More goalie injuries, McDonagh's a big time buy low (but hurry!), tempering Ekblad enthusiasm, examining the "career AHLer" curse, and more….

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Hey everyone – I'll be handling Ramblings twice this week, filling in for Dobber. Hopefully I can get back on the horse – the last time I did this was in the summer!

One quick word at the outset – since I'm not a regular Rambler, I don't have the macro that Dobber and Steve use which automatically makes each player's name not only appear in blue but also creates a link to his player profile page. And although I've done my best to manually bold everyone's name, you won't be able to click those names to automatically get to their profiles page like normal. The same issue might also affect the columns that I post on the site today and Wednesday.

But to make up for that, I plan on giving you over 4000 words in my Ramblings today and hopefully again on Wednesday.

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Before talking about yesterday's games, I'll pause to point out it was the first Sunday where more than half of the NHL's teams were in action (16 to be exact). But going forward, there'll generally be more hockey being played on Sundays, and with that a bit less on Saturday.

Here's what's on tap for each of the eight remaining regular season Sundays:

8 games = February 22nd, March 29th

7 games = March 15th

6 games = March 1st, March 8th

5 games = February 15th, April 5th

4 games = March 22nd

And the teams who play most often on these eight more Sundays are generally not surprising given that US networks will be involved and the NHL will be eager to capture audiences in major cities which had been used to watching football until last week:

Six more Sunday games = Florida and Pittsburgh

Five more = Washington, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Anaheim, Rangers

Be sure to keep all this in mind, especially those of you with weekly line-up settings and because it will result in more back-to-backs.

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Early returns for the Blues in the four games since Kevin Shattenkirk went down with injury aren't good. After losing to Chicago on Sunday they now stand at eight goals scored (three of which came against lowly Buffalo) versus twelve goals against, and just one for eight in PP chances. Even still, they did manage to win two of the games and have a firm hold on a playoff spot. It's probably just a bit of shellshock, and soon they'll readjust.

The main area of ongoing concern figures to be the PP. As great as he is at all-around hockey, Alex Pietrangelo isn't a PP QB, and neither are Ian Cole, Jay Bouwmeester, Chris Butler, or Carl Gunnarsson each of whom has seen some PP ice time fall into his lap. No question they'll deeply miss Shattenkirk in this area, as he'd been a fixture within the top 15 for PP Ice Time per game among d-men.

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As for the Hawks, I'm perplexed about Andrew Shaw, who I had pegged for good things this campaign, mostly due to his 29.6% IPP at 5×4 last season (IPP standing for In-Percentage Points, and representing the percentage – in this case at 5×4 – that player received a point when a goal was scored while he was on the ice), which was staggeringly low for a forward.

And yet here we are well into 2014-15, and Shaw has taken a step back despite not only getting more PP Ice Time (2:59 per game) than Marian Hossa, Brad Richards, or Brandon Saad, but also having over 50% of his PP shifts be with Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Patrick Sharp.  Plus, he’s received top six time at even strength, particularly earlier in the season.