Frederik Andersen appears set to suit up for Thursday's big game against the Predators.
The Toronto Maple Leafs goalie took the optional skate Wednesday, the morning after he was forced to sit out a win over the Blue Jackets with an upper-body injury.
Andersen said he felt good after taking the ice, and is traveling with the team to Nashville while fill-in Garret Sparks has been sent back to the AHL.
According to TSN's Mark Masters, Andersen said it will be determined on the plane whether he'll play against the Predators, although he added he felt optimistic and ready to go.
Barring a setback and emergency recall, all indications are that Andersen should at least be able to serve as backup to Curtis McElhinney.
A senior with the University of Minnesota, Kloos finished fourth in Big Ten scoring this season, recording 18 goals and 25 assists in 38 games.
The Minnesota native previously spent three seasons with the USHL's Waterloo Black Hawks, where he wrapped the 2012-13 campaign with 87 points in 54 games.
Tampa Bay remains in the thick of the playoff race, three points back of the Boston Bruins for the second wild-card seed with one game in hand.
The Lightning have seven games remaining, and while Stamkos won't play in Thursday's contest against Detroit, he has not yet been ruled out for Saturday.
Stamkos has registered nine goals and 11 assists in 17 games this season.
As the NHL regular season winds down and the stakes get higher, it's important to stay loose.
Marc-Andre Fleury took that to heart at practice Wednesday, unscrewing the tops of the Pittsburgh Penguins' water bottles in order to soak unsuspecting teammates.
Prankster Fleury is at it again - unscrewing Gatorade bottles and hoping to soak unsuspecting teammates...
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Keeper/dynasty leagues can vary in terms of settings. If you're in a keeper league requiring value retention, such as auction keepers or keep-by-draft-position leagues, then the following list can be extremely beneficial.
In keeper leagues where you're allowed to keep only a handful of players, this article may not be all too relevant. However, if your league doesn't put a cap on how many players you can keep, or simply allows you to keep a large number, the following players are gold.
These players may not be having the most outstanding seasons but for various reasons, should improve significantly in 2017-18 (stats as of Wednesday, March 29).
C/RW Elias Lindholm, Carolina Hurricanes
Lindholm has enjoyed a solid season. He has 43 points in 65 games but the total could be much higher.
He ranks eighth in the NHL with 29 primary assists in all situations, according to Corsica.Hockey, leaving him with just a handful of secondary assists. This is quite an absurd and unfortunate assist ratio for Lindholm. For example, Edmonton Oilers C Connor McDavid leads the NHL with 38 primary assists, but he also has 24 secondary assists.
Lindholm is a former top-5 pick as recently as 2013. He may not seem so young since this is his fourth year in the league, but he has plenty of room to grow - especially as apart of a youthful Carolina team which is a lock to improve in 2017-18. The Swede could register 70 points as soon as next season.
RW Oliver Bjorkstrand, Columbus Blue Jackets
Bjorkstrand doesn't have much hype around him. He doesn't come with the luxurious top-10 pick tag (he was a third-round pick in 2013) and he hasn't produced at an otherworldly rate in his brief NHL career.
He does, however, rank third in the NHL in iSCF60 (individual scoring chances for per 60 minutes) among players who have played at least 300 minutes this season. He has only six goals and five assists in 22 games to show for it.
Given his track record of scoring in both the WHL (144 goals in 193 games) and the AHL (31 in 88), his scoring touch at the highest level could be right around the corner thanks to an absolutely lethal shot.
Even though the Blue Jackets are a youthful team built around depth, there are permanent openings in their top-six forward group for Bjorkstrand to take. Don't rule out a 30-goal season in 2017-18.
LW/RW Nino Niederreiter, Minnesota Wild
Niederreiter, like Lindholm, is a former fifth-overall pick who has been severely unlucky in the assist column. Of Niederreiter's 30 assists, 24 have been primary helpers.
In addition to being unlucky in the assist column, he also hasn't had much luck in the scoring department. Take a look:
Year
Shots
Goals
S%
Avg.DIST
16-17
171
20
11.7
24.49
15-16
159
20
12.6
26.1
14-15
149
24
16.1
24.82
He has already set a career high in shots this season but it hasn't resulted in more goals, despite taking higher quality shots. With a bit more puck luck in 2017-18, 30 goals is a real possibility.
Furthermore, Niederreiter comes with dual-position eligibility and has racked up at least 100 hits in five straight seasons, cementing his value in banger leagues.
D Jaccob Slavin, Carolina Hurricanes
Slavin might be the most underrated defenseman in the NHL - and he's only 22 years old. Since the 'Canes dealt veteran blueliner Ron Hainsey at the trade deadline, Slavin has 14 points in 18 games while averaging 24:23 per game. In fact, nobody on Carolina has logged more minutes per game this year - even D Justin Faulk.
Perhaps the most impressive part about Slavin's game is he has a plus-21 rating on such a poor and inexperienced team. Considering he is second in the NHL in takeaways, this plus/minus doesn't appear to be a fluke.
A young defenseman on a growing team who could potentially put up 40 points (he has 33 this season) with a high plus/minus and plenty of blocked shots is more than worth keeping for a pick typically reserved for a dart throw.
Carey Price has no time for people who steal souvenir pucks from children.
Following the Montreal Canadiens' 4-1 win over the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night, Price was tossing pucks over the glass to some lucky kids when a young man snatched one of them out of the air. He began to celebrate, but then noticed Price staring him down and made the wise decision to hand over the biscuit.
For the first time in 25 seasons, the Red Wings won't partake in the playoffs, ending the third-longest run in league history. Tuesday's loss to the Carolina Hurricanes was the final nail in the coffin for a campaign long awaiting the inevitable.
Entering the season, general manager Ken Holland, the tenured architect of the Red Wings who has guided the team to four Stanley Cups, admitted his club was probably not a contender, but that a traditional teardown wasn't in the cards.
Rather, the Red Wings opted to rebuild on the fly, integrating young players like Anthony Mantha and Andreas Athanasiou around a strong supporting cast.
But the results weren't there this season, with the Red Wings poised to finish near the bottom of the East.
The Red Wings can be seen as victims of their own success to an extent, as years of sustained winning have caught up with them at the draft table, having had little opportunity to select highly touted prospects in the first round over the last two-and-a-half decades due to consistently impressive finishes in the standings. This year, though, Detroit will make its earliest first-round pick since 1990.
"We've got 11 picks in 2017," Holland said. "We've got an extra second-round pick in 2018, which is looking like it should be a deeper draft than this year. I also think every draft, players come out of the second, third and fourth rounds. We've got more spins of the wheel."
The silver lining is that the youth movement is already well on its way. At this year's trade deadline, Detroit shipped out three veteran skaters in Brendan Smith, Steve Ott, and Thomas Vanek to return a collection of draft picks, the lifeblood of a salary-cap league.
More hope is on the way from the farm, which has produced Mantha and Athanasiou in recent seasons, and continues to foster talent like Martin Frk, Evgeny Svechnikov, and Tyler Bertuzzi.
"We've got some players in Grand Rapids that we think are not very far away," Holland said. "We've got to continue to draft, develop and push these players through the system, and hope that some of them become way better than where we pick them in the draft."
The now-former Boston University defenseman decided to forgo the rest of his college career and has signed an amateur tryout agreement with the Boston Bruins' AHL affiliate in Providence, general manager Don Sweeney announced.
Per Sweeney, McAvoy will join @AHLBruins for practice and could play this weekend.
Signing McAvoy to an entry-level contract and bringing him straight to the big club would have burned a year off the deal since McAvoy will turn 20 on Dec. 21, as per Cap Friendly.
The Bruins could still call him up for the stretch run and possibly the playoffs should they agree to an ELC, but it seems as though they may wait until next season to bring his first pro deal into effect, thereby ensuring he plays a full three years before hitting restricted free agency.
McAvoy, who was drafted 14th overall in 2016, recorded eight goals and 43 assists in 75 games over two seasons at BU.
It's been a season of accolades for the franchise netminder. Last month, Price leapfrogged Dryden for third all time on the franchise wins list. He now ranks behind only Plante and Patrick Roy.
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Here is a look at the Squad Up daily NHL fantasy picture for Wednesday, March 29 (all advanced statistics courtesy of Corsica.Hockeyand apply to 5v5 situations):
Dynamic Duos
LW Marcus Johansson (34K) & C Evgeny Kuznetsov (45K), Capitals (at Avalanche): The Capitals second line played just 20.55 percent of the 5v5 minutes in Tuesday's overtime win over the Minnesota Wild. The top line of LW Alex Ovechkin, C Nicklas Backstrom and RW T.J. Oshie logged 26.03 percent of the minutes. The second line has a superior possession rating at 5v5 and averages a similar amount of scoring chances per 60.
LW Richard Panik (34K) & C Jonathan Toews (55K), Blackhawks (at Penguins): The Penguins sit fourth in the NHL standings, but their defense has been poor. Injuries can take the blame, and they remain without Ds Kris Letang, Olli Maatta, Trevor Daley and Ron Hainsey. Their 2.64 expected goals per 60 minutes on home ice ranks 25th. Chicago's top line played over 27 percent of the 5v5 minutes last time out.
LW Max Domi (49K) & RW Radim Vrbata (48K), Coyotes (vs. Blues): Arizona sits near the bottom of the league in every major defensive metric. The Blues have been worse on the road than the Coyotes are on home ice over the past month. St. Louis is expected to score 2.06 goals per 60 minutes, while Arizona is expected to put up 2.86 goals per 60. Domi's line played 26 percent of the last game.
(Photo courtesy Action Images)
Bargain Plays
C Nick Schmaltz (25K), Blackhawks (at Penguins): Schmaltz was much more appealing when he was centering the Blackhawks' second line than he is while beside Toews with the two sharing a position. He did dish out two assists in his most recent game, while playing 15:38. The line was Chicago's most frequently used threesome but played just 13.26 percent of the 5v5 minutes.
D Matt Niskanen (25K), Capitals (at Avalanche): The trade-deadline acquisition of D Kevin Shattenkirk has cut into Niskanen's power-play time, but he still played nearly 15 percent of the available PP TOI. He has topped 22 minutes of total ice time in each of his past three games.
(Photo courtesy Action Images)
Top Fades
LW Alexander Steen (66K), Blues (at Coyotes): The Blues horrible play on the road was noted above. Steen has been a big part of their struggles as just four of his 14 goals have come as a visitor this season. He has 32 points in 34 games at home but just 17 points in 35 home games. Steen has already been dropped to the third line with C Patrik Berglund and LW David Perron.
C Nathan MacKinnon (64K), Avalanche (vs. Capitals): Those hoping to take advantage of a tired Capitals team will need to think again. Many expect G Philipp Grubauer to be the first goaltender for the Vegas Golden Knights, and he has offered little more opportunity to opposing offenses than starter Braden Holtby this season. MacKinnon remains with just 15 goals and 48 points on the season.
(Photo courtesy Getty Images)
Contrarian Options
D Oliver Ekman-Larsson (43K), Coyotes (vs. Blues): Any stack of the Coyotes' forwards is extremely inexpensive, making OEL a logical inclusion. He has gone point-less in three consecutive games, playing at least 25 minutes in each of his past two. He isn't even the most expensive D on a thin slate.
LW Artemi Panarin (61K), Blackhawks (at Penguins): The overall performance of Chicago's second line suffers with C Tanner Kero filling in for the injured Artem Anisimov. The lower expectations makes Panarin the better choice over RW Patrick Kane, due to his more reasonable salary. He's totaled at least four SOG in all but one of his past five games.
