Hockey Rambling

It makes no sense for the Wild to be trading Kevin Fiala, who scored his 13th goal last night… in his last 19 games. Fiala is on fire, and is finally on pace for a 70-point season after a slow start. All of his underlying numbers are extremely consistent with previous years. On top of [...]

Vladimir Tarasenko missed a game over the weekend and with his recent, lengthy injury that saw him miss most of last year and much of the year before, there are always concerns. Those concerns were alleviated on Monday as he was at practice and coach Berube said they expect him to play on Tuesday night [...]

This injury to Brendan Smith looks pretty serious: https://twitter.com/SportsLigma/status/1495466054201622532 The result was Brady Skjei, Jaccob Slavin and Brett Pesce each seeing over 25:30 of ice time on Sunday against the Penguins. Seth Jarvis saw a near season-low for ice time. His 9:22 was only above the 9:14 that he saw in the second game of [...]

You might not have projected it before the season, but Buffalo’s top line of Tage Thompson – Jeff Skinner – Alex Tuch is fantasy relevant. Yes, all three players. Tuch has scored at a point per game since he arrived. Skinner is already 20 points ahead of his production from all of last season. Then [...]

Our Frozen Tools Forensics writer Chris Kane profiled 4th Year Breakout players in his article this week. The most prominent name on that list is Andrei Svechnikov, who continued to add to his point total on Friday. Svechnikov scored a pair of power-play goals to go with an assist in the Hurricanes’ 5-3 win over [...]

Under Dominique Ducharme in 2021-22, Cole Caufield scored just one goal in 30 games. Under Martin St. Louis, Caufield has four goals in four games, including his game-tying and game-winning goals on Thursday. The obvious take would be to assume that the 5-8 St. Louis would have a soft spot for the 5-7 Caufield, but [...]

The big news from Wednesday was that Claude Giroux announced he is going to discuss his future with Philadelphia Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher. The 34-year-old center is a free agent after the season and the Flyers are not making the playoffs. This is going to be a talk about trade vs. finish the season vs. [...]

Congrats to Sidney Crosby for scoring his 500th career goal, and everyone knew it was going to come against the Flyers. https://twitter.com/penguins/status/1493758030508216326 It’s a shame that we were robbed of three of his prime seasons, but even without that he has become one of the best players ever. It’s great that he is healthy again, [...]

There was a very significant trade on Monday as Tyler Toffoli was traded to the Calgary Flames. Going the other way is Tyler Pitlick, a first-round pick, a fifth-round pick, and prospect Emil Heineman. His Dobber Prospects profile can be viewed here. Dobber wrote about the trade yesterday and readers can check out his column [...]

As a reminder from your friendly neighborhood fantasy guy – do not forget to acknowledge Valentine’s Day with your loved one. Between COVID and the Superbowl, it will be easy to let things like that slide. * It’s been a surprising season in many regards when it comes to surprise player production. Leading the way, [...]