slimcliffy

Heading into Wednesday night’s game against Buffalo, Ottawa had been on a 1-6-1 skid, allowing 35 goals in those eight games. Something had to give with the lineup and the first solution seems to be Drake Batherson being dropped to the third line: https://twitter.com/TSN1200/status/1592903674132471809 We should note that in this downturn, no regular Ottawa forward [...]

We had the 2022 Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Monday. It is highlighted by a trio of high-profile Canucks players with Daniel and Henrik Sedin plus Roberto Luongo. There was also Daniel Alfresson, Riikka Sallinen, and Herb Carnegie. There has been some debate as to the merits of some of these players i.e. [...]

Jonatan Berggren was called up by Detroit for their home game on Thursday night against the New York Rangers. The second-round pick from 2018 has 71 points in 77 career AHL games and looks to help fill the lineup with all their injuries. This is an interesting recall for the Wings. All of Robby Fabbri, [...]

The Boston Bruins had a couple of significant offseason injuries that would seemingly take at least a month of the season to clear. Brad Marchand beat that timeline by weeks, returning to the lineup recently. On the blue line, it appears Charlie McAvoy is getting close to his own return: https://twitter.com/smclaughlin9/status/1590376939524849664 Other reports indicated that [...]

We have reached the one-month mark of the season. With St. Louis finally playing their 10th game of the 2022-23 campaign on Monday night, every franchise has reached the double-digit mark in games played. It is no longer early as we are settling into the rhythm of the season and teams/players start falling into their [...]

Toronto’s blue line has struggled at times this year. Justin Holl’s on-ice expected goals against rate at 5-on-5, for example, is bordering near 3.0 per 60 minutes. His pairing with Rasmus Sandin did not go well, and neither did the pairing with the now-injured Jake Muzzin. There is some help coming, though: https://twitter.com/koshtorontosun/status/1587826945546387457 It was [...]

November is here and the NHL season is now settling into its rhythm. Teams are getting to the point where they need to make decisions on rookies, burning the first year of their entry-level contract. Wyatt Johnston in Dallas is sticking around, we found out recently, but there are decisions for guys like Juraj Slafkovsky [...]

Being surprised by an early result is a response to expectations. What a person – in this case yours truly – expected to happen in the first few weeks of the season is directly related to what they were expecting to happen. In that sense, whether this is a surprise to each reader depends on [...]

We are a couple weeks into the full NHL season and the injuries are starting to pile up across the league. Aaron Ekblad, Nikolaj Ehlers, and Tyler Bertuzzi, just to name a few notable fantasy options, have already hit the IR and will be out for lengthy, if varied, timelines. Ottawa has started to endure [...]

In yesterday’s Ramblings, we went over some early numbers from different players and lines to look for some early indications of where to pay attention. As mentioned in that Ramblings, it can take several weeks for some numbers to stabilize but if fantasy owners wait several weeks before making decisions on certain players, they could [...]