In a strange twist for a Tuesday night, we only had one game on the schedule. Well, the scheduling quirks for the week don't end there, as there is a full slate of 15 games both tonight and Friday night, while the Thanksgiving Football matches on Thursday are avoided completely with no NHL games. There's a fairly standard 11 games on Saturday, and four games on Sunday to then close out the week.

After last night, every team has two games left, except for the Oilers, who only play once on Saturday. Feel free to stream a better option for your team at this point, especially since the following week you also only get three games from the Oilers, all against Western Conference playoff teams.

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Mikko Rantanen served his one-game suspension in that single game last night. The NHL PIMs leader will be back in the lineup against Seattle tonight. It seems like the Stars didn't miss him though, as they blew the Oilers out of the water anyways.

Jamie Benn scored his first goal of the season, this being game four for him after missing the first quarter of the season recovering from a collapsed lung in pre-season. He added an assist, and at least two hits in every game thus far with at least one shot per game, plus his ice time is slowly ticking up.

Wyatt Johnston and Jason Robertson led the way with a power play goal each – Johnston had himself a four-point night. The Johnston – Steel – Benn line combined for eight points. But in terms of chances, it was the Mavrik Bourque line that dominated:

Stuart Skinner was chased from the game after one period, and allowed four goals on eight shots. He's still at six games with a save percentage of .900 or better out of 18 starts. If the Oilers aren't close to making a move, then they had better get cracking.

Connor Clattenburg scored for the Oilers in his second career game, which was a little bright spot for the team. Clattenburg is a big man (6-2, 215) who went undrafted in his first year of eligibility, and then wasn’t taken until the fifth round the next year (2024). His offensive upside is probably the third line, but he offers potentially 200+ Hits per year, as well as 80+ PIM.

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The Predators are apparently listening on Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault, while the Canucks are putting some of their "veterans" up on the block. Both teams need to pick a lane, and it will be interesting to see which younger players step up in the vacuum created by any trades. Something to be thinking about as we get into trade season.

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The cap league skater rankings dropped yesterday, with the goalie list due out this morning as well. This led me down a bit of a rabbit-hole of a thought rant when it comes to future planning.

Matthew Schaefer and Alexander Nikishin jumped into the top-50 for rating in cap leagues, though it is interesting to note how similarly they fall despite the two extra years on Schaefer's contract. In part, it's because the algorithms have trouble properly evaluating what Nikishin might get on a next contract, meanwhile to the outside observer, we can see that Carolina is locking up their young players early, and having set up Miller with his $7.75 million deal, and seeing how Miller carries a lot more of the load than Nikishin does, that probably sets a soft cap on what Nikishin could expect to see on a long-term extension. There is still the possibility of a bridge deal, but if I had to guess, I would say that six years at $8 million could work for both sides.

Now, Carolina's management of contract is something that I have mentioned before, and it is worth noting again just how well they have positioned themselves over the next five-to-eight years. Andrei Svechnikov is the only member of a top six forward group whose average age comes in under 25, and he is the only one signed for less than six years, with four years remaining on his deal with a $7.75 million cap hit.

Planning out to have a core locked in over the next handful of years while the NHL undergoes a huge market growth correction, could see the Canes paying their top six forwards less than a third of their total salary cap room!

Not to mention that the team also has Jacob Slavin, Sean Walker, and Miller locked in for at least four more years at their current cap hits. In 2028-2029, assuming that the bottom-of the lineup players are signed for close to league minimum, and Pyotr Kochetkov is locked up long-term at around an $8 million cap hit, then the Canes could have upwards of $80 million to fill out their third line and a fourth defenceman. What that does, is it allows them to continue to bring in the big fish in free agency year after year, and by 2028 they're looking at a third line of Jackson Blake, Logan Stankoven, and Svechnikov, all still in their prime (under 30), while the top six above them has become a murder's row of talent.

In my cap league, I'm trying to use this model to plan for the future, and while I would love to compete this year, injuries are holding me back from really thriving this season. Missed time from Roman Josi, Mikael Granlund, Joey Daccord, Roope Hintz, Chris Kreider, Patrick Kane, and Jordan Spence has been hard to mitigate. However, a core of that group alongside Dylan Larkin, Tage Thompson, Jackson Blake, Zach Werenski, Logan Thomspon, Jesper Bratt, and more has kept me afloat thus far.

As you can tell it's a group that generally has term on their deals outside of the older players (who will age out for some new growth to take over), and that core can hopefully keep a high level of play up into the range of the 2027-2030 seasons, where their locked in contracts will become a huge asset. Maybe easier for the Hurricanes to manage as they get to sign their own contracts and coordinate that, but it is an important thing to look ahead at your core and their contracts (or even just ages for the contention window in non-cap leagues).

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Elias Salomonsson should be making his NHL debut today. He's a former second round pick of the Jets who has grown through the Swedish leagues and looks to be making the jump from the AHL now as a result of the Neal Pionk injury. He's noted as being an offensive defenceman with solid passing skills, but his NHL equivalency numbers have never been extremely high-level, so outside of the deepest of leagues, he's probably not noteworthy for fantasy in the short term.

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Gavin Brindley's injury was some very unfortunate timing last week, and he has been labeled week-to-week at this point with an uncertain timeline for return from his lower-body injury. As Valeri Nichushkin was also out with an injury, Brindley was trying to make the most of the bump up to the top six. He only had seven points in 17 full games to start the year, but five of those points came in his most recent five games.

He recently signed a two-year extension with the Avs, for $875K per year. If Brindley can get healthy and regain his spot in the top nine, then that could be a bargain for cap-league owners. It was surprising to see the Blue Jackets deal Brindley away, as he was a highly regarded prospect in their system and had built up plenty of chemistry with Adam Fantilli in college. However, after a couple of injury-plagued seasons, Brindley was given a fresh start with the Avs and has seized some of the opportunity. The next contract is a two-way deal next year, and one-way after that. That may have hinted to the timeline which the Avs expected Brindley to follow, but from his showing thus far, he may not play another career AHL game.

He has been a favourite prospect of mine from the months leading up to the 2023 draft, and I'm glad to see him making the most of the chances here.  

In the meantime, Gabriel Landeskog is back on the top power play unit, which is certainly worth monitoring if he can get his tough back as a net-front player there.

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See you next Wednesday, and if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments you can find me on BlueSky @alexdmaclean.