Cuts from skates are just a part of playing hockey and in the NHL. We have seen some absolutely gruesome injuries in this manner over the years, with Evander Kane being an example from this season alone. Something similar happened to Ryan Johansen a few nights ago and that was why he left the game against Vancouver. We got an update:

Ryan Johansen will miss an estimated 12 weeks after surgery on his right leg. #Preds

— Robby Stanley (@RStanleyNHL) February 23, 2023

That timeline would put him out until mid/late May, which means he's done for the year barring a deep playoff run from Nashville. So, he's done for the year.

Following a resurgent 2021-22 season that saw 26 goals and 37 assists in 79 games, Johansen fell back to Earth like many of his teammates this season with 12 goals and 16 assists in 55 games. Later in these Ramblings there'll be a dive on Johansen and some ancillary topics surrounding him.  

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Washington traded Garnet Hathaway and Dmitry Orlov to Boston yesterday. I had a breakdown of that here.

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New Jersey provided a sort-of update on MacKenzie Blackwood:

Mackenzie Blackwood is still being evaluated and will see #NJDevils doctors tonight. Lindy Ruff doesn't have an update beyond that right now.

— Amanda Stein (@amandacstein) February 23, 2023

Blackwood injured himself at morning skate a few days ago and hasn't suited up since. Any sort of lengthy absence means sure-fire top starter status for Vitek Vanecek. It had been roughly a 60/40 split in Vanecek's favour of late but if Blackwood is on the shelf, that probably becomes 80/20 or 85/15. More when we get it, but Blackwood fantasy owners should be making alternative arrangements for the short-term. Can I interest you in a gently-used Arturs Silovs? Vancouver has a tough schedule in the near-term with Boston, Dallas, Minnesota, and Toronto on the schedule over the next nine days, but Nashville, Anaheim, Ottawa, Dallas, Arizona, Los Angeles, Anaheim, Vegas, San Jose, Dallas again, and Chicago in the three weeks after that. Not that Silovs will get all (or most) of them but there will be worse ideas than streaming Vancouver goalies during a soft schedule in mid/late March when options are so thin.

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Alex Ovechkin was back on Thursday night, but Anthony Mantha is now on the injured reserve:

Alex Ovechkin will play tonight, Caps coach Peter Laviolette says

Anthony Mantha (upper body) will go on IR

— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) February 23, 2023

Ovechkin was back in his usual top-line spot alongside Evgeny Kuznetsov. As for Mantha, a bit more on him later.

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Adam Henrique and John Klingberg:

Per @HTValentine , who was at Ducks morning skate, John Klingberg and Adam Henrique are out tonight vs. Capitals with lower-body injuries.

Henrique is week to week after leaving game vs. Tampa Bay on Tuesday.

— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) February 23, 2023

On this topic, Troy Terry was back in the lineup for Anaheim on Thursday night after missing a few games due to injury. It is very important for that guy to keep creating as much chemistry with Trevor Zegras and Mason McTavish as possible.

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Jonas Brodin is back on the shelf:

The #mnwild has placed defenseman Jonas Brodin on injured reserve (lower-body injury).

— Minnesota Wild PR (@mnwildPR) February 23, 2023

Calen Addison was back in the lineup on Thursday night. This isn't very good timing for a team that has so much unusable cap space and is in a playoff push.

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Montreal gave an update on forward Kirby Dach:

I don't think I've ever seen this before. pic.twitter.com/2pDnzQJj4H

— Arpon Basu (@ArponBasu) February 23, 2023

That is something that I, also, would have to say that I've never seen.

At this point, it doesn't really matter for Dach or the Habs. They need to lose as many games as possible and Dach has shown that he's found his game again anyway. What is most important is ensuring he's healthy for training camp in September. There is no indication that this is something that will keep him out for the season, but a small part of me wonders if we're not going to see some creative injuries and injury designations from the tank teams over the next 6-7 weeks.

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It was quite the nail-biting night in the NHL.

Well, except the game I decided to watch. Edmonton pasted Pittsburgh 7-2 in a game where the score was very much indicative of the play. Connor McDavid had two goals and two assists with seven shots and a block. That seems good. Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins both had a goal and an assist while Tyson Barrie had a pair of helpers, both on the power play.

Tristan Jarry was pulled after the second period, giving up six goals on 29 shots.

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In more exciting news, Tampa Bay came back from separate two-goal deficits against Buffalo to push the game 5-5 to overtime. Buffalo ended up winning the game 6-5 on a short-handed overtime goal from Ilya Lyubushkin. Not one word of that sentence is a lie.

Tage Thompson had a hat trick, his first in 20 games, which feels long for him for some reason. He is up to 39 goals, passing last year's high of 38 in 22 more games, and he even gave his fantasy owners three hits on Thursday night. What a guy.

Jeff Skinner had two assists with one of those coming on the power play. Skinner now has 10 power-play assists on the season, the most for him in any season since his 2010-11 rookie campaign (12).

Brayden Point had a goal and three assists in the loss, with Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman posting a goal and an assist each. Point is up to 65 points now, a four-year high, and he needs two more to have the second-highest total of his career. He could get to 90 points again.

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A final-minute goal from Nico Hischier pushed New Jersey and Los Angeles to an overtime over their own, which ended halfway through thanks to Dawson Mercer's 18^th tally of the season, and his second of the game. He has now surpassed his 17-goal rookie season in 24 fewer games played, and the same number of PP goals. He added an assist with three shots, a block, and a hit in a well-balanced fantasy effort, like an early-90s breakfast commercial.

Tomas Tatar had goal and an assist while Dougie Hamilton had a pair of helpers.

Anze Kopitar had a goal and an assist as well, and he's now scored in four straight games, totalling seven points in that stretch. He now has 20 goals for the first time in three seasons. Kevin Fiala had two assists and three shots with a couple of PIMs and a hit on the second line in the absence of Trevor Moore.

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Ovechkin returning wasn't enough to boost Washington after their teammates were traded and they fell 4-2 to Anaheim of all teams. John Gibson saved 41 of 43 shots, to be fair, in an excellent performance. Troy Terry scored in his return, skating 17:31 partly alongside Trevor Zegras, partly alongside Mason McTavish.

Trevor van Riemsdyk got some secondary PP work for Washington with Orlov gone. Something to monitor.

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Detroit took a 4-1 victory from the New York Rangers, giving the Red Wings a much-needed two points. Over their last 15 games, the Wings are 10-4-1 and they have now climbed into a playoff spot due to points percentage. Things are very interesting in the middle of the East.

The second line did the damage as Andrew Copp had a goal and two assists while Michael Rasmussen had a goal and an assist as well. Filip Zadina also scored, his second since returning. Him providing reliable secondary scoring could be a big part to Detroit staying in the race for the next six weeks. Rasmussen now has a career-high in points with 29 in 55 games played.

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Minnesota and Columbus played. The Wild won 2-0. Marc-André Fleury stopped the 30 pucks he had to. Kirill Kaprizov scored. A hockey game certainly happened.

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Ryan Johansen is a fascinating NHLer. After a couple acclimation seasons, Johansen scored 33 goals in his age-21 season, his first 82-game campaign. He followed that up with a 26-goal effort the year after. It would be seven years before he cracked 20 goals again, reaching 26 last season. For a guy to post 59 goals in his age-21 and age-22 season, then score just 78 goals over his next 437 games, is a pretty weird career line to take.

Of course, the change was going to Nashville. From 2013 until he was traded in 2016, Johansen managed 14.6 shot attempts per 60 minutes at all strengths. That isn't a super-elite mark, but it is inside the 75^th percentile, or what was a first-line rate. In Nashville, he never came close again: his career-best single-season mark in a full season with Nashville is 10.7 (back in 2016-17). His three-year average in his first three Nashville seasons was 9.3 per 60 minutes, over 36% lower than that three-year stretch in Columbus, and things have not improved. He went from a dual-threat – like teammate Matt Duchene – to a pure passer, and he never went back. Even when he scored 26 goals last year, he did it landing 1.5 shots per game, nearly half the rate of his first full Columbus season.

Johansen is now (almost certainly) done for the season and that brings the future into focus. What can we expect from him?

What the Nashville lineup looks like in October 2023 is up in the air but it's hard seeing them being much better than they are now, which is to say a non-playoff team. The one thing that could save them is if Philip Tomasino turns into a game-breaker in the offseason, which he very well could, but Nashville has eight players with at least two more years left on their deals and at least a $5M cap hit. Those kinds of contracts aren't being moved so other than swapping some lesser players around, this is what he has until he's traded at the 2025 deadline or signs with another team that offseason. For that reason, it's probably not a good idea to expect much more from him. All their stars had career seasons a year ago and he still topped out at 63 points in 79 games, needing to shoot 22% to get there. Without large roster changes really being possible, and all their top skater prospects already on the team (apologies to the Zachary L'Heureux truthers), we may have seen the best of Johansen in Nashville, and perhaps in his career as he turns 31 in the summer.  

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To say the move to Washington hasn't gone as Anthony Mantha, the Caps, or fantasy hockey players had hoped, would be a gross understatement. He was never a monster producer, but over his last three full seasons in Detroit, he averaged 28 goals every 82 games. He has 22 goals in 105 career games with Washington, so there has been a noticeable drop. So, what is going on?

First, he ran into the same problems Jakub Vrana ran into: too many forwards and a full power play. Mantha's final three years in Detroit saw him average 17:51 in TOI; he's averaged 15:06 in Washington and has passed 17:51 in ice time in just two of his 54 games in 2022-23. What was once his average is now an outlier. That loss of ice time at all offensive strengths is a big blow.

It is really important to reiterate that TOI. It is important because his goals/60 minutes at 5-on-5 over the last two seasons is 0.77. Not a great mark, but his mark over his final three seasons in Detroit was 0.78. It is virtually identical, though with the league scoring more we'd like to see an increase. All the same, it's not different from what he had done previously, but he did lose nearly two minutes of 5-on-5 ice time per game. Over a full 82-game season, it would cost him a few goals, and that's at 5-on-5 alone.

When we get to the power play is where problems really start. Back in Detroit, Mantha's final 232 games (or nearly three seasons' worth) saw him score 24 PP goals, or one every 9.7 games. He has a grand total of two PP goals in 105 games with the Caps, or one every 52.5 games. Had his usage stayed consistent from Detroit to Washington, he would have about nine more power play goals than he does now. It is hard to score on the power play when you don't play on it, I guess.

So, when we take the loss of ice time at 5-on-5 and the loss of a PP role, Mantha is probably being short-changed somewhere around 10 goals every 82 games. That works out to about 13 goals for his entire Washington tenure. Add those 13 missing goals due to ice time/role changes to what he's actually scored, and it would give him 35 goals in 105 games with the Caps, or 27 goals every 82 games. Do we remember his pace back in that three-year full-season Detroit stretch? It was 28 goals every 82 games.

Looking under the hood, there's still a lot that Mantha is doing right on the ice. However, the team has its favourites and the coach clearly has no inclination to play him more as his role was still nuked even with Tom Wilson, TJ Oshie, and Connor Brown all out of the lineup. I am still a firm believer that Mantha is a 30-goal, 60-point winger in the right spot, but Washington is not the right spot.