After falling behind 2-0 in the series, the New Jersey Devils won four of the next five games, including their 4-0 shutout of the New York Rangers Monday night in Game 7. Credit to Akira Schmid, who saved all 31 shots faced in this game to secure the win, his second blank sheet in his five games played. This particular game, however, was how well the Devils played nearly start to finish. The Rangers had a few chances, but they were far from the better team on the night. Goals from Michael McLeod, Tomas Tatar, and Erik Haula highlights the depth scoring they got. It was vital to their success.

A special mention to Ondrej Palat. He missed over 30 games in the regular season and didn't quite play to his standards otherwise. Palat made two key plays – one on Haula's goal and one on McLeod's goal – that gave him a couple assists and was a big help in getting New Jersey to the second round. Playoffs are a different game for the former Lightning attacker.

John Marino had a pair of assists in a very good game for him, while Jesper Bratt added an empty-net goal, his first tally of the series. Maybe it gets him going for Round 2.

Speaking of which, New Jersey moves on to play Carolina next round. Game 1 of their matchup goes Wednesday night in Raleigh.

Timo Meier took a huge hit from Jacob Trouba in the third period and left the game, but he did reappear on the bench for the celebration. We will pass long updates as we get them. Replays seemed to indicate a lot of head contact, incidental or not, so hopefully it's nothing serious for Meier.

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Of all the big stories from the regular season, the failure of the Calgary Flames to reach the postseason was a big one. Despite a lot of offseason overhaul, the introductions of Jonathan Huberdeau, Nazem Kadri, and MacKenzie Weegar, among others, was supposed to keep this team at the top of the West. Six months of sub-Buffalo-Sabres-level goaltending later, and the team missed the postseason, and the future was very up in the air. A bit of clarity was provided on Monday:

Hearing that Darryl Sutter has been let go as Flames head coach.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) May 1, 2023

Darryl Sutter finishes his three-year stint as Flames coach with a record of 114-75-31 record, good for 13^th in the league. That isn't awful, but this isn't a team aiming to just make the playoffs, either.

There isn't a whole lot more to say here until we see who the replacement is. I am a believer in Sutter as a coach, I just don't think this was the right roster for him. Outside of the bad goaltending, the big problem was the lack of offensive creativity from the whole team. Perhaps a new coach can give them the offensive jolt the team desperately needs.  

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On the good-news front for Calgary:

#Flames Don Maloney has chatted with Oliver Kylington. Says he is "excited about coming back next season."

— Wes Gilbertson (@WesGilbertson) May 1, 2023

Kylington missed the entire season attending to a personal matter. Hopefully all is well with him and he can get back in September. He was a big piece missing from the blue line all year.

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The end of the NHL regular season brings a lot of news regarding signings of college free agents, players already drafted, and overseas professionals. Most of these deals end up being nothing of import, but as we just saw with Andrei Kuzmenko in Vancouver – more on him later – there are some that end up being fantasy diamonds.

Washington's first-round pick from 2022, Ivan Miroshnichenko, has terminated his KHL contract and is free to join the Capitals whenever he chooses. He just turned 19 back in February and had three goals in 23 games with Omsk. His Dobber Profile can be found here.

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Florida provided an update on forward Ryan Lomberg:

Maurice says Lomberg is week to week.

— Jameson Olive (@JamesonCoop) May 1, 2023

It doesn't appear as if he'll return in the second round, and it's to-be-determined after that. A tough break for a guy who had been a good depth piece for the Panthers.

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Joel Eriksson Ek shed some light on what he was going through in the postseason:

JEEk attempted to play Game 3 on the broken leg but realized he just couldn't. Surgery came afterward.

"It didn't hold up." #mnwild

— Jessi Pierce (@jessi_pierce) May 1, 2023

For a bit of clarification: he had a broken leg, tried to play on it, lasted less than 20 seconds, and that was that. Hopefully he's ready to go for September.

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Today's Ramblings continues my offseason series of reviewing each of the non-playoff teams from a fantasy perspective. The teams that in the postseason will get their fair share of coverage and by the time the playoffs are over, we're moving to free agency and the Draft. It is important to look back before we get too far ahead of ourselves.

We have already covered five other non-playoff teams and those are linked at the end of the column. Today, we are going back to the West Coast and looking at a franchise with wide-ranging expectations: the Vancouver Canucks.

As usual, data will be taken from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick, unless otherwise indicated. This will cover their successes and failures, improvements and declines, as well as where they go from here, all through a fantasy lens.

Successes

There was a lot of fantasy goodness here. Elias Pettersson had far-and-away his best season ever, posting career-highs in goals (39), assists (63), shots (257), blocks (89), and hits (74). It is funny that he did so well considering his points/60 at 5-on-4 were a three-year low for him (in 82-game seasons) while his 5-on-4 shooting percentage (9.8%) was by far a career-low as well (previous low was 12.7% in 2019-20). Like Sidney Crosby in Pittsburgh, Pettersson had a fantastic season and was short-changed on the power play, which speaks to how good he really was. This pushed him to the 10^th overall player in Yahoo! Fantasy this season, ranking seventh among skaters.

Quinn Hughes also had a career year. Though he didn't really increase his shot rate as anticipated (his shots per minute went down slightly, actually), Hughes set career-high marks in assists (69), points (76), PIMs (34), shots (154, thanks to a career-high in games played and TOI), blocks (71), hits (29), and power-play points (34). His problem in fantasy persists, though: 100 blocks+hits is by far a career-high mark, and it was still lower than Josh Morrissey's block total alone (119) in 112 fewer minutes played. Hughes is a tremendous producer, and that makes him very valuable in points-only formats, but as good as that production is, defencemen are scoring more in general anyway, and he's not adding a lot to his peripherals. We'll call it a success with an asterisk.

There were other small successes, but the last we'll discuss is Andrei Kuzmenko. The offseason signing out of the KHL surpassed all possible expectations with 39 goals, 35 assists, and 19 PPPs. He missed just one game (can't remember if it was an injury or not) and led the team in power-play goals with 14. Of course, the percentages were the kingmaker here: Kuzmenko led all forwards (min. 1000 minutes) in 5-on-5 shooting percentage at 22.6%. Only two other forwards in the sample (282 total forwards) were over 19% and Kuzmenko was the only one over 21%. At all strengths, he finished at 27.3% shooting while no other forward was over 22% (again, minimum of 1000 minutes played). As good as he was, if he repeats his shot volume in 2023-24 but shoots 15%, he's waiver-wire fodder in a lot of formats. He is going to be a very volatile player at the draft table in September.

Failures

The failures got coach Bruce Boudreau fired so there were a lot of them.

JT Miller has arguably the worst season of his career. Evolving Hockey has him finishing the year with negative wins above replacement (-0.1), something he hadn't done in any season where he played at least 50 games. Considering he was at 2.9 WAR in 2021-22, it was a huge collapse. By expected WAR, it was his worst 82-game season since leaving New York at the end of the 2017-18 season.

That doesn't tell his whole story, though. A lot of that value is tied up in a drop at even strength, which tracks: Vancouver scored 2.82 goals/60 at even strength with Miller on the ice, again the lowest mark for his career in any season where he played at least 50 games. That was thanks to the team posting its worst shooting percentage with him on the ice (8.7%) for that same 50-plus-game stretch. When we look at data tracked by Corey Sznajder, we can see why this happened.

In the 2021-22 season, Miller's shot contributions at 5-on-5 (individual shots plus assists on teammate shots) was over a standard deviation above league average, and though he didn't shoot a lot (he never has), he was a very good playmaker. That combination made him an offensive comparison stylistically to guys like Mats Zuccarello and Tyler Bertuzzi:

Conversely, if we look at the same measure for 2022-23, Miller still wasn't shooting but his playmaking fell off a cliff, to the point where he compared stylistically to… Milan Lucic:

It makes sense that if his playmaking got a lot worse, his team scored less with him on the ice.

Despite that, he still posted 32 goals and 82 points in 81 games, posting 30 PPPs, 223 shots, and 200 hits. The hits and blocks were career-best marks for him, so the drop in points was (partly) made up by a rise in peripherals. However, he finished just inside the top-50 Yahoo! skaters and was likely a disappointment because of it, given his higher Average Draft Position.

Both Brock Boeser and Ilya Mikheyev would technically count here, but both fought injuries all year. Boeser was hurt from the outset and posted his second-lowest shots/60 rate of his career. Whatever the issue, it's hard to say a guy with 18 goals, 178 shots, and 49 hits in 74 games was a success. Ditto for Mikheyev, who is hopefully 100% healthy for the start of the 2023-24 campaign.

We can throw Thatcher Demko into the "was hurt and didn't play to his level because of it" basket, at least partially.

Improvements

It really is harsh to say this, but the team improved considerably after Oliver Ekman-Larsson was put on the shelf. With OEL on the ice in his 54 games, the team allowed 3.0 expected goals against/60 minutes at 5-on-5 and 3.91 actual goals against/60 minutes, both the worst marks on the team. With him on the ice at 5-on-5, the team's goal differential was -20 with a 45.2% expected goal share. With him off the ice at 5-on-5, the team's goal differential was -3 with a 47.9% expected goal share. Overall, until OEL's injury, the team was 26^th by expected goals against and 30^th by goals against. After his injury, they jumped to 12^th by expected goals against and fifth by goals against. A healthy Thatcher Demko helped the goals against – and perhaps a new voice in the room with now-coach Rick Tocchet – but the team was much better without OEL on the ice before Tocchet got there. The team did improve defensively, a lot, over their final 30 games, but it's fair to wonder how much of it was the team just not playing their worst defensive defenceman and how much of it was the new coach.

That improvement also applies penalty kill, as the team's PK goals against/60 minutes with OEL off the ice (8.2) was nearly half of OEL's goals against/60 while on the PK (16.1).

It is important to note how much better the team was. There is a colossal difference in what the Canucks looked like with and without OEL on the ice, and the improved PK with good discipline helped Vancouver immensely down the stretch. It is a glimpse into what the team can be moving forward. That makes a big difference in the fantasy outlook for Demko, because this defence is at least competent without their weakest link eating 20 minutes a night.

Declines

It is hard to say what counts as an improvement and a decline, given the change in coaches and the out-sized, negative impacts that OEL had on the team. For example, the PK clearly declined in 2022-23 compared to 2021-22, but if we take out the OEL impact, they were either similar or even improved in the most recent season. The 5-on-5 team defence also declined but, again, *gestures at the previous 350 words*. I guess as long as OEL heads to Robidas Island, as much as that sucks to say, the declines could be short-lived.

There was a decline in play from Demko but as referenced earlier, it's a wonder how much was related to injury. It looked like he tried to gut it out earlier in the year, and it led to an .883 save percentage through early December. After his return in late February – which coincided with OEL being on the shelf – he posted a .918 save percentage in 17 games. That is closer to what we might expect so while there was a decline from 2021-22, it isn't quite a straight line. Demko could end up being a real good value at the draft table in September.  

Where Do They Go From Here

The problem, at the end of all this, is two-fold.

First, it's what to do with OEL. His ankle injury ended his season prematurely and it's a wonder if he can ever regain his form. He was completely fine in 2021-22, but that is also the only season out of his last seven years that he had a positive impact on both expected goals and actual goals. CapFriendly has OEL with four more years on his contract at $7.26M per season. If he can be the guy he was in 2021-22, that is fine (but not great). If he is literally any other OEL iteration from recent history, he is a colossal drag on the entire roster both on and off the ice.

As for the rest of the roster, it's dicey. The team is projected to be over the cap already, though a lot can depend on what they do with OEL (and others). It will be really hard to add to the roster without subtracting elsewhere, and this team has basically two types of players: young guys on ELCs and veterans on $4M+ contracts. They probably don't want to trade the former and they probably can't trade the latter, at least not without paying a premium.

Vancouver legitimately played better down the stretch and that is good news for Demko keeper league owners. They still have a very good top PP unit so production from the top guys isn't a huge concern; Pettersson, Miller, and Hughes should have good fantasy seasons again in 2023-24. However, with Boeser, Kuzmenko, Mikheyev, and Conor Garland around, there could be lots of competition for the rest of that top PP unit. That doesn't even count Filip Hronek, who saw a bit of top PPTOI in a 3F/2D setup. If Miller doesn't turn around his 5-on-5 play, it transfers a lot of value to the power play, and reduces viable fantasy options outside the Pettersson line. Another interesting Vancouver offseason is ahead of us.

Previous Offseason Reviews:

Buffalo

Calgary

Pittsburgh

Nashville

Ottawa