While talking with Steve Laidlaw a couple months ago, he mused that Aaron Ekblad may be ready for PP1 minutes. I told him I thought Alex Wennberg would get PP1 minutes to help replace Dadonov's playmaking. Well:

With special teams work kicking off today at #FlaPanthers camp, here’s one interesting power play unit they’ve rolled out early: Barkov, Huberdeau, Duclair, Wennberg, Ekblad.

— Jameson Olive (@JamesonCoop) January 6, 2021

I talked with Steve on his pod last night about the Panthers and other teams, so look for it here at Dobber when it gets posted in the next couple days.

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Generally speaking, I don't have a lot of interest in Stars forwards this year but if Denis Gurianov continues to skate on the top line with Hintz/Benn, then I will have a lot of interest in his services at his ADP, which is bargain-basement pricing right now.

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Artemi Panarin had the day off at training camp yesterday, which doesn't seem like a big deal in a vacuum. However, with limited practice time, I have to think teams will want their players skating together as much as possible, so there is likely a real reason other than just rest. All we know is it was something "procedural" and he'll be back today.

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Zemgus Girgensons underwent surgery on his hamstring and will miss the entire season. A bad break for a guy who had found himself a home as a bottom-6 forward.

It does open up one more forward roster spot, which is one fewer hurdle to jump for Dylan Cozens. Veterans will get the first look but it's just one stumbling block removed, is all. Coach Ralph Krueger said as much, though Tobias Rieder will initially get Girgensons's slot.

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I recently talked about the Habs' potential power-play lines and it does appear not only are they going back to a 3F/2D top unit, but the second unit will be run by Alexander Romanov:

Entraînement du #CH. On pratique l’avantage numérique ce matin.
Première unité:

Drouin
Weber-Toffoli-Suzuki
Petry

2e unité:

Anderson
Tatar-Gallagher-Kotkaniemi
Romanov

— Chantal Machabee (@ChantalMachabee) January 6, 2021

Don't get hung up on the unit numbers. That second unit could easily outscore the top one this year.

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Winnipeg is going back to their trusted Wheeler-Scheifele-Connor-Laine-Pionk power play, so no worries about Ehlers or Stastny jumping up there just yet.

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The Jackets signed Oliver Bjorkstrand to a five-year deal with an AAV for $5.4M. The Danish winger is 25 years old, so in addition to the coming season, this will carry him through to his early 30s. As Tywin Lannister once said to Arya when she was posing as a boy for safer travel: "Smart".

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Luke Kunin signed a two-year deal with the Preds. Expect him to stay in a bottom-6 role with the team but if players like Tomasino and Tolvanen don't work out, he could easily slide to a top-6 role. That could see him replicate, possibly even improve, on last year.

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Well, I have finally for-real finished my rankings for 2021, and not with a minute to spare. I won't waste any time so I wanted to point out some interesting things from my own rankings. (No, I don't make my full projections public. I will have a full ranking list out sometime later this week, though.) Let's get to it.

I ran a poll on Twitter yesterday:

POLL: If you had to take an even-money bet on who will have more points this year, which side would you take

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) January 5, 2021

Remember that Filip Forsberg is just two years removed from a near-point-per-game season and was regularly a 60-point guy before that. I know Josi is great and all… but yeah this is how it's supposed to shake out.

I don't know how to say it any other way than what I've said a few times this offseason: Jon Hynes doesn't give heavy minutes to forwards. For some reason, Mikael Granlund got as much TOI he could handle last year and everyone else was boned. I mean it: this was the order of TOI/game in the second half of the season last year:

• Granlund – 18:50 per game
• Kyle Turris – 16:31
• Forsberg – 16:29, and so on down

For this reason, I don't have a single Nashville forward projected for more than 40 points, which means no Predators forward would be projected for 60+ points in a normal year. And even in a division that looks to have a lot of weak defensive teams, I don't know how forwards have big years here; guys playing 16-17 minutes a night just don't have monster offensive seasons. (For reference, one top-30 scorer from last year played under 18 minutes a night and it was Max Pacioretty playing 17:55.) It is always a surprise when I have a defenceman projected to lead a team in points but the Preds, helmed by Hynes, are in a sad state of affairs in the fantasy realm right now. We can only hope he changes his approach.

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I have Mitch Marner coming in tied for fourth in league scoring, quaintly enough, tied with teammate Auston Matthews. (How they get there will differ, obviously.) Basically, I have Marner repeating his 2019-20 season (67 in 59) in fewer games. That is probably because both he and Matthews are in their respective primes while also getting a defensively-soft division this year.

One thing I have struggled with is how, exactly, to incorporate the intra-divisional play this year. Currently, above 2019-20 levels, I have the Canadian division scoring an extra ~6 percent compared to a neutral division, the Central closer to two percent, and the East and West in the negatives (meaning they should be lower scoring than otherwise expected). I have seen other estimates and they're generally lower than mine, so I worry about over-estimating. But I have gone over my math more than once and it seems right. I guess we'll find out.

Anyway, the Canadian Bump® should help a lot of guys up here score above what we expect them, so we should be focusing our efforts there.

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On the topic of scoring, I have just two players from the West Division finishing top-25 in scoring, and they're both on Colorado's top line. Which brings an interesting dynamic into all this: we have been focusing on the scoring effects of intra-divisional play, but what about the goaltending effects?

I have a question: do you want to draft a goalie who will be playing one pairing of Matthews/Tavares or McDavid/Draisaitl every third game? Connor Hellebuyck could have another great season, but that blue line is still a mess and he is going to be having elite offensive teams coming at him often.

Conversely, I see the Arizona goaltenders going late in drafts all the time. I agree that the 'Yotes won't be very good this year, but neither will Los Angeles, Anaheim, and possibly San Jose. They are not exactly in a division loaded with world-beaters. They are in a division with a lot of other Yotes-esque teams. Wins may be tough to come by, but ratios? Not as much.

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On the topic of Colorado, I have Cale Makar leading all defencemen in points and it's hard to explain why that's such a weird proclamation for me. I am typically slower on the uptake for young stars and it has served me relatively well over the years.

What Makar did was so far beyond what could be considered reasonable for a 21-year-old rookie that we have to start immediately comparing him to Hall of Famers. This is not hyperbolic in the least, either: from Hockey Reference, here are all the rookie NHL defencemen aged 21 or younger who managed at least 0.8 points/game (min. 50 games played):

Of the eight defencemen to do it prior to Makar, five are Hall of Famers, and his production profile (G/A/SOG) lines up best with Ray Bourque and Larry Murphy. Read that sentence back before proceeding to the next paragraph.

It is not a perfect comparison. Saying Makar is the next Bourque is obviously unfair to Makar, but the reality is I don't know a better way to predict small-sample futures than with comparable pasts. There are some concerns with Makar, namely on-ice shooting percentages, but I think small TOI increases will help offset this and lead to pushing Makar to the top of all blue liners. Again, this is an absurd proclamation for a second-year player but we have to trust our numbers/process and adjust when we're wrong. Makar is such a special case that he'll help me with other players moving forward.

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I have the Ramblings tomorrow so I will be going more into over- and under-valued players.

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