The impact of Chara’s return, the quirks of the Leafs’ upcoming schedule and more…

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Zdeno Chara could return tonight. Yeah buddy!

I opened with this story because it is important to make it clear that Chara's return WILL NOT hurt Dougie Hamilton. There are two reasons for this.

1. Hamilton and Chara normally skate together at even strength so Hamilton isn't going to be losing minutes at evens. If anything Chara's return helps Hamilton, although Dennis Seidenberg has been a rock alongside Hamilton while Chara has been out.

2. Boston divvies up the power play time evenly. While Chara and Hamilton operate on different power play units the return of Chara simply means kicking someone off of Unit A, having little to no effect on Hamilton's Unit B.

If you are looking for someone who will be hindered by Chara's return consider Brad Marchand who has gone from zero power play time to averaging 1:26 per game. Of course, Marchand has but one power-play point this season so he has hardly benefitted from those minutes but you could consider this a lost opportunity for future growth.

Also hurt by Chara's return is Joe Morrow who could find himself back in the minors.

One area I was going to say Chara might help is getting the Bruins more power play chances but after digging deeper I don't think that will be the case. Indeed, the Bruins could use more power play opportunities as they rank dead last but they are unlikely to get them. The Bruins finished dead last in power play chances in each of the previous two seasons and haven't finished out of the bottom 10 in any season since Claude Julien was named head coach. There's something about his philosophy that fails to create power plays at an average level.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The Bruins have been a great team under Julien and they've had some superb fantasy performances. I just wonder if we wouldn't see David Krejci or Patrice Bergeron hit 80 points in a season if their coach had them playing a system where they drew more penalties and loaded up a top power play unit instead of splitting time equally. It might not happen anyway but it's an interesting thought experiment.

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James Reimer with a huge 41-save shootout win for the Leafs. We hadn't seen this guy since November 18^th when he gave up six goals in back-to-back appearances. I wonder if the Leafs will retroactively place him on IR for those three weeks he sat claiming "bruised psyche" to garner some cap relief. That's a joke, of course, but I do wonder if some team could try that.

He earns a little more trust after last night. Can you imagine if he would have had another poor performance? We might not have seen Reimer again until 2015. As it stands, the Leafs have three back-to-backs between now and New Year's so Reimer could see some more action. In fact, it would surprise me if he got Saturday night's game against the Red Wings having already beaten them last night.

Interesting schedule quirk to make note of: the Leafs will play six games in nine nights from this Saturday through to Sunday, December 21. It could be worth loading up on Leafs for this weekend knowing this stretch is coming, though many of those games are on the common Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday circuit.