The big news from Wednesday is that the Montreal Canadiens have fired head coach Claude Julien and assistant coach Kirk Muller. This comes off the heels of a pair of losses to the Senators, both games where the Senators looked like the better team, honestly.

As a Habs fan, I will say this: the team has been great at 5-on-5 for years. Since they last made it out of the second round in 2015, here are the team's ranks in 5-on-5 expected goal share, starting with 2015-16: 10^th, 4^th, 13^th, 4^th, 3^rd, and 1^st. By actual goal share in the same time frame, the team ranked: 18^th, 6^th, 29^th, 9^th, 13^th, 1^st. So in the last six years, they have been top-5 by expected goal share four times, top-10 by actual goal share three times, and have not made it out of the second round once.

Special teams have long been an issue for the team. They are 20^th on the PP by goals/60 this year and 24^th on the PK. Last year those numbers were 24^th and 20^th. The year before they were 30^th and 12^th. Not a single top-10 season by either PK or PP in the last three years. We can argue about the power play and them having enough top-end talent, but there's no reason for a consistently average-to-bad penalty kill outside goaltending (and that's another big issue here).

While Julien has been a great 5-on-5 coach for the Habs, it's clear that there have been special teams issues throughout that pre-date even Julien's tenure but have persisted. Add that to the fact that bad goaltending – or rather a bad goaltender with an insane contract – can sink any coach, and, well, here we are.

This only changes their fortunes with better special teams and better goaltending. The latter, I'm not so sure about.

You can read Alex MacLean’s take here.

*

A quick update on Anthony Cirelli:

Anthony Cirelli is on the ice practicing with the extras/taxi squad prior to #Bolts morning skate and wearing a regular jersey. It's been almost 2 weeks (13 days) since he suffered an upper-body injury. Good sign he's getting close to a return.

— Bryan Burns (@BBurnsNHL) February 24, 2021

The team would later say he's expected to play soon, but won't be rushed and won't play back-to-backs immediately. At least we have some clarifications.

*

Both K’Andre Miller and Tomas Hertl were added to the league’s COVID list:

Tomas Hertl is #SJSharks player added to NHL COVID protocol list. Also #NYR defenseman K'Andre Miller. Vegas' Tomas Nosek off list. Flyers still have five players on it

— Stephen Whyno (@SWhyno) February 24, 2021

San Jose’s game Thursday night has already been postponed.

*

We had another goaltending battle in Toronto as a 0-0 game late in the third period turned into a 1-1 overtime game. But William Nylander scored the late third-period goal to tie and the overtime winner to send the Leafs off with a 2-1 win. David Rittich ended up saving 37 of 39 in the loss, while Michael Hutchinson saved 21 of 22 in the win.

Andrew Mangiapane scored the lone goal in the loss for Calgary. Matthew Tkachuk had five hits and an assist. Those hits keep him well above three hits per game on the year.

*

The Flyers faced a hobbled Rangers team and managed to take a 4-3 win. It wasn't easy, as Chris Kreider scored a hat trick to try and will the Rangers to a win, but Philadelphia's two power-play goals, erm, powered them to the win. Shayne Gostisbehere got one of those goals, and added an assist to go with six total shots for a very nice fantasy night. Erik Gustafsson also had 1-1.

Claude Giroux returned for Philly and had three assists with eight shots. I'd say he was fine.

New York looks real bad, as to be expected, without all of Panarin, Miller, and Trouba in the lineup. On the bright side, Kreider and Zibanejad look as good as they have all season.

*

Both Anton Khudobin and Andrei Vasilevskiy posted 3-0 shutout wins in their respective games on Wednesday. Khudobin in particular was superhuman in his 43-save effort for Dallas. They need him to steal games while they're getting guys healthy, and he did just that here.

*

For my last few Ramblings I have been talking about players off to hot starts and their signs of regression. It is probably worth going to the other end of that spectrum and look at players that have started off with low production levels and should turn things around.

Before we do all that, a few thoughts on this season.

As I've already written, 5-on-5 scoring is down this year but power-play scoring is up. We're also seeing more PP opportunities so I think it's safe to say we're seeing a fairly unique season. Beyond that, it's a shortened season anyway, as teams will be playing, at most, two-thirds of a normal schedule. That doesn't really give enough time for all percentages to even out – a full season doesn't even do that. We also have the unknown COVID factor: just how badly is it affecting players? We have had it run through entire teams and we know some players are struggling with returning (Marco Rossi and Rasmus Ristolainen at least). What about the players who've already returned? Are they at 100 percent of their physical peak, or is it considerably lower in some cases? And we (probably) won't know just how healthy anyone really is, and that makes evaluation difficult.

And then there's the effect of all intra-divisional play. We have already seen the production benefits of playing in the Canadian Division. In a typical year, we can start to draw conclusions after roughly 20 games, but those are games usually across many teams. Now that it's the same teams over and over, how does that affect the numbers we use for projecting future seasons? I have no idea, but we'll need to make adjustments after the season.

So that's why when I say players should either turn their production around or endure negative regression, this is based mostly on knowledge accumulated over the last 10 seasons, which is nothing like this season. For now, it's the best we can do.

With all that out of the way, here are some guys who have some positive secondary assist regression coming and should help fill the assist column over the balance of the season.  

Alex Radulov

This is a situation where the incoming positive assist regression won't necessarily help build up his value from here – Radulov has 11 points in eight games on the season as it is, including eight assists. But his problem is that over half of his points (6) have come with the man advantage. That won't persist so when his PP production does decline, he needs to make it up elsewhere, and secondary assists at 5-on-5 are certainly one area of possibility. On the year, he has exactly zero secondary assists at 5-on-5, and that also won't persist. Now, if his PP production falls off a cliff – and it could – there won't be enough positive 5-on-5 regression coming to help, as the best Radulov can hope for is probably an extra secondary assist at 5-on-5 per 10 games, and 4-5 extra assists the rest of the year won't help enough.

Evgenii Dadonov

Five goals over the last couple weeks quelled early concerns about his production but it's worth noting that Dadonov has just two assists on the year. This is a guy who averaged 37 assists/82 games in Florida. Now, Ottawa is not Florida, but even half that old assist rate (~19/82 games) would be considerably higher than his current rate (~8/82 games). That is a lot of numbers so let me simplify this: if he had an assist rate of simply less than half his recent three seasons, he should still have 3-4 more assists than he does now. All of a suddent, Dadonov having six goals and six assists in 21 games for Ottawa looks a lot better than his current line, and that's a conservative estimate. There is definite assist regression to come.

On top of that, the team is shooting under five percent with him on the ice. That won't persist, and should increase his assist rate even more. The buy-low window is closing, it seems.

Anders Lee

This is a precarious one because Lee has never been known for assist totals; the guy has never reached 25 assists in a season. With that said, his 82-game pace this year is 14 where he had 23 in 68 games last year and 23 in 82 games the year before. On the season, he has zero secondary assists at 5-on-5 and not that he should have a huge amount, but he should have a couple by now. Don't be surprised if we see him post 5-6 secondary assists at 5-on-5 over the balance of the season, which would help balance out his fantasy value a bit.

Rickard Rakell

This is another precarious one but for a different reasons: the Ducks are awful offensively. While I don't imagine Rakell will keep shooting under two percent, for example, they also don't have a lot (any?) high-end playmakers so that he's not getting prime shooting situations makes sense. So when I say that Rakell has positive secondary assist regression coming, he does, it's just a matter of how much because he only had seven such assists last year and three the year prior. At best, we might get 4-5 from him over the balance of the season. I would like to see him play with Trevor Zegras, but whether that happens game in and game out, well, I have my doubts.

Viktor Arvidsson

Our final guy on the list is because Nashville may be going through changes soon. We have seen the trade rumours start as the team has faltered to start the year and we've seen trade bait names floated. Whatever happens, Arvidsson won't keep shooting zero percent at 5-on-5, and he won't post zero secondary assists at 5-on-5. Be careful here because Filip Forsberg may be gone soon, but Arvidsson is one of the better buy-low candidates all around right now.