Anthony Duclair had been off to a good start to his 2024-25 season with two goals and three points through New York's first four games. Considering the team was shut out twice in those four games, it was a pretty good offensive performance.

Unfortunately, Duclair got hurt in the third period of their fifth game and the update given from GM Lou Lamoriello was not a good one:

Lou says it will be a "long-term" injury for Duclair but not season ending. More will be known tomorrow after further testing.

— Andrew Gross (@AGrossNewsday) October 21, 2024

That it's not season-ending is a positive note, but that it's long-term is not. We will update once more is known. Simon Holmstrom took Duclair's spot on the top line in practice. They also had very new power play lines, which tells me they're looking to split units and TOI for now:

Roy doing some different things with #Isles PP, some rotations, but we saw this a few times (QB-LW-RW-Bumper-Net)

PP1: Reilly-Barzal-Holmstrom-Nelson-Lee
PP2: Dobson-Palmieri-Horvat-Pageau-Tsyplakov

Would be shocked if Horvat and Barzal aren't on same unit.

— Stefen Rosner (@stefen_rosner) October 21, 2024

Not great news for the top players' fantasy value.  

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New Jersey sent defencemen Seamus Casey to the AHL. Considering he was playing under 12 minutes a game, and had less than 18 minutes of total TOI in the team's two recent games, the writing was kind of on the wall. He will be back, but it may not be until next season with Luke Hughes and Brett Pesce set to return sometime soon-ish.

Daniil Misyul was called up in Casey's place.

Ondrej Palat was back on the top line with Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt, which is where he finished their game against Washington.

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Nashville called up prospect Zachary L'Heureux ahead of Tuesday's game at home to Boston. With the Predators starting 0-5, a move like this seemed inevitable.

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Columbus made a notable line change in Monday's practice by moving Yegor Chinakhov down to Adam Fantilli's line:

#CBJ lines this morning feature a few changes
Sillinger-Monahan-Marchenko
Pyyhtia-Fantilli-Chinakhov
ZAR-Danforth-Olivier
JVR-Kuraly-Labanc
Werenski-Provorov
Christiansen-Severson
Johnson-Jiricek
Harris

— Jeff Svoboda (@JacketsInsider) October 21, 2024

The top line had been playing extremely well, but injuries had really thinned out the team's forward depth, so this is being done to give Fantilli a legitimate top-6 winger. We will see how long this lasts.

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Brandon Hagel was back on Tampa Bay's top PP unit for their game on Monday night. The Lightning had been using defenceman Darren Raddysh for much of this season, and Hagel being added to the top unit is a huge boost in his fantasy value.

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Alexis Lafreniere was not at Rangers practice on Monday:

Alexis Lafrenière is not skating today, he's listed as day-to-day with an upper-body injury. #NYR

— Remy Mastey (@MasteyRemy) October 21, 2024

Matt Rempe skated in his place. For my money, if Lafrenière were expected to miss time, it would not be Rempe next to Vincent Trocheck and Artemi Panarin. Probably nothing for Laf fantasy managers to worry about, but something to keep an eye on.

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Edmonton's practice had them going back to their original lines:

RNH-McD-Hyman
Skinner-Draisaitl-Arvid
Janmark-Henrique-Brown
Podk-Ryan-Brown

Ekholm-Bouchard
Nurse-Stetcher
Kulak-Emberson

— Ryan Rishaug (@TSNRyanRishaug) October 21, 2024

It feels like there will be a lot of line changes all season for the Oilers.

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It looks like Philipp Kurashev will be a healthy scratch for the Blackhawks when they host the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday. He had a good season last year but that was also playing a lot of his minutes next to Connor Bedard. A secondary role has not brought anywhere near the same levels of success.

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Tyler Seguin was back at practice for Dallas, on his usual line with Matt Duchene and Mason Marchment, and is set to join the team on their mini two-game road trip to the Eastern Conference.

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David Perron was not at practice for Ottawa on Monday, and he is not with the team as they head out for a three-game Western Conference road trip. The team said he is away from Ottawa for personal reasons.

Ridly Greig was back and practicing on the third line, though, so the bad news is balanced with some good.

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An update on Macklin Celebrini:

Grier says Celebrini is true week to week. He says Sharks will give another injury update in 2 weeks. So basically count Celebrini out for 2 weeks at least

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) October 21, 2024

With that timeline, we shouldn't expect Celebrini back until the first week of November at the earliest. Just a brutal start to his career, so let's hope this is nothing serious and he's 100% when he returns.

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William Karlsson was skating with Vegas for the first time in a month:

William Karlsson is on the ice for a team skate for the first time since Sep. 21

Wearing a red no-contact jersey, but it's obviously a great sign for his eventual return. pic.twitter.com/3898xXcr96

— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) October 21, 2024

This is a team that is a bit top-heavy up front and could really use him back as soon as possible.

Vegas also said that Victor Olofsson is week-to-week, so again, there is a balancing act between good news and bad.

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There was just one game on Monday night – the new Monday Night Hockey on Amazon – and Toronto took a 5-2 win at home against Tampa Bay. The score sounded closer than it really was as the Leafs held a 5-1 lead after the second period and were firmly in control from the middle of that period onward.

William Nylander scored twice, adding a power play assist, while totaling five shots in the win. Auston Matthews had a goal (PP) to go with six shots and two blocks. Matthew Knies and Max Pacioretty had the other tallies. Knies is now up to two goals, 15 shots, and 10 hits in six games as he starts building solid banger value.

Mitch Marner had a pair of assists, including one on the PP, to go with two shots. He now has three PPPs and seven total points in six games.

Brayden Point (PP) and Nick Paul had the goals for Tampa Bay. Paul has five points in five games to go with 10 shots and eight hits as his good start continues.

Brandon Hagel was moved to Tampa Bay's top PP unit in place of Darren Raddysh, so Hagel fantasy owners have to be doing a little dance right now. Hagel had five shots and a hit in 21:39 of ice time.

Andrei Vasilevskiy was pulled after the fourth goal, saving just 10 shots, with Jonas Johansson taking over halfway through the game. Tampa Bay plays Tuesday night in New Jersey, so look for Vasilevskiy to get another start.

Anthony Stolarz continues his excellent start with 32 saves on 34 shots in the win. He has three wins in four starts with a .938 save percentage. Even if Joseph Woll were 100% ready to go right now, it's a wonder how many starts he'd get with the way that Stolarz is playing. Until he stumbles, he may be the go-to guy in net.

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We are a couple weeks into the NHL regular season and while we shouldn't draw firm conclusions about much, I did want to take some time to go over peripheral stats. These Ramblings will focus on hits and blocks.  

In the offseason, I wrote about the change in hits and blocks in the 2023-24 season, namely that there were a lot more blocks and fewer hits than years prior. In fact, the total number of blocks jumped 34.5% from 2022-23 while the total number of hits dropped 9.1%. The curious part, especially for blocks, was that the growth was relatively evenly distributed; among forwards and defencemen, blocked shots jumped 35% and 34.2%, respectively.

Let's look at the early portion of the 2024-25 season to see if anything has changed. We will start with the forwards, and data will be from Natural Stat Trick or Frozen Tools.

In 2023-24, forwards registered 16 347 blocks in 472 943:24 of ice time, or about 2.07 blocks per 60 minutes. As for hits, forwards put up 38 301 hits, or about 4.86 hits per 60 minutes. How have they managed thus far in 2024-25 (not including the Tampa Bay-Toronto game)?

	Blocks/60	Hits/60
2023-24	2.07	4.86
2024-25	2.12	4.84

So far, the forward block rate is up a bit while the forward hit rate is down a bit.

For the block rate, it makes sense that they're up a bit when compared to the 2023-24 season. Blocked shot rates are typically higher on the penalty kill than they are elsewhere, and power plays are generally more abundant earlier in the season than they are later in the season. For example, through the first five weeks of the 2023-24 season, teams averaged 3.48 power play opportunities per game; that dropped to 2.92 power play opportunities per game after those first five weeks. As of Monday of this 2024-25 season, power play opportunities per game sat at 3.27 per team per game. Presumably, once the penalty rate starts declining, the blocked shot rate for forwards will decline with it.

As for hits, things should go the other way of blocks once the penalty rate declines. Last season, forwards managed 4.86 hits per 60 minutes in all their ice time, but just 1.66 hits per 60 minutes while on the penalty kill while the even-strength hit rate was 5.58 per 60 minutes. The assumption is that once time on the PK declines, and more time is devoted to even strength play, the hit rate will rise.

All told, things are about in line with where they were last season for forwards, but once penalty rates come down, the blocks are likely to decline while the hits rise. We will see where things stand a couple months from now.

Moving to the blue line, the changes in the 2023-24 season resulted in defencemen registering 4.89 blocks and 4.21 hits per 60 minutes. Overall, the rise in shot blocking from the 2022-23 season was 34.2% while the drop in hits totaled 11.7%.

** I want to add a note here: between the time I wrote that article in July and the time this is being written in October, official NHL stat keepers added 2017 hits to the defencemen. I thought I was using the wrong stat sheets, but the total number of blocks was basically the same. Also, I looked at the stat sheets I had from mid-September when I started my 2024-25 projections and they matched the lower total from 2023-24, not the higher one I used today. It isn't unusual to see stat changes months later, but that is a lot of hits to add so late in the offseason. There was still a drop in overall hits, but it was very modest, and nowhere near the 11.7% drop I found in July. **

So far in the 2024-25 season, this is what defencemen have done compared to the year prior with the adjusted number of hits from 2023-24:

	Blocks/60	Hits/60
2023-24	4.89	4.21
2024-25	4.93	3.40

As with forwards, that block rate will probably come down once the penalty rate comes down, but that is a sizable decline in hits. Much like forwards, defencemen post a hit rate on the PK much lower than the overall rate, managing about 2.34 hits per 60 minutes while short handed. Presumably, once the power play opportunities decline, the hit rate will rise.

If I were to make a guess, it's that by the end of the season, we end up with fewer blocks and more hits per minute than we did in 2023-24. Each hit is probably going to be more valuable because there are fewer of them, but we shouldn't expect significant changes from what we saw last season like we saw from 2022-23 to 2023-24. Again, this is just a guess based on what usually happens with penalty rates, but we should expect blocks to go down and hits to go up, generally speaking, from here on out.