It is nearly time for the 2023-24 Dobber Hockey Midseason Fantasy Guide to drop! It has everything fantasy managers need for the second half of the season including projections, prospect updates/recalls, trade deadline targets, rebounds/regressions, and a whole lot more. Help support what we do year-round by ordering your copy of the Midseason Guide here.

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Good news on the Bowen Byram and Artturi Lehkonen injury fronts:

Jared Bednar says:

-Byram and Manson day-to-day
-Lehky will join team on upcoming road trip
-Landeskog hopes to hit the ice at some point
-Miles Wood (influenza) back soon

— Vic Lombardi (@VicLombardi) January 10, 2024

It is a bit worrisome that the Gabriel Landeskog timeline is still "hope to skate at some point" but that's probably the best we can hope for at this point.

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Some big news about Connor Bedard:

Hearing Connor Bedard underwent surgery on Monday to repair his fractured jaw.

Bedard is expected to miss approximately 6-8 weeks, meaning #Blackhawks will unfortunately need an injury replacement at #NHLAllStar.@DailyFaceoff

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) January 10, 2024

That timeline could carry Bedard right into March, so this is a huge blow to the team and to fantasy managers. At least it's nothing like a knee/back injury so he should be his normal self when he returns.

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Toronto recalled goalie Ilya Samsonov:

The @MapleLeafs have recalled G Ilya Samsonov from the @TorontoMarlies.

G Dennis Hildeby has been loaned to the Marlies.

— Leafs PR (@LeafsPR) January 10, 2024

He has had a very bad year so hopefully the reset in the AHL helps him refocus. We'll find out soon enough.

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Buffalo had an update on winger Jeff Skinner:

Jeff Skinner has an upper-body injury, per the Sabres. No timeline yet. He had imaging this morning so they're still waiting for more information.

— Heather Engel (@engelheather) January 10, 2024

It really sucks that this team's forward group hasn't really been able to stay healthy all year. Hopefully they can pull something together after the All-Star break to give them a boost heading into 2023-24.

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Leo Carlsson may be back in the next week for Anaheim, which is great news considering how bad that injury looked at first glance.

Coach Cronin did say that things didn't look nearly as good for Trevor Zegras, so don't expect him back anytime soon.

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Jamie Drysdale was slotted on Philadelphia's second PP unit for the game on Wednesday night. I will say that, as someone that has to pay close attention to lineup changes on a daily basis, Drysdale could be on the top PP unit for the very next game.

It was also a successful debut for the newest Flyer as Philadelphia took a 3-2 shootout win over Montreal. It was a comeback win, too, as Sean Monahan scored 90 seconds into the game and David Savard got a lucky deflection 10 minutes later off a point shot to make it 2-0. Owen Tippett scored not long after to cut into the lead 2-1 and Morgan Frost scored a power play goal (assisted by Drysdale) to tie things up in the second. Sean Couturier tallied a nice drag-and-snap shootout goal to give his team the extra point.

I'm going to be honest, as a Habs fan, I've been pretty entertained this season, even among all the losses, but this was the least entertaining game of theirs this season. Not that it matters for fantasy, but outside of a couple posts, it was a lot of ho-hum play, even as the Flyers dominated. It was one of those games where Philadelphia's excellent defence just neutralized Montreal's limited offence while the Flyers struggled to generate much in the way of dangerous chances. Mercifully, these two teams don't play again for two and a half months.

Drysdale finished his debut with that one power play assist, two shots, a hit, and a block in 19:46 of ice time. The Flyers ran seven defencemen, and he had the second most TOI behind Travis Sanheim. It didn't take him long to become a Torts favourite.  

Kaiden Guhle finished the game with one assist, one hit, and 10 (!) blocks. He is now averaging nearly three blocks per game as he looks every bit of Savard's heir apparent.

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Dallas laid a beatdown on Minnesota 7-2 on Wednesday night. The Wild continue on without a lot of their top stars and the seams of a roster handcuffed by buyouts are showing. Dallas was outshooting Minnesota 24-9 after two periods and had a 3-0 lead, to give some indication of what was going on.

Joe Pavelski, Jason Robertson, Tyler Seguin, Roope Hintz, Matt Duchene, and Sam Steel all scored for Dallas. Nils Lundkvist also scored and added an assist on the Duchene goal. He had three shots and two blocks in a great multi-cat night. Lundkvist now has five points in his last six games after starting the season with five points in 23 games. He should be a lineup regular now with Miro Heiskanen out and he's still a decent offensive defenceman. It'll be interesting to see what he can do with a secure role and secondary PP minutes.

Esa Lindell had three assists, two shots, a block, and a hit while Mason Marchment had a pair of helpers. Marchment now has 32 points, exceeding his total of 31 a season ago in 28 fewer games played.

Matt Boldy had a goal and an assist (PP) in the loss, adding four shots, two hits, and two PIMs to his season totals. Jesper Wallstedt allowed all seven goals on 34 shots.

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Colorado shut out Vegas 3-0 on Wednesday night thanks to a 25-save shutout from Alexandar Georgiev, his 23^rd win on the season. It pushes his save percentage up to .897, which isn't good, but he leads the league in wins and is second in saves to Ilya Sorokin. He might not be having a great season by his ratios, but he could start 65 games this season and that's a heavy, heavy workload.

Valeri Nichushkin scored twice (PP) on five shots, adding a hit in the meantime. Funny enough, later this Ramblings there is a bit on why a downswing from Nichushkin is in the cards for the second half, but he now has 20 goals and 34 points in 28 games since the injury to Artturi Lehkonen. It has been quite the two-month stretch.

Logan O'Connor also scored while Mikko Rantanen had two power play assists on Nichushkin's goals. Rantanen had a shot-less game on November 27^th, and since that point he has 82 shots in 21 games. It helps that he's skating 24:30 a night in that span.

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Every year, the fantasy hockey gods provide us with players who give us a lot of fantasy value relative to their draft cost, and those surprises can often be league-winning options; Andrei Kuzmenko and Erik Karlsson are two examples from 2022-23.

With that in mind, let's review some players that have been surprises so far in 2023-24, which are sustainable moving forward, and which are not. As usual, data from Natural Stat Trick, Frozen Tools, and AllThreeZones, unless otherwise indicated.

Valeri Nichushkin

This hurts me, because Nichushkin is a player I've believed in offensively since before he's been drafted, and the last few seasons have been awesome to see in that regard (injuries aside). However, the injured Artturi Lehkonen is with Colorado on their current road trip, so his return seems imminent. It's no guarantee he's back in the next couple of weeks, but things certainly look that way.

In Lehkonen's 12 games to start the season, he was a fixture of the top power play unit over both Nichushkin and Jonathan Drouin. Of late, it seems as if Drouin has finally found chemistry with Nathan MacKinnon both at 5-on-5 and on the power play. The former Montreal Canadien was acquired for that exact purpose, so taking him out of those roles when Lehkonen returns seems unlikely. In sum, Lehkonen's return should not only ensure that Nichushkin remains on the second line, but also on the second power play unit.

Since Lehkonen's injury, nearly 44% of Nichushkin's production has been on the power play, including 11 of his 18 of his goals. If he loses that role, and is stuck playing on a non-MacKinnon even strength line, his fantasy value is crushed. There is no guarantee he will drop the PP spot to Lehkonen, but he very well could, and then go from a top-50 fantasy skater to a fringe option in shallower formats.  

Robert Thomas

If St. Louis were a better team, we'd probably be hearing more about Thomas being in the 94^th percentile of all forwards in points/60 at 5-on-5 this season. His rate of 2.74/60 is, as of Wednesday morning, higher than JT Miller, Sidney Crosby, Jack Eichel, Roope Hintz, and Auston Matthews. That is very, very impressive. What is holding back Thomas's production, even as he's on pace for a career-high 86 points, is the St. Louis power play; his points/60 on the man advantage is the lowest for him in any season where he's played at least 35 games, and it's even lower than his 5-on-5 rate.

There are two reasons why things can be even better in the second half, though. First, he's getting a lot of ice time – since Craig Berube was fired, Thomas has averaged 21:37 per game, over a minute more than he did under Berube.

Second, and more importantly, is that the St. Louis power play has seen a big turnaround in some respects. Under Berube, the current top PP configuration registered just 55.9 shots per 60 minutes, a number that has exploded to 75.1 per 60 minutes under Drew Bannister. An awful 3% shooting is keeping their goals minimal, but there should be a huge turnaround if they can keep it up: the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons saw 32 instances of a player being on the ice for at least 70 shots per 60 minutes on the power play, and none of those 32 instances saw an on-ice goal rate lower than 8.2/60 minutes (and well over half those instances exceeded 10 goals per 60 minutes). It would be a huge outlier for the St. Louis power play to keep up their current shot rates and not see a goals explosion, and that's why Thomas's season should not only continue being as productive as it's been, but likely even better. It's a matter of the coach not getting frustrated by the lack of goals and breaking up their PP unit.   

Joel Farabee

The top three marks by points/60 at 5-on-5 this season belong to Elias Pettersson, Connor McDavid and… Joel Farabee? It seems improbable, but he went into Wednesday night's action as one of three regular forwards to be north of 3.0 points/60 at 5-on-5. It has helped him to 30 points in 40 games, and it seems all but assured that he cruises past his career-high of 39 points set a year ago.

Of course, that level of production should cause fantasy owners to perk up a bit and there is cause for concern in the second half. Not only just because he plays on a Flyers team whose line combinations are about as reliable as a 1972 Ford Pinto on a cross-country road trip, but because he's registering a point on 90% of the goals scored with him on the ice at 5-on-5. For reference, there were zero forwards in either of 2021-22 or 2022-23 to skate 900 minutes at 5-on-5 and crest the 90% mark; Pettersson led all of those forwards last year at 86.2%, and he was the only one over 85%. Farabee is on pace for over 1000 minutes at 5-on-5.

All this is to say it seems very likely Farabee's production takes a dive in the second half, and without a good Flyers power play, there aren't other ways to soften the cushion of that decline. Expect 20-25 points over his next 40 games, rather than 30-plus, unless his PP production rises sharply.

Jake Walman

This all depends on what people are looking for from Walman over the second half. He should keep proving good PIM levels and great shot-blocking numbers, so that's a positive on his side. The negative is that he's shooting over 14%, which will drop, and there are other signs of regression.

First off, he has four power play points, and his 82-game pace has him pushing towards double-digit PPPs. The problem is he's also registered a point on every single PP goal scored with him on the ice, and he's seen under 3% of the team's power play time over the last month. With his power play role completely gone from what it was earlier in the season, and that production rate sure to decline anyway, he may not register a single PPP in the second half unless there are injuries to Detroit's key defencemen.

Second, Evolving Hockey has Walman with the worst even-strength defensive impact of all Detroit's defenders. That isn't an end-all, be-all stat, but Walman also has the highest 5-on-5 goals against rate on Detroit's blue line this season, and it has gotten worse over the last month. In other words, there is a reason why he was a healthy scratch recently, and if he doesn't show improvement, there may be more healthy scratches, if not just a reduced role when he is dressed. It is an instance where poor defensive play, while not directly related to fantasy value, will impact fantasy value. He is good enough to turn things around, but the runway is getting shorter.