Injuries are the part of every postseason for every team, but the way Carolina has endured theirs is something else. The team got five games from Max Pacioretty before he was re-injured and shelved for the season while Andrei Svechnikov blew out his knee out a week after the Trade Deadline. Add in the recent Teuvo Teravainen injury, and things were looking bleak.

They did get a bit of good news about a depth injury as Jack Drury was at practice on Thursday:

Drury on the ice in a yellow no-contact jersey

— Cory Lavalette (@corylav) April 27, 2023

Drury has been out since early in Game 4 due to an upper-body injury that the team has said is not a concussion. It isn't as if Drury is a key cog to the roster, but losing any more guys at this point is a loss, almost regardless of their station on the team.  

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Now that their AHL affiliate’s season is over, Minnesota recalled a slew of their young players ahead of Friday night’s home game against Dallas:

The #mnwild has recalled forwards Adam Beckman, Steven Fogarty, Nic Petan, Marco Rossi, Nick Swaney and Sammy Walker, defensemen Daemon Hunt and Dakota Mermis and goaltender Zane McIntyre from the @IAWild.

— Minnesota Wild PR (@mnwildPR) April 27, 2023

Minnesota is down 3-2 in the series and are standing on the precipice of another first-round exit, their third in three years. Remember that the cap penalties for the Suter/Parise buyouts actually go up next season to $14.7M. Despite a rising salary cap, the Wild will effectively have less space than they did in 2022-23.

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More on Dallas forward Joe Pavelski:

Joe Pavelski is on the ice for practice but he's in a blue jersey with fourth liners/scratches. Tyler Seguin is in the green practice jersey with Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz. pic.twitter.com/dVGMBgjbaQ

— Saad Yousuf (@SaadYousuf126) April 27, 2023

It doesn't appear like he's on his way back, but that he's practicing with the team would lead me to believe it's not out of the question. Hopefully we get more answers sometime Friday.   

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Good news on the health front for the Los Angeles Kings:

LAK health news:
Blake Lizotte in full contact jersey at LAK practice.

— Dennis Bernstein (@DennisTFP) April 27, 2023

Not that Blake Lizotte is a game-breaker for them, but he is a useful bottom-6 option, and Los Angeles is not going to beat Edmonton by going toe-to-toe with the top of the lineup.

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The first elimination of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs was that of the Winnipeg Jets at the hands of the Vegas Golden Knights. Vegas won Game 5 by a margin of 4-1, also winning the series 4-1, and sending Winnipeg to the golf course.

In all honesty, this was a game I shut off after the second period. Vegas had scored three times in the second period to make it a 4-0 game and Winnipeg had managed 14 shots on goal. The injuries that the Jets had to endure made this game, and series, a formality more than a contest. It isn't to say the Jets didn't play hard or anything, but removing key players from a lineup that didn't have the depth to replace them was always going to be a very uphill battle.

Chandler Stephenson scored twice, including once on the power play, while Mark Stone put up a goal and two assists, as the duo led the charge in the fifth and deciding contest. After being held pointless in Game 1, Stone put up three goals and eight points in four games to lead the Golden Knights charge. It is safe to say that he has had a massive impact on the outlook of this team.

Laurent Brossoit stopped 29 of 30 shots in his victory and in defeat of his former team. He wasn't otherworldly this series, but he held the net and made sure games didn't get out of control. Being above average is good enough for this team, and that's what Brossoit was.

There will be a lot more on Winnipeg's season, and future, from many of us here at Dobber, so I won't go too long here. All I will say is that all of Mark Scheifele, Connor Hellebuyck, Nino Niederreiter, and Blake Wheeler each have one year left on their contracts and all will be at least 30 years old for next season. This could be the last time we see this Winnipeg core in the postseason, which feels like a shame. Winnipeg was never really able to replace Dustin Byfuglien until this season from Morrissey, and then he was hurt this series. We will see what the summer brings.

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At the risk of sounding a self-congratulatory, I wrote a post on my personal blog before the start of the Tampa Bay-Toronto series about why Michael Eyssimont (and Nick Paul, by extension) were key players to watch in the series. The injury to Eyssimont early in Game 1 kind of made that moot very quickly.

Fast forward to Game 5 with the Lightning facing elimination, and Eyssimont returns to the lineup with Tanner Jeannot heading to the press box. The result was the Eyssimont-Paul-Ross Colton line utterly dominating Toronto by scoring twice, including the game-winner by the returning player as Tampa Bay skated away with a 4-2 win. That line out chanced the Leafs 7-1 when they were on the ice together, to boot. The trio's two goals stood as the winning and insurance markers.

Andrei Vasilevskiy saved 28 of 30 shots, including one nifty shoulder save late in the game, to help his team to Game 6 and a trip back home.

Morgan Rielly and Auston Matthews tallied in the loss with Matthews having three shots and four hits.

Tampa Bay has played some poorly at times in this series, but this was not one of those games. They looked fast and aggressive, never letting off the gas. Toronto may have to look to shake up its depth, and Michael Bunting is certainly returning to the lineup when the Leafs head to Florida for Saturday's tilt.

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After dropping the first two games of the series at home, the New Jersey Devils have now reeled off three straight wins after shutting out the New York Rangers 4-0 in New Jersey. Akira Schmid stopped 23 shots in the shutout and has now saved 80 of 82 shots since entering the series. Perhaps we can look to New York's lack of shot generation, or net attack, but Schmid has definitely been the story of these last three games, and we can't dismiss his excellent performance.

Erik Haula had two goals on four shots, and added an assist with two blocks, while Dawson Mercer had one tally and one helper. Mercer's was his first career playoff goal, and it was a wicked bar-down-and-out one-timer while short-handed. It really was a thing of beauty.

Igor Shesterkin faced 40 shots and stopped 37 of them. Maybe he could have been a bit better but the team isn't going to win game by scoring zero goals.

Game 6 is Saturday night.

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To cap off the week, we are going to continue the offseason series of reviewing the (fantasy) regular seasons of the non-playoff teams. We've already touched on a pair of teams in each Conference, including Nashville yesterday and Pittsburgh earlier this week. Today we head back to the East, and to the Ottawa Senators.

These Ramblings will cover the Sens from their successes/failures, improvements/declines, and where they go in the offseason. All of this will be, of course, through a fantasy hockey lens.

As usual, we are going to use our Frozen Tools as well as Natural Stat Trick for our primary data sources, unless otherwise indicated. Clear as mud? Great.

Successes

First and foremost, Tim Stützle asserted himself as a superstar-in-the-making. He may already be there, in fact. Regardless, here are the improvements Stützle made from his first two seasons:

• Points per 60 minutes increase at 5-on-5 by nearly 55%.
• Shot attempts/60 increase at 5-on-5 by nearly 24%.
• Points/60 increase at 5-on-4 by 7%.
• Shot attempts/60 increase at 5-on-4 by over 17%.

That is a lot of increases, even on the power play where he excelled in his first couple of campaigns. The gains made at 5-on-5 are a big reason why he cracked the 90-point plateau, adding over 50% to his point total from a year ago.

One explanation for his points increase at 5-on-5 is the jump in Scoring Chance Contributions/60 minutes at 5-on-5. The SCC/60 stat is simply a player's individual scoring chances plus assists on teammate scoring chances, and this is all tracked by Corey Sznajder. That rate increased by a whopping 45% from 2021-22. His number (11.03/60) for 2022-23 didn't put him among the elite like Connor McDavid or Nathan MacKinnon, but it did put him in the next tier with names like Kevin Fiala (10.93/60), Jason Robertson (11.0/60), John Tavares (11.26/60). That improved offensive play at 5-on-5 was a huge key to Stützle's offensive success, which led to his finish as a top-25 skater on Yahoo! Fantasy (coincidentally, just ahead of Tavares).

Brady Tkachuk hasn't quite reached his final fantasy form, but 35 goals, 83 points, 29 PPPs, 347 shots, and 242 hits is about as close as he'll get. His value was hurt in leagues with plus/minus, but in multi-cat leagues without them, he was likely a top-10 skater. That is about what we should expect from him moving forward, though his older brother offers insight into how younger Brady can improve his point totals further (it might be toning down the sheer physicality).

The last guy we'll touch on is rookie defenceman Jake Sanderson. Perhaps it wasn't a great fantasy season with four goals and 32 points, but he did put up 17 PPPs and 190 combined hits/blocks. For a 20-year-old rookie, that's pretty good. It's fair to wonder how much PP run he gets with a healthy Thomas Chabot and Jakob Chychrun, but he had positive impacts at both ends of the ice (per Evolving Hockey), and his shooting/playmaking metrics were very good for a rookie blue liner:

Again, for fantasy, the general problem is likely going to be the pecking order among Ottawa defencemen and not his actual play. Think of Miro Heiskanen playing behind John Klingberg in Dallas.

A quick shout out to Claude Giroux, too. It isn't often a 35-year-old All-Star hits a career-high in goals (35) but here we are.

Failures

Despite some players having very good-to-great fantasy seasons, it was still underwhelming in some respects. Alex DeBrincat was a huge offseason addition and posted his second-lowest goal total (27) of his career, including the shortened 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. It was shooting percentage-driven because if he shoots his career rate heading into 2022-23, which was 15.5%, he scores 40 goals. We should expect a rebound, whether it's in Ottawa or elsewhere.

The team's failure to score regularly at 5-on-5 – 24^th in goals/60 minutes thanks to a league-worst 7.5% shooting – was a problem that hampered a lot of players. The Tkachuk-Stützle-Giroux combination was successful, but everyone else was not. Outside of those three forwards, the team had one regular forward finish in the top-half of the league in on-ice goals/60, or goals scored with that player on the ice, and it was Mathieu Joseph, and he missed a third of the season. Despite the offseason additions, Ottawa was a poor scoring team with the top line off the ice, and it's a wonder how much the Josh Norris injury hampered here.

That 5-on-5 scoring failure really hurt Thomas Chabot's fantasy value. He wasn't bad, when healthy, but his points and shots per game were a three-year low, and his assists per game were a five-year low. A young team on the upswing made significant offseason additions and their top offensive defenceman got worse for fantasy. We'll get back to this in a minute.

Finally, the goaltending. Trading Filip Gustavsson did not work out in the short-term and despite bringing in Cam Talbot, the team's save percentage fell from .904 to .895. It is hard to say the goaltending outright failed when injuries played a part, but this did not go as planned.

Improvements

One improvement was made on the penalty kill. It might not seem overly relevant, but a better PK should help the goaltender(s) of the future. This is where teams shot from against the Ottawa penalty kill in 2021-22, per HockeyViz, with the brown areas being areas where shots were taken more often than league average:

And what they did this year:

More from the right circle, but a lot less from the close-in scoring areas. That helped dropped their goals against per minute from last year, though their penchant for taking a lot of penalties led to a high raw total of goals against.

The team legitimately generated more offence with the top guys off the ice, they just couldn't finish. With Stützle and Tkachuk off the ice at 5-on-5 in 2021-22, the team generated 2.1 expected goals and 26.3 shots per 60 minutes. This season, those numbers with the big boys on the bench jumped to 2.5 expected goals and 30.6 shots per 60 minutes. The team also shot 6.7% with them off the ice at 5-on-5, so that relates back to the lack second- and third-line scoring we talked about earlier. Hopefully, a rebound in shooting percentage in 2023-24 leads to more goals and, thus, more fantasy value for the non-elite options.

Declines

It should be said that as much as they produced on the power play, the team was less efficient with it in 2022-23. The top PP unit's goals/60 minutes at 5-on-4 dropped from 9.75 a year ago to 9.09 this season, a decline of nearly 7%. The reason they produced so much in raw totals was they led the league in PP opportunities per game by a wide margin; there was a bigger gap between them and second-place Pittsburgh than between Pittsburgh and sixth-place Edmonton. Perhaps this is another situation where having Norris back in the lineup sees them tick back up, and if they can keep drawing penalties at an elite rate, they could reach another level in 2023-24. This is a situation where a decline isn't a big problem.

The big declines all came due to percentages. At 5-on-5, the team's shooting percentage dropped from 7.7% in 2021-22 to 7.53% in 2022-23. It might not seem like a lot, but it pushed them from 26^th in the league by SH% to a distant last. They dropped more than the league average, and that relative drop is important. For a third time: please help us, Josh Norris.

It was much of the same, as mentioned earlier, with their goalies. Ottawa had two problems: too many penalties, and bad percentages. Both things can be helped with coaching, and hopefully a bit of positive regression.

Where They Go From Here

The anticipation is another big offseason from Ottawa. There should be a new ownership group for the real offseason, and the hope is they want to make a big splash as a sign of goodwill towards the fanbase.

Even if they don't, there is a lot of housekeeping to do. CapFriendly has the team with more than $16M in cap space for 2023-24, but that'll disappear fast: Shane Pinto is an RFA and though he won't be expensive, he'll get a sizeable raise from his sub-$1M entry-level deal; Erik Brännström's play this season may have added a lot to his own impending RFA deal; depth guys like Dylan Gambrell and Julien Gauthier might eat into that $16M, too, or their replacements will.

Then we get to the blue line. Both Travis Hamonic and Nick Holden are free agents. Neither is a key piece of the team, but it will force them to turn over the blue line to a bunch of young players, with Artem Zub being their oldest blue liner, turning 28 years old in October. It's likely they bolster the defensive depth, but it will be with true depth pieces, and not another Chychrun-like addition.

Finally, the goalies are gone. The only net-minders under contract for 2023-24 are the young goalies in the minors. Ottawa has to decide whether they want to give the keys to them or go get some veteran help in free agency. They may have to sign one, if not two, NHL goalies in the offseason.

And then we get to the crux of all this in DeBrincat. He is an RFA and the team already said they'd qualify him, which means if he's in Ottawa next season, it's likely his cap hit starts with a 9, and it could hit double-digits. If we assume DeBrincat is back next year on his $9M qualifying offer, it leaves the team with about $7.1M in cap space for Pinto, Brännström, the forward depth, and both goalies, pending further moves. That is what makes this offseason so interesting for Ottawa. Some very important franchise decisions will need to be made in the new ownership group's first offseason. No pressure, Pierre.

This is a team that is clearly on the rise, still, but might need to change the way they play offensively a bit. While some of the East's recent beasts might be on the decline – Washington, Pittsburgh, maybe others depending how the offseason goes – there are franchises like Buffalo and New Jersey also on the rise. Ottawa has all the pieces to make a great top-half of the roster. A healthy season from Norris will go a long way to giving this team two great scoring lines, and then the depth will decide how much of a contender this team actually is. Interesting, indeed.