The Boston Bruins signed prospect James Hagens to his three-year entry-level contract. Hagens had signed a tryout contract to go play with Providence in the AHL, but after six games, he's getting the call up. There is no information yet about when he'll make his debut, but this is something that is important to track over the final week of the fantasy hockey season.

*

Evan Rawal reports that in a radio hit, Colorado Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said they don't think that Nazem Kadri's finger injury is too serious, and that he isn't worried about an extended absence into the postseason. We will have to wait for more of a firm update, but that's a good sign.

*

New York Islanders reporter Stefen Rosner tweeted that Isaiah George is headed back to the AHL thanks to a returning Tony DeAngelo. DeAngelo has missed the last couple of weeks with a lower-body injury but seems ready to return when the Islanders play Toronto on Thursday night.

*

Zach Benson scored twice as the Buffalo Sabres beat the New York Rangers 5-3. That gives Benson 5 goals and 12 points in his last 16 games as he has certainly had a much better second half than first half. Jason Zucker and Ryan McLeod, meanwhile, each registered a goal and an assist.

Alexis Lafreniere scored twice in the loss. He is now up to 55 points and needs three points in his last three games to set a career-high.

Adam Fox posted a goal and an assist in the game and he now has 24 points in his last 20 games dating back to March 1^st.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen started for the Sabres and stopped 17 of 20 shots for the win. He may get some more starts from here on out as Alex Lyon is dealing with an injury.

*

The future showed out for Washington on Wednesday night as Ryan Leonard scored his 18^th goal of the season and Ilya Protas registered his first career NHL point by assisting on an empty-net goal from Cole Hutson. The Capitals beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-0, with Logan Thompson registering a 21-save shutout. That shutout was his third of the season, setting a career-high, and it leaves him one win shy of 30 on the season.

Brandon Carlo was injured and left the game after the second period. Anthony Stolarz was injured early in the first period and also left the game.

*

Connor McDavid had his best fantasy night of the season with a hat trick in San Jose, adding a pair of assists, having three of those points on the man advantage, and totaling eight shots and a block as the Edmonton Oilers skated to a 5-2 win over the Sharks. Both Vasily Podkolzin and Jack Roslovic managed a goal and an assist along the way.

With a pair of assists, Evan Bouchard now has 91 points on the campaign, surpassing 90 points for the first time in his career. McDavid leads the league in points and Bouchard leads all defencemen in points.

Connor Ingram was pulled after the second period but remained in the game as a backup to Tristan Jarry. There was no reason given, but if it's injury-related, it has to be minor. They may have just rested Ingram for the third period as they had a three-goal lead.  

*

On Tuesday, these Ramblings started a playoff preview with the first four teams to qualify for the postseason: The Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars, and Minnesota Wild. Today, we'll continue the postseason preview with four more teams.

As this is being written (the morning of Wednesday, April 8^th), only the Tampa Bay Lightning, Buffalo Sabres, and Montreal Canadiens have qualified for the playoffs. However, the Pittsburgh Penguins are six points clear of fourth place in their division with four games remaining. They also have the tie-breaker (33 regulation wins) over the Philadelphia Flyers (25), Columbus Blue Jackets (27), and New York Islanders (28), so they need just two points in their next four games to qualify. They may very well qualify going 0-4 the rest of the way, too, which is why MoneyPuck has them at 99.8% to make the playoffs while HockeyViz has them at 99.9%.

So, we have the Lightning, Sabres, Canadiens, and Penguins as our next four playoff teams to preview. Data is from Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, or Frozen Tools.

Tampa Bay Lightning

The success of Darren Raddysh is well known to us by now, but that Tampa Bay has gotten great seasons from the likes of J.J. Moser, Emil Lilleberg, and Charle-Edouard D'Astous is what has kept them at-or-near the top of the Atlantic Division. The key for that quartet is that they are all between 49-60% goal share at 5-on-5 without Nikita Kucherov on the ice with them:

Ryan McDonagh and Erik Cernak haven't had the same success, but they also take a lot of shutdown minutes with a lot of defensive zone starts. Starting in the defensive zone with the Yanni Gourde line is quite different from starting in the offensive zone with the Brandon Hagel line.

Unlike some other teams, there is a clear delineation between the haves and the have-nots in Tampa Bay. Gage Goncalves is sixth among their forwards by points/60 minutes at 5-on-5. His rate (2.09 points/60) is that of a low-end, top-line forward in line with names like Beckett Sennecke and Morgan Geekie. After Goncalves, Pontus Holmberg is seventh among Lightning forwards by points/60 minutes at 5-on-5. His rate (1.34 points/60) is that of a high-end fourth-liner. In other words, the Lightning don't have a single forward who produced 5-on-5 points at a second- or third-line rate. It is feast or famine on this roster, so if those top guys get shut down, the Lightning are in big trouble.

It also makes Tampa Bay easy to stack for playoff pools. There are the top six forwards – Kucherov, Hagel, Jake Guentzel, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli, and Goncalves – and the rest can be left to the side.

Finally, there is the question of Victor Hedman. He has been injured and ineffective for long stretches of the season, and he's currently away from the team attending to personal matters. If he can come back and be the guy he was last year, it gives the Lightning another difference-maker. If he can't, they might only have one defenceman (Raddysh) worth drafting in most fantasy leagues.

Tampa Bay has a 6-4-0 record against their likely opponents in the first and second rounds (Buffalo, Boston, Montreal) with a minus-1 goal differential – they have a +61 goal differential in their other 68 games. They are a top-heavy roster for fantasy selections and that makes them a very fragile team to draft; a deep run from those top guys can win the pool but an early exit would mean that fantasy playoff roster is DOA before the end of April.  

Buffalo Sabres

Perhaps the story of the season, Buffalo started the campaign 11-14-4, which is a .448 points percentage, good for a 74-point pace over a full season. Since then, they are 36-9-4, a .776 points percentage, or a 127-point pace. That absurd 48-game stretch has pushed them from the basement in the East to a potential division title.

There are several reasons the Sabres are having their best regular season in nearly 20 years, but we have to start with the special teams. Through 78 games, the Sabres are +43 on the power play (48 GF, 5 GA) and -29 while short-handed (10 GF, 39 GA). Their +14 goal differential on special teams puts them tied for the sixth-highest special teams goal differential per game this season, and the second-highest in the Eastern Conference:

That special teams differential is much higher than any of the last four seasons (-12, -15, +4, and -3 going back four years). With a minus-29 goal differential on the penalty kill, the Sabres are tied for the best goal differential per game while short-handed. The power play isn't dominant – about league average – but the penalty kill has been great. Their 26-goal improvement on special teams is nearly half their overall goal differential improvement from last season (+57 goal from last season overall). Teams that are reliant on power play scoring are going to be in tough against the Sabres.

What also is important for Buffalo is their balanced scoring. They have nine forwards with at least 20 points at 5-on-5 and four defencemen with at least 20 points at 5-on-5. That makes them 1 of 3 teams to have at least nine forwards and four defencemen with at least 20 points:

That is what makes them appealing for fantasy playoff pools. They are unlikely to be heavily targeted in the same sense as Colorado or Tampa Bay, but they have a lot of scoring depth beyond Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, and Rasmus Dahlin. Secondary options like Jason Zucker, Jack Quinn, Josh Doan, Josh Norris, Zach Benson, Ryan McLeod, Mattias Samuelsson, and Bowen Byram are all viable selections later in drafts in case Buffalo does go on a run and win a couple rounds.

Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Montreal, and Boston look like the Atlantic side of the bracket. Against those other three teams, Buffalo is 6-3-3 with a +5 goal differential. However, they are 3-0-1 against Tampa Bay and 3-3-2 against Montreal and Boston. Not that any of those matchups are ideal, but those four teams have difficult matchups ahead of them no matter what. Buffalo is a dark horse in the East, but dark horses lose all the time.

Montreal Canadiens

Along with Buffalo, Colorado, Columbus, and Utah, Montreal is 1 of 5 teams with at least four defencemen to amass at least 20 points at 5-on-5 this season. Lane Hutson leads the way with 44, but Noah Dobson has 35 points at 5-on-5, which is 8^th in the league, and Mike Matheson has 29, which is tied for 18^th (Alexandre Carrier is the other). Despite the top line of Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki, and Juraj Slafkovsky getting all the attention, Montreal's defencemen are the engines of the offence, and that gives them several options on the blue line to draft from.

Montreal's ability to create offence with the top line off the ice will come down to what Ivan Demidov can create with the line mates he has. Here is Demidov's 5-game rolling average of goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, showing what happened when he had Juraj Slafkovsky on his line and when he didn't:

In that time with Slafkovský on the Demidov line, the Canadiens scored 4.2 goals/60 minutes with Demidov on the ice at 5-on-5. In the other two sections without Slafkovský, the team has scored 3.2 goals per 60 minutes. That is still a pretty good rate, but pales in comparison to what the duo did together.

There are also the wild cards in Kirby Dach and Alex Texier. Both returned on Tuesday, both have shown offensive upside this season (Texier especially), but both have had a tough time just staying healthy or otherwise in the lineup. If they're healthy, Montreal could boast three scoring lines of varying effectiveness. If they're not, the team has two, and maybe just one.

Montreal is similar to Tampa Bay in that they have a handful of high-end names that separate themselves from the rest of the roster, 2-3 other defencemen besides their top guy who can put up some solid point production, but the depth forwards could struggle. What differentiates Montreal is they could see bursts from the likes of Dach, Texier, and Zachary Bolduc. They have a tough road like Tampa Bay and Buffalo do and can be top-heavy like the Lightning. It is what makes Buffalo the easier of the three to stack secondary options in fantasy playoff drafts.

Pittsburgh Penguins.

When a team has a turnaround like the Penguins have – anywhere between 16 and 24 points higher than last year, depending how they finish – there is more than one improvement. For our purposes, though, the depth scoring has to be highlighted here. In the previous couple of seasons, the Penguins greatly struggled to score with the quartet of Sidney Crosby, Bryan Rust, Evgeni Malkin, and Rickard Rakell off the ice. Here is Pittsburgh's goal-scoring rate per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 in the prior three seasons where they missed the playoffs, and then this season, with those four forwards off the ice:

The success of rookie Ben Kindel, offseason additions like Anthony Mantha and Justin Brazeau, as well as Tommy Novak (he only got two games with Pittsburgh last season) has not only helped Malkin produce well but given the team the kind of depth scoring they had back in their Stanley Cup seasons a decade ago.

That is what makes Pittsburgh a dangerous offensive team. Maybe the opposition can shut down the Crosby line, but Malkin leads the team's regular forwards by 5-on-5 goal share this season. If both lines get shut down, Pittsburgh's power play is sixth by goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-4. If both lines and the power play get shut down, Pittsburgh's goal-scoring with their top-four forwards off the ice far exceeds teams like Tampa Bay, Montreal, and Boston.

Pittsburgh's problem is they aren't playing those teams. They are playing Philadelphia and if Carolina wins their first-round series, they play the Hurricanes. Philadelphia has been one of the best defensive teams in the NHL since the Olympic break while Carolina has the kind of depth scoring that can stack up with Pittsburgh's.

What Pittsburgh's defence and goaltending looks like in the postseason is one question. What isn't a question is whether they have the firepower to win rounds. They absolutely do; they just need to stay healthy. But if this team is healthy, there are several forwards who can be productive fantasy playoff options beyond the usual top names, and that kind of depth makes them an interesting secondary team to stack once the likes of Colorado, Dallas, and Carolina have been picked clean.