Morgan Geekie continues to chug along and ranks second in the league in goals after scoring his 23^rd and 24^th goals of the season last night. He's also ranked 39^th in the league in shots, which then had me look into whether he was the top player in the league for save percentage. If you take out anyone with a tiny sample size of less than 10 shots, then the top three players in the league by shooting percentage are all Boston Bruins – and none of them are David Pastrnak. Alex Steeves and Casey Mittelstadt are at seven and eight goals respectively on the season, and neither has more than 27 shots, putting them both in Geekie's territory, with all three of them at or above 26.9%.

I'm not sure if there's something to link that with all three Bruins, be it a system thing, or just some bad stat trackers in the building. Geekie seems to be here to stay with the NHL goal scoring elite though.

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In a game that saw both starting goalies wearing helmets of the opponents colours, the biggest milestone for the Oilers versus the Penguins was Leon Draisaitl notching point #1000 with an assist on Zach Hyman's tally. Then 24 seconds later, he started on the road to the 2000-point mark, assisting on Connor McDavid's tally.

Neither Stuart Skinner and Tristan Jarry was especially strong, but it did look last night like Edmonton managed to pick the right goalie. Jarry earned the win despite allowing four goals, while the Oilers scored five times on their former mate Skinner. McDavid and Draisaitl did the most damage, with four points each. After a slow start, Zach Hyman is now keeping up with them, and add two points himself to bring him to 11 points in his last nine games.

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Rasmus Ristolainen threw his weight around with multiple open-ice hits in his first game of the season. He has missed a lot of time over the last few seasons because of injury, and that will likely take the edge off of his peripherals volume over the course of the season. However, like most players, an initial burst of Hits and maybe SOGs is something we are more likely to see because of the adrenaline compared to everyone else who is already into the mid-season "lull". He finished the night with a plus-two rating, one SOG, three Hits, and two blocks.

Meanwhile, Jacob Fowler started another game for the Canadiens, and across those three starts this week he has allowed 11 goals, and won once. He may be the future in net, but he's not necessarily the answer for the present.

Neither apparently is Sam Montembeault, who will be spending the next couple of games in the AHL on a conditioning stint. I would expect Jakub Dobes to draw the next start, which is a softer start against a Connor Bedard-less Blackhawks team on Thursday.

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Zach Werenski scored two goals last night, bringing him up and over a 25-goal pace on the season. The last defenceman in the non-Cale Makar tier to pass 25 goals was Brent Burns with 29 in the 2016-2017 season. He also added an assist on Adam Fantilli’s beautiful OT winner.

Mikael Granlund scored a goal and added an assist for his first points in seven games since returning from an injury. He has been playing third-line minutes now that Beckett Sennecke has moved up to a full-time spot on the second line.

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Igor Chernyshov made his NHL debut for the Sharks on the top line with Macklin Celebrini, and recorded one assist in 12 minutes of ice time. He's certainty someone that's worth keeping an eye on, especially while playing with Celebrini, who had four points himself last night in order to jump into a tier with Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid as the only three players who have reached 50 points at this stage in the season.

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Anthony Stolarz is apparently seeing a specialist for his upper body injury, which is not healing at the rate that the player or team was hoping.

That means we're going to be seeing a longer run from the Joseph Woll and Dennis Hildeby tandem. They have both been playing well of late, and despite a sub-standard start from Woll last night, he settled in to stonewall the Hawks in the second half and earn the win. He's still going to get the majority of the starts, despite Hildeby's nearly equivalent numbers on the year.

It was also announced that the voice of the Leafs since 1982, Joe Bowen, is going to be retiring at the end of the season. He is the voice of 100 great childhood memories of mine, listening to Leafs games in the car with my dad, usually on the way home from my own hockey games. All the best in retirement Joe.

The Leafs managed a late rally over Spencer Knight and the Blackhawks, knocking him outside of the top-10 in league save percentage.

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One of the most productive AHLers this season has been Grand Rapids' John Leonard, who has put up 19 goals and 29 points in 20 AHL games. In the wake of Patrick Kane's injury, Leonard has been called up to fill a scoring role on the second line. No points in his first game in two seasons, but his line with Alex DeBrincat did dominate the shot share.

With Emmitt Finnie fading after a hot start, and no one else grabbing the LW role on the top line, there is a chance that Leonard could stick even after Kane's return, and hold a spot in the top six.

The Red Wings also lost winger Jonatan Berggren on waivers to St. Louis yesterday. The Blues have been hit with multiple injuries of late, especially on the left side, so there's some room for Berggren to make an impact.

They won where it counted on the day though, taking home the OT win over the Islanders with DeBrincat's second goal of the game. Lucas Raymond led the way with three assists, putting him on pace for a 95-point season. It also appears I may have been wrong on John Gibson, who has been excellent since I noted two weeks ago that it was probably time to drop him – unfortunately we can't be right all the time.

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A league mate of mine was asking me whether I believed in the recent stretch of scoring we're seeing from Luke Evangelista. I took one look at his Frozentools page, and the answer was a resounding "yes". As soon as you open his page, the red marker for his career GP number being at his breakout threshold (BT) catches your eye. Then a quick glance over to see that yes his ice time is tracking upwards, his shooting percentage isn't overly high (it's too low actually), and it's easy to say on the surface that the 13 points in his last 11 games is a sign of a breakout and not just some crazy hot streak.

Looking under the hood, you see that his underlying numbers are all indicative of someone who isn't being inflated by luck, and there's even more room to grow, so he's not capped out either. He's not exactly someone that his owners will be looking to sell low on, but he's a great option to try and buy in on now while the breakout is still masked by some previous struggles, and by the overall ineptitude of the Nashville offence.

With that in mind, I wanted to look at a few other names who could be worth checking in on as they hit/approach in-season breakout thresholds, and aren't already viewed as top-of-the-lineup type players.

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Bobby McMann is someone I have been trying to acquire in my cap league dynasty, as he has a safe floor, and a low cap hit. We're seeing some streakiness from him with three successive multi-point games followed by a few pointless outings, and he is still 30 games away from his BT. There is room up the lineup in Toronto with all the injuries, line juggling, and overall lack of success that they have seen in the standings to this point. He's a buy-now in hopes of him putting it together for the last 20-30 games of the year, where there is likely some added value for H2H playoffs and such.

Bobby Brink is similar to McMann as he still has more than 20 games to go until his BT, but he's also in a strange situation where, despite the Flyers losing Tyson Foerster to an injury, Brink's ice time has actually dropped from Q1 to Q2, and his power play usage has dried up as well. If the usage was to reverse in the second half, and he could keep up his (to this point sustainable) even strength scoring, then that could be the 20% jump in scoring that we're looking at right there. There's pedigree, upside, and opportunity here.

Ridly Greig is a bit of a different case, as this year his numbers have actually been the lowest of his career, as he's pacing for under 30 points. However, he's been extremely unlucky, shooting under five percent, and not having his teammates score as much with him on the ice. He's right at his 200-game threshold, and has one point in his first eight games back after returning from an injury. He's more of a buy-low than the others, but in the end his upside may be similar with one or more 50+ point seasons to come. Greig also does offer more peripherals than the others, and his acquisition cost might be the lowest of this group.

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Connor Ingram's chance at seeing a role with the Oilers by the end of the year took a big hit with the Jarry trade, as Jarry will now have a lot more runway than Skinner would have been given the rest of the way. On top of that, Ingram is allowing over four goals per game in the AHL, so it's not as though his play is forcing the issue. I had been holding him in an NA spot in one league, but as soon as I have a spare weekly add to burn and fill my NA spot with someone else, he'll be back on the waiver wire.

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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.