Toronto's blue line has struggled at times this year. Justin Holl's on-ice expected goals against rate at 5-on-5, for example, is bordering near 3.0 per 60 minutes. His pairing with Rasmus Sandin did not go well, and neither did the pairing with the now-injured Jake Muzzin.

There is some help coming, though:

Keefe says the plan is for Liljegren to play on Saturday against the Bruins #Leafs

— Terry Koshan 🇺🇦 (@koshtorontosun) November 2, 2022

It was a breakout season, of sorts, for Timothy Liljegren a year ago. He was second, behind Morgan Rielly, in points per minute from the blue line. What's more is that per Evolving Hockey, he led their blue line in expected goals impact, and was second in actual goals-for impact, behind Rielly again. With Liljegren on the ice with them, Toronto's top line generated a whopping 73% more expected goals last season and 85% more actual goals, on a per-minute basis. He was a great puck-mover for them even if he played third-pair ice time.

We may have to see how Liljegren fares returning from injury, but this could be the boost the team needs from the back end.

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On the topic of returning defencemen:

Coach Lalonde says Jake Walman is projected to return in about a week #LGRW

— Carley Johnston (@carleykjohnston) November 2, 2022

Jake Walman is a player I've been high on for a few years (relatively speaking, for a 26-year-old third-round pick). He looked good playing a sheltered role in St. Louis and my wish  is he can keep that play with Detroit. This could be a big season for him though he'll still likely be a third-pair guy for them. That means no fantasy relevance, at least not in 2022-23. Hopes are he can put together a full-ish season and live up to the potential he's flashed.

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There is a discussion on Kyle Connor's slow start to the year a little later in these Ramblings but, relatedly, there was a Winnipeg recall:

TRANSACTIONS: The #NHLJets have placed D – Logan Stanley on injured reserve, retroactive to October 25, and recalled F – Jansen Harkins on an emergency basis from the Manitoba Moose (AHL).

— Winnipeg Jets PR (@WpgJetsPR) November 2, 2022

He never really translated his AHL success a few years ago into NHL success but Jansen Harkins had a great start in the AHL this year with nine points and 17 shots in six games. If he's turned a corner, he could help a thinned-out Jets roster. It is just an emergency recall, but Harkins is someone to monitor, at the least.

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John Tavares scored his first hat trick of the season while Auston Matthews tallied again in Toronto's 5-2 win over Philadelphia. Tavares assisted on the Matthews goal, giving him a four-point night. That makes seven goals, seven assists, nine power-play points, and 53 shots on goal for Tavares on the season. He has been a great fantasy draft pick through the first month of the season.

Morgan Rielly had a pair of assists, giving him nine on the year.

Owen Tippett and Joel Farabee replied for the Flyers. For Tippett, he now has two goals in five games on the year. Felix Sandstrom took the loss, saving 39 of 44 shots faced.

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We had a very slow day in the NHL, at least as far as games and news are concerned, so I thought it'd be worth going through some top fantasy picks that haven't performed to expectations just yet. Last week we discussed some players that were surprises to me by my personal rankings and expectations. This week, we're going to take a more macro look at what the market was expecting. It will be important to note whether there's just some bad luck going on, or at least a hefty dose of it, or just poor play. The former could indicate an immediate turnaround – Evander Kane and Timo Meier are recent examples – while the latter could indicate time to abandon ship.

They aren't perfect, but Yahoo! rankings and ADP will be used. Goalies will not be listed because, come on, they're goalies. Data from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick.

Jonathan Huberdeau

It will depend on the league, but Huberdeau was likely taken somewhere in the second round in most formats. To date, he has one goal and five points in eight games, posting 14 whole shots on goal. One response to the slow starts of everyone on Calgary's top line was a shuffling of their forward trios before the team's 5-4 loss to Seattle. It didn't help in the way they hoped, it seems, though the team did control a lot of the game.

One obvious problem is the ice-time decline, which is expected for this Flames team. Even a year ago when they had arguably the best top line in hockey, Matthew Tkachuk was playing under 18 minutes a game. Expecting much more than 18 minutes from Huberdeau was expecting too much, even if his sub-17-minute mark is a lot steeper than anticipated. Regardless, without top-tier efficiency, no one will be able to post 100 points skating under 17 minutes a game. That is a huge issue.

Secondly, he didn't mesh well with Tyler Toffoli and Elias Lindholm. That line was sitting at 2.8 expected goals for and a 52.5% expected goal share, which isn't awful, but nowhere near elite, and the zero actual goals scored at 5-on-5 stuck out like a sore thumb.

Calgary's power play is top-tier again – and Huberdeau is a big part of that – but until he starts earning considerably more ice time, 100 points is out of the question. If he can be a point-per-game guy skating 17 minutes a night, that would be a success, even if he would be a draft loss in the fantasy realm.

Tim Stützle

It is weird to see Brady Tkachuk and Drake Batherson with 12 and 11 points each, respectively, but their center sitting with six. That line has been dynamic offensively at 5-on-5 generating over 3.5 expected and 3.7 actual goals per 60 minutes. Their top power-play unit has been similarly great, scoring nearly 10 goals per 60 minutes. Despite all that, and a small ice-time increase, Stützle's points per game have declined from last year.

A big offseason concern for Stützle's fantasy value was earning top PP minutes with Claude Giroux and Alex DeBrincat being added to the team. That hasn't come to fruition as he's been firm on the top PP unit all season long. So, what gives?

First is his Individual Points Percentage (IPP) on the power play. In his first two seasons with the team, he managed a point on 66% of the 5-on-4 goals Ottawa scored with him on the ice. This season, he's at 25%. That will obviously climb significantly and if it were normal, he'd be close to a point-per-game player. So, when that IPP does turn back his way, the power-play production will rise sharply, and his overall production with it.

The second problem is his shooting. His shot attempt rate is down 25% from last year and he's missing the net more than normal. Once his shot attempt/shot on goal ratio normalizes, he'll be close to two shots per game, which would be about status quo from last year. A lack of shooting means shot percentage declines are magnified and his end-of-season goal total is very much an open question.  

Stützle should see his PP production rise over the next few months and that means a boon to his fantasy value. My concern is that he ends up with something like a 15-goal, 55-assist season. In multi-cat formats, he may not have as much value as we'd like, though he's a buy-low-ish option right now for points leagues.

Johnny Gaudreau

All things considered, it's not a terrible start for Jonathan Hockey. He leads Columbus in points, having two more than the next-closest players, and is on pace for a 40-goal season. He is lacking assists, though, with just three in his 10 games. I assume he won't finish the season with 25 helpers, so we need to look into what's happening here.

The clear culprit, as anyone who has paid even cursory attention to the Blue Jackets, is the power play. With 10 games under their belt, the team has posted zero – zero! – power-play goals. The only other team with fewer than four is Anaheim (2). Columbus's PP has been awful, even when not scoring, being bottom-5 in shot and expected goal metrics. Gaudreau can still put up 15 PPPs on a league-worst power play, but it's still a far cry from the 25 he posted last year.

Once the PP starts scoring, there shouldn't be much doubt that the top Jackets winger will be a point-per-game players, but like Huberdeau, the change in scenery may not have 100 points on the table again, and a lot of fantasy owners will be disappointed as a result.

As a bonus: his shot rate per minute is down from last year which means a lower shots-per-game rate even with 83 seconds of more TOI per night. Three shots per game is still very good, but a decline, nonetheless.

Vladimir Tarasenko

It really isn't a bad start for Tarasenko with three goals and four assists in eight games, falling a shade shy of three shots per game. It is a decline from last year but last year was also a career-best season for him, so a bit of a decline may have been in the cards anyway. The big problem is how he's getting those points: 6 of 7 have come at even strength. Tarasenko has just one PPP in eight games. Last year, he averaged one every 3.4 games.

The Blues are smack in the middle of the league in PP scoring, ranking 16^th overall. This is where I wonder if the loss of David Perron is starting to show itself. The team scored 10.5 goals per 60 minutes on the PP in Perron's final three seasons with the Blues. He was one of the most impactful PP forwards in the league, in fact. When Tarasenko was on the ice with Perron on the PP from 2018-21, the team's scoring rate increased 34%. Last year, that increase was 28%. This year, Tarasenko's on-ice PP goal rate is in line with the lower, Perron-less rates from years gone by.

Tarasenko will start scoring on the power play and things will normalize a bit, but seeing him getting back in the 20-25 PPP range seems like a reach unless he and the other players find the scoring touch they had with Perron on the ice with them. Tarasenko could be closer to a 70-point forward than a point-per-game-plus guy he was a year ago.

Kyle Connor

To get the obvious out of the way: Connor won't keep shooting 3%. Even if he shoots a career-worst 10%, he could still crack the 30-goal mark. An even higher positive regression would put 40 goals back in range again. That isn't the real problem. Rather, it's missing Nikolaj Ehlers, who is now getting a second opinion on his injury as he's not recovering as the team and player had hoped he would.

Without Ehlers on the top line with him at 5-on-5, he and Mark Scheifele are generating 40% fewer expected goals and the goal rate has been more than halved. With a second line of Perfetti-Dubois-Wheeler, the Jets just don't have another offensive option to play with Connor/Scheifele. Unless the lines change, or until Ehlers returns, they are going to have an anchor on their right wing. That makes it really hard to have above-average goal rates.

A career-low IPP will turn around for Connor and his goal/point rates will climb. However, he wasn't drafted to be a 30-goal, 65-point forward. He was drafted to be a 40-goal, 85-point forward. The lack of winger depth for the Jets is showing and Connor's season will likely suffer because of it.

Moritz Seider

Detroit's injuries have piled up and that will not help Seider's case to repeat a 50-point season. He has also been inconsistently on the top PP unit, which was a big factor in his production a year ago. He has one PPP in nine games, a year after posting 21 in 82 contests. He also hasn't scored yet, which will right itself, but he's also skating under 22 minutes a game, a TOI decline from a year ago as the team filled out its blue line in the offseason. Unsurprisingly, a loss of top PPTOI, and just TOI in general, has led to fewer shots on goal.

On the bright side, his 14.3% IPP at 5-on-5 is far too low and the team is scoring more with him on the ice than in 2021-22. Once that turns around, his 5-on-5 scoring could more than double on a per-minute basis. It isn't hard to see him repeating his 20-25 points at that strength from a year ago. The bigger problem is the injuries they're enduring and the PP scoring less than last year when he's on the ice.

I have hope here. Now that Seider is back on the top PP unit, with the aforementioned Perron and his elite PP prowess, he should see the power-play points start to roll in. The question is the 5-on-5 scoring persisting through the injuries and (hopefully) getting some more ice time. Either way, I think he still reaches 40 points, and with his peripherals, will be just fine in multi-cat formats. But he was often drafted as a top-10 defenceman in multi-cat leagues, a height that will be difficult to reach from here.