencemen I want to highlight, though, because they are assisting on way more goals than they usually do, and that should be a concern.

Rasmus Dahlin

In Dahlin's prior four years, he assisted somewhere between 35% and 45% of the goals scored when he was on the ice – there is a reason he cracked the 50-assist mark twice in the last three years. The problem here is that so far this season, he's assisting on 60% of the goals scored with him on the ice (the highest dot):

This is a bit of a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is that he won't stay at a 60% assist rate. For some context, in Erik Karlsson's 76-assist season in 2022-23, he had an assist on 50.7% of the goals scored while he was on the ice. Dahlin staying at 60% seems very improbable.

The good news is that there is potential for positive regression in other areas. For one, he's shooting 2.4% where he shot between 7.4-8.5% in each of the prior four seasons, so he can make up some of the assist drop by just scoring more. The other area is the team is shooting just 8.6% with him on the ice, and he's been between 8.8-12.2% in each of the prior four seasons. Maybe he has a down year and it hovers around 9%, or maybe things get way better and is in the 11-12% range the rest of the way. Regardless, the team should be scoring more, and an uptick in that area should also help soften the inevitable decline in assist percentage.

Victor Hedman

Another defenceman whose assist percentage has been between 35-45% for each of the prior four seasons is Hedman. Like Dahlin, it can vary, but Hedman averaged 57 assists every 82 games over the prior four campaigns and cracked the 60-assist mark twice. The bad news is that, again like Dahlin, Hedman's assist percentage this season is far higher than normal (again the very top dot):

Another reason this is a huge problem is his ice time, which is the lowest of the five seasons in this sample. In fact, he has reached the 25-minute mark in a game just twice in 15 games (13.3% of his games) compared to 29 times in 72 games, or 37.2% of the time, in the 2023-24 season. Not only is he due for some assist regression, but he's been getting less ice time than at any point in the last decade.

With Hedman missing games with some lingering injury issues, a drop in ice time, and assist regression on the horizon, the rest of his season doesn't look so rosy. He won't be awful or anything, but he turns 35 years old next month and the Lightning need him healthy for the playoffs, not for January.

Thomas Harley

Speaking of injuries, Harley has landed on the injured reserve and when looking at some of his underlying numbers, he may have been playing injured for several weeks now. His on-ice impact had dropped from one of the best in the league to one of the worst, so hopefully he can recover from whatever is ailing and come back looking like the guy he had been the prior three years.

He will need to be that guy, too, to support his fantasy value. It doesn't seem as if Miro Heiskanen is letting go of that top PP role anytime soon and Harley's assist percentage is over 57%:

Considering Harley has never had a season of at least 35%, the fact that he's well over 55% is a concern. If he can return from the injured reserve as the player we know he can be, an uptick in his play-driving can help soften the landing here, but it seems very unlikely he's a guy who will post an assist every two games whenever he does come back.