On Monday, the Columbus Blue Jackets announced that they had hired Dean Evason as their new Head Coach. He has one of the winningest records among active head coaches, and was very well regarded from his time in Minnesota. While he was there, the team was managing the earlier stages of the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts, which limited the ability to fill the roster with higher-talent individuals. Nevertheless, he managed to keep the team around the playoff bubble.

Interestingly, he was the only coach that Kirill Kaprizov had ever known in the NHL until last season's firing. He paced for over 100 points twice under Evason, though last year he was under a point-per-game player before Evason was fired. After John Hynes came in Kaprizov continued at a point-per-game until the mid-point of the season before exploding for 61 points in his final 39 games – a 128-point pace. Maybe not the best indicator for Johnny Gaudreau's revival.

Brock Faber also exploded after Evason left, finally being placed on the power play and thriving there. Confounding that a little though is the injuries to Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon also would have played a role there, making it tougher to decipher what was Evason and what was circumstantial.

What we can take away from some other numbers is that Evason didn't always heavily favour his top powerplay unit, but he does always run with four forwards and one defenceman. That bodes well for Zach Werenski, but may limit the effectiveness of any other offensive defencemen in Columbus.

Overall, Evason is a good team coach though, and this should help the goal differential and the goaltending. It will be interesting to see how he adjusts without a player as skilled as Kaprizov, and whether he can get the most out of players like Patrik Laine while keeping all of Columbus' excessive number of depth players happy and productive as well.

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With the release of the NHL schedule a few weeks ago, we can start breaking down a lot of the numbers, data, and trends that we get from it.

Stick taps to Eric Daoust who had the schedule loaded up into Frozentools within hours, where it's downloadable in its entirety as an Excel sheet.

H2H leagues function because the last few weeks of the season (either weeks 23-25 or 24-26 of the NHL season this year) where the top teams face off and the winner advances towards a championship. Those three win-or-go-home weeks are critical, and finding any advantage that you can is a must for competing. Having more man-games than your opponent is one way to get an edge, and it's one of the easiest ones that requires the least amount of actual hockey knowledge or research. Simply get productive players from the teams with schedules, and trade away the players from teams with bad schedules. Easier said than done sometimes in evaluating how to balance making sure you make the playoffs, does a slightly better player with less games have less value than a worse player with more games, and with the possibility that NHL players are traded within the season just to add some complexity. I'll leave those nuances to you as the manager, as they are the fun part about fantasy hockey, but I will share with you the teams to target.

First, one preface to this, is that sometimes it is better not to draft these players, because if you do then you miss out on more games in-season, and that can cause you to finish further down the standings than you might otherwise. Just something to consider.

Now, depending on which weeks your H2H finals run, you will either want the first list here, or the second. Make sure you double and triple check which is which, and ensure that your commissioner doesn't change any of the scheduling part-way through the season. Any changes that need to address things like this should begin the following year, as managers like you could have already started making decisions based on the previous information.

Fantasy Weeks 23-25 (March 17^th to April 6^th)

Teams with the maximum 11 games: BUF, CGY, DAL, LA, MIN, MTL, NSH, OTT,

Teams with the minimum eight games: NYR, SJ

Fantasy Weeks 24-26 (March 24^th to April 17^th – with the longer final week)

Teams with the maximum 13 games: BUF, CLB, DAL, DET, MTL, NYI, OTT

Teams with the minimum 10 games: BOS, PHI, PIT, STL

I'll have a more thorough article out within the week for you with all of this, but I always like getting the meat of it out as early as I can.

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Another useful tool is created by Rjfisher83, which is the "Same Night Tool". It's worth a download to play around and see how it can help you and your decision making, but the bottom line is it helps when making a close call between players in order to maximize which players you will get more games out of. Depending on who you have rostered and how many starting spots you have, you can test out which teams would mesh most seamlessly with those existing players. I find it most helpful with goalies when conflicts are more pronounced due to less starting spots. You can find the thread here with the download link.

In one league, I am planning on using a few upcoming draft picks on goalies and tested a few different iterations to find out which goalies meshed the best. Maybe it was just the assortment of goalies I was checking, but it seemed that almost no matter what, Edmonton was the top team available. If that's the case with most other possible iterations, it lends a little more value to Stuart Skinner this year, and maybe some unexpected value for Calvin Pickard as well, perhaps as even more than just a spot-start option.

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Rick Roos has already received enough questions for a two-part mailbag, with the first part appearing today and the second next week after. If he receives a few more then he will do a part-three, so keep them coming. To get your questions to him, private message “rizzeedizzee” via the DobberHockey Forums or email admin@dobbersports.com with “Roos Mailbag” as the subject line. No one does a deeper dive on your questions than Rick.

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One super dark horse that I will make sure to keep an eye on this year is Kyle MacLean, and it's not just because we share a last name. He played 32 games last season, registering nine points, which wouldn't be all that special if it wasn't for his IPP of 82%, and his primary points percentage of 77%. He also brought two hits per game, which is great for leagues that count it, but also the manner of his hits was noteworthy.

I watched each of his points this past season (great little tool in the game log section of Frozentools) and many of the points started with a MacLean hit causing a turnover, some puck retrieval, and then him going straight to the front of the net. It's a recipe for success that should play well anywhere in the lineup. If Brock Nelson starts the year as LW1 like he was the last quarter of 2023-24, then that would slot MacLean is as the 3C alongside Kyle Palmieri and Pierre Engvall. That would be a step up from last season's running-mates of Cal Clutterbuck and Matt Martin.

On top of that, he's signed for three years at the league minimum. A bargain for cap leagues. It's still a long shot, but in those big dynasty cap leagues he's probably available for nothing, and if feels like there's more upside here than your typical off-the-radar fourth line guy.

Maclean is one of the players I dug up while researching the Annual DobberHockey Fantasy Guide. If you want to find the rest of those possible gems on one-way contracts, then you're going to have to buy the guide.

You can pre-order it here.

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In previous years we have had a schedule of arbitration hearings that range in dates from July 20^th to August 4^th. We're into that timeframe now and we have not had any arbitration hearings scheduled, but a few players who elected for arbitration have settled prior to a hearing. You can find the list of players who filed here, and the explanation as to why the NHLPA changed approaches here.

This doesn't have a huge impact on fantasy, but it does mean that cases will be happening under the radar, and we should have some resolutions to the Martin Necas, Ukko-Pekka Luokkanen and other cases in relatively short order. If any of them are being dangled in your leagues now could be the time to pounce on the uncertainty.

It won't last long though, as Beck Malenstyn settled yesterday, while we're just waiting on Spencer Stastny's number to drop after going through the arbitration process earlier in the week.

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See you next Wednesday, and if you want to keep up with it you can find me on Twitter/X here, or BlueSky here if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments.