The Washington Capitals have called up prospect Ilya Protas from the AHL. The third-round pick from 2024 leads AHL rookies in scoring this season with 62 points in 66 games. He is being thrown right into the fire of a playoff chase with just over a week left in the season, but we've just seen Porter Martone succeed in the same situation.

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Both Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli were absent from Tampa Bay's lineup on Monday night. That makes three straight games for Hagel as the Lightning are clearly prioritizing a fully healthy (or as close as possible) lineup over a division title.

Tampa Bay lost that game Monday in Buffalo as the Sabres earned a 4-2 win. Jason Zucker scored once on four shots while Jack Quinn added a goal of his own. Quinn now has 8 goals, 12 assists, and 79 shots in his last 27 games.

With a pair of assists, Bowen Byram now has 41 points on the season, giving him his first career 40-point seasons. Knock on wood, but he has also played all 78 games so far this season after playing all 82 games last season. For a player with a brutal injury history, that is a great sign.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stopped 23 of 25 shots in the win, his 20^th of the season. That makes three straight seasons with at least 20 wins, and of 38 goalies with at least 30 starts this season, he is fifth by save percentage at .910.

Jake Guentzel managed a goal and an assist in the loss, and he needs three more goals for his second career 40-40 season.

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A trio of power play goals from Jonathan Toews, Gabriel Vilardi, and Kyle Connor lifted the Winnipeg Jets to a 6-2 win over Seattle. Connor scored again in the third period, and he needs one point to reach 90 for the second straight season and two more goals to reach 40 for the second straight season.

Toews and Vilardi each had a goal and an assist while Mark Scheifele totaled a trio of helpers. Scheifele needs three more points for his first career 100-point season.

Philipp Grubauer started for the Kraken and left the game during the second period with an injury. With nine days left in the regular season, it might be Joey Daccord's net from here on out.

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William Eklund posted a goal and an assist as the San Jose Sharks managed a much-needed win over the Chicago Blackhawks by a 3-2 margin. That leaves Eklund two points shy of a 50-point season.

Alex Nedeljkovic was stellar in net for the Sharks, stopping 27 of 29 pucks sent his way.

Frank Nazar had a goal, an assist, six shots, and a block in the loss. He has 17 points in his last 18 games.

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Los Angeles managed a 3-2 shootout win over Nashville on Monday night as their third-line duo of Scott Laughton and Joel Armia scored both goals. Laughton now has five goals in 16 games with the Kings after scoring just 10 goals in 63 games with Toronto across the last two seasons.

Anton Forsberg was great in net again for the Kings, stopped 29 of 31 shots, and all three faced in the shootout. Going back to Christmas, he has a .909 save percentage in 15 starts compared to Darcy Kuemper's .870 save percentage in 26 starts.

Roman Josi posted a goal and an assist in the loss. That gives him his eighth career season with at least 10 goals and 40 assists.

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There were only four games on Monday night, and there are just 10 days left in the regular season, so now is a good time to get a head start on looking towards the playoffs. Let's do a little playoff preview and start with the first four teams that qualified for the postseason: Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, and Minnesota Wild.

Data is from Hockey Reference, Evolving Hockey, Natural Stat Trick, and Frozen Tools. All is current as of the morning of Monday, April 6^th.

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For much more in-depth playoff information, head to the Dobber Shop and grab a copy of the 2026 Dobber Hockey Interactive Playoff Draft List!

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Carolina Hurricanes

There is one thing that should be known about the Hurricanes: relative to their games against fellow members of the Metro Division, they struggled against the Atlantic this season:

An .800 points percentage is a 131-point pace, and a .59 points percentage is a 94-point pace. If Carolina played all their games against the Metro, they might be the best regular season team of all time. If Carolina played all their games against the Atlantic, and the rest division performs as they have this season, Carolina wouldn't make the playoffs. Their games against Montreal skew things (three losses, minus-7 goal differential), but the same could be said for their games against New Jersey (four wins, plus-11 goal differential).

That is notable because there is a decent chance that two teams from the Atlantic – two of Boston, Ottawa, or Detroit – are the two wild card teams, and an opponent in the first round for Carolina. The Hurricanes have gone 5-2-1 against those teams, but did not fare so well against Boston, so they could be in tough in their first-round matchup.

All the same, Carolina is fourth in goals-for per game this season and are a near-lock have home ice at least until the Eastern Conference Final. They are the second-highest scoring home team in the league, trailing only Colorado, so that's a good thing for them.

The downside for Carolina's fantasy playoff value is that scoring is very spread out among the team. They have five 20-goal scorers (Jordan Staal has 19 and Logan Stankoven has 20 so they could reach that plateau as well), but only one 30-goal scorer (Seth Jarvis, though Andrei Svechnikov needs one more for 30) and zero 35-goal scorers. They also have just one point-per-game forward (Sebastian Aho has 78 points in 77 games) and just one 40-point defenceman (Shayne Gostisbehere, 47). This is a team that could very well reach the Eastern Final again, but someone like Nikita Kucherov could have more points in three rounds than anyone on the Carolina roster will have in four (if they get to the Stanley Cup Final).

Carolina is a top scoring team that can get to their conference final, but the choice between top players from that roster against top players from Tampa Bay or Colorado isn't much of a choice if we're looking for raw per-game upside.

Colorado Avalanche

It is a bit of a good news/bad news situation for Colorado. The good news is that they are likely to win the Western Conference, which means home ice throughout the Western playoffs, and they also get a matchup with the second Wild Card seed. That means someone like San Jose, Nashville, or Los Angeles, which is preferable to facing Utah as the first wild card.

The bad news is if they get through the first round (and if they don't, it's a massive failure), they get the winner of the Dallas/Minnesota series. The Avalanche have just four wins in eight games against those two teams and five of those eight games went to a shootout. The top of the Central Division is a meatgrinder, and that means despite Colorado being the top team in the West, they are far from a lock to reach the West Final.

When healthy, the team's offence revolves around Nathan MacKinnon, Martin Necas, and Cale Makar. If Colorado goes deep, it'll because they're highly productive. It also helps lift secondary scoring options, particularly ones that have been fixtures of the power play post-Trade Deadline like Brock Nelson and Nazem Kadri.

Colorado also has a lot of depth scoring on the blue line. Makar is over a point per game, and Sam Malinski, Brent Burns, and Josh Manson have all reached the 30-point plateau. Burns has crested the double-digit goal mark with 12, and Malinski fourth among defencemen in assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 this season. Notably, Malinski averaged 15:56 per game until the end of December, and 18:49 per game in calendar 2026. Part of that is a very recent uptick with Makar injured, but even before the Makar injury, Malinski averaged 18:30 per game in 33 games from January 1^st to Makar's injury (March 30^th), so he's been leaned on more as he's established himself as a top-4 defenceman.

Top Avalanche skaters will be top picks in fantasy playoff pools, but even secondary options that aren't getting top PP time like Artturi Lehkonen, Valeri Nichushkin, Malinski, and Burns are worth grabbing in later rounds. Just beware that their path to the West Final hits a drastic incline in the second round. 

Minnesota Wild

It is a tale of two seasons for the Wild. Here are their splits before and after Quinn Hughes' first game on December 14^th:

• Before Hughes: 2.8 goals for/game; 7.6 goals/60 minutes on the power play
• After Hughes: 3.6 goals for/game; 10.2 goals/60 minutes on the power play

That is why it's not quite the right approach to look at their entire season. Adding the best defenceman in the world is a massive point of differentiation.

The top Wild skaters are well-known: Hughes on the blue line and the forward quartet of Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Mats Zuccarello, and Joel Eriksson Ek. What is key here is that it's not only the top guys that greatly benefitted from Hughes' introduction to the roster, but the depth. Here are the points/game pace changes for the team's forwards before and after Hughes:

Part of Hartman's increase is more time on the top line after Marco Rossi was dealt, but guys like Boldy (+0.03) and Eriksson Ek (+0.03) saw negligible improvements. Hughes has had a big impact on this team's scoring, and he has helped the top guys improve their production a bit, but the impact has been felt throughout the lineup. That means for fantasy managers stacking the Wild for a deep playoff run, including names like Hartman and Vladimir Tarasenko is a good idea.

Of course, their problem is that they face Dallas in the first round and then likely Colorado in the second. The Wild are 4-2-1 against those two teams, which is great, but they are 2-1-1 against those two teams since the Hughes trade with an even goal differential (10 GF, 10 GA). Minnesota might be a top-5 team in the league, but they have a brutal road to the West Final.

Dallas Stars

The under-discussed aspect of Dallas' season is they haven't been a very good offensive team at 5-on-5. They are about league average (2.53 goals/60 minutes against a league average of 2.52) and that has been true even since Thomas Harley returned from injury on December 9^th. The injuries to Roope Hintz and Mikko Rantanen matter, but the reality is that guys like Mikko Rantanen (on-ice for 2.95 goals per 60 minutes) and Wyatt Johnston (2.7 goals/60) have not been anywhere near the level of the top guys from Colorado, and even Minnesota's Joel Eriksson Ek is at 3.38 goals/60 since the Hughes trade. The top forwards from Dallas haven't been bad offensively at 5-on-5, but they haven't been elite, and the depth hasn't produced much.

What cannot be denied is just how good Dallas' special teams have been. To this point of the season, the Stars are tied with the Wild for the second-highest special teams goal differential per game:

Across the previous two playoffs, there were 14 franchises who played at least 10 playoff games. Among those franchises, the two finalists each season (the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers) were 3^rd and 4^th by special teams goal differential per game. No team with a negative special teams goal differential reached a Conference Final, let alone a Stanley Cup Final, and the Dallas Stars were even (+22/-22 in 37 games). If Dallas can hold their own at 5-on-5 while also maintaining the exceptional special teams play they've shown in the regular season, there very well could be another deep playoff run in their future. The big obstacle is facing Minnesota in the first round and then likely Colorado in the second. Regardless, their exceptional power play highlights how the top of their lineup is responsible for a lot of the offence, making them a team to target in fantasy drafts (assuming other top teams in Colorado and Tampa Bay are targeted first).