Fishing the TOI Pond

With a handful of games played for each team, now’s as good a time as any to quickly touch on some general changes we’re seeing in player deployment and whether it means anything for Fantasy (or DFS more specifically).

Since it’s still too early to dive into results and performances (at least for me, I prefer to spend a few weeks digging into my priors before I start ingesting the early handful of games from a data perspective), I’m changing relatively little as the days progress. But since deployment is almost entirely in the hands of the coach, I find TOI to be pretty immediately sticky. “Role” is a fluid term, and changes on a day-to-day basis, sometimes with an announcement via line rushes, but I’ll try to shine a light on a few spots to note and use every tool in the bag to determine whether the changes we are noting are real, or whether they are unlikely to continue.

For these purposes, I am comparing 23-24 TOI per game to 22-23 TOI per game. All strengths TOI will be considered, though you should of course consider things like unusually frequent OTs, high PP opportunity rates, and one-off events (injuries, equipment issues, teammate availabilities) in determining how both 23-24 and 22-23 TOI should be interpreted.

Let’s get into things:

Today’s Primary Point: Biggest TOI Losers in 2023-24

Starting off with the easier group of players, here are the biggest losers of TOI so far this season. Note that a few names hang around here like Zach Werenski and Pavel Buchnevich for no other reason than those players suffered early-to-mid game injuries, thus hampering their 23-24 TOI figures. There’s little to discuss in those cases, so keep that in mind when interpreting the data. I’ve highlighted a few players worth discussing further based on the perceived (ir?)relevance of their situation or their fantasy outlook.

• Tony DeAngelo & Dmitry Orlov - Grouping together the first two highlighted players, TDA and Orlov each joined Carolina this offseason, with TDA having played a sizable role in PHI (more on how that vacuum is being filled below) and Orlov being a key contributor on both the Capitals and Bruins. It is a little strange to see Orlov so low, but it’s hard to argue with the results the Hurricanes have gotten from Burns, Slavin, Pesce, and Skjei so far, at least on the scoresheet. Skjei is on pace for a 100-point season, with 6 in five games! Although Orlov is clearly a superior player at 5v5 to DeAngelo, these two are likely to remain paired up, or to play as mix-in types in a 7D set-up for Rod Brind’Amour’s squad, limiting their fantasy usefulness. DeAngelo, in fact, may have more fantasy-based insulation thanks to his reasonable PP role, seemingly even usurping Brent Burns in recent days to be the sole D on the PP1.

• Jack Roslovic - Under Brad Larsen, Roslovic was the fifth-most used forward in Columbus last season, fourth if you exclude Gus Nyquist, who was traded at the deadline. This season, it’s fair to say the influx of youth and the arrival of Mike Babcock Pascal Vincent has done a significant number on Roslovic’s role. Friday night marked his season high, at just 12 minutes for a player one year removed from averaging sixteen-and-a-half minutes per night. With no PP time and a tenuous grasp on a fourth line role, Roslovic seems to be on the outs in Columbus at 26, snuffing out what once was a rather promising prospect profile for good.

• Henri Jokiharju - Despite the relative stability in scenery (Buffalo), coach (Don Granato), and defensive partner (Owen Power), Jokiharju shows up as one of the biggest TOI losers this year. What gives? Well, the influx of Erik Johnson and Connor Clifton hasn’t helped matters, with NHL veterans replacing the minutes of AHL-type defenders last season. However, we’ve also seen Buffalo’s two studs, Rasmus Dahlin and Power, roam the ice a ton, pairing up in many situations and throwing the pairs into more chaos than was seen last year. This is likely a small-ish sample, but the limited fantasy potential of Jokiharju likely makes this a rather irrelevant point. But it’s interesting to see that Power will show up in the next section, while his literal partner has taken a significant YoY hit in TOI.

• Jeff Petry & Blake Wheeler - Not a whole lot to say about these two players who each found new homes in the offseason (Petry to DET from PIT via MTL, Wheeler to NYR from WPG), other than to alert you to close out your tabs and tip your bartenders before heading out. These guys are cooked, Wheeler especially, and their teams seem to realize it, or are at least monitoring their minutes to combat the lack of effectiveness (to put it charitably). Petry and Wheeler are likely to further diminish in viability as the season progresses.

• Kailer Yamamoto - Seattle replaced Daniel Sprong and Ryan Donato with Kailer Yamamoto, who was sent away by the Edmonton Oilers after several years of empty-calorie minutes. Unfortunately for Yamamoto, even those minutes have now been trimmed by a fair amount, losing just under 5 minutes per night on average in TOI. Yamamoto has worked his way onto the second PP unit and even managed a PP assist the other night against Carolina, but like most players in Seattle has a rather limited 5v5 role without much upside.

Well, that was a downer. These guys stink! Thanks for reading. If you made it this far though, here’s some names that you should actually care about:

Today’s Actual Primary Point: Biggest TOI Gainers in 2023-24

Lots of names to digest, but let’s just churn through these guys and why I’ve highlighted them (in addition to their strong YoY TOI increases, of course…). Apologies in advance to the Jan Rutta fanatics. Maybe next time I’ll highlight Jan Rutta’s minutes.

• Ryan Donato - I suggest you check out my ravings about Connor Bedard here and here and here and even check out the Hockey PDOCast deep dive on Bedard’s early returns. Once you do that, you’ll understand why Ryan Donato, a gritty, net-front player with a knack for the net and good two-way impacts, stands out both in a fantasy setting and to Chicago’s coaching staff. One minor note is that at the end of Thursday’s thrashing, we saw CHI1 broken up for the first time, so it’s worth monitoring where Donato lands relative to Hall and Bedard, both at 5v5 and on the PP1. If it’s status quo moving forward, it’s all systems go for this year’s possible Fantasy-Breakout-of-the-year candidate, 20 Minutes A Night Ryan Donato. When he gets the puck, he’s firing on net, often from short distances, meaning the goals and shots should pile up for Donato. Bedard is special, and is more than capable of carrying the unheralded Ryan Donato to a level of fantasy relevance he’s never established before.

• Connor McMichael - These top two players are my catnip. I can’t get enough of it. McMichael has been on my radar for a few years now and has done relatively little with his NHL time with the Capitals to this point (except to maybe serve as the coolest possible name-cousin to Connor McDavid.. what are the odds?). However, he lit up the AHL last season, with shot and point rates that were ~1.6x better than prospects of a similar cohort (controlling for age and whether a player was drafted (since that tends to play a role in NHL production, right or not). While I’m not sophisticated enough to incorporate draft position in this analysis (McMichael was drafted #25 by Washington in 2019), being a first rounder certainly doesn’t hurt matters. Last year was actually a step back from his AHL debut in the 2021-shortened COVID year, where he racked up an astonishing 3.85 shots/game and 0.76 P1/GP in 33 games at just shy of 21 years old. This 3.85 figure blows away the field among AHL U21 players, while the 0.76 P1/GP compares similarly to Trevor Zegras (1.06 in only 17 GP), Phil Tomasino, Lukas Reichel, Alex Holtz, and JJ Peterka (all between 0.76 and 0.86). It is better than players such as Cole Perfetti (0.69), Tyson Foerster (0.63), Arthur Kailyev (0.58), Martin Necas (0.55), and some other current-NHLers. Development can have a winding path, and it seems Spencer Carbery is committed to nurturing Connor McMichael’s growth into what could be an elite player for a Washington team that desperately needs its next wave of talent. By the way, who was Hershey’s coach in 2021 while McMichael was tearing up the league? If you guessed Spencer Carbery, you’d be right. A massive buy signal, with tons of upside once Carbery puts Nick Backstrom and/or TJ Oshie out to pasture and opens up a PP1 job for the dynamic McMichael.

• Oliver Ekman-Larsson - 25 and a half minutes per night plus PP1 duties? Yeah, that’ll work. After being cast off in Vancouver and bought out of a hefty deal, Florida pounced on the opportunity to give Ekman-Larsson the #1 job while Montour and Ekblad were on the shelf. While it’s early, the returns have been excellent so far, with quality two-way play in his massive minutes (he ranks 3rd in the league in TOI/GP to this point!) and even a bit of point production to boot. OEL is likely to look like one of the major Ws of the offseason in the league, though of course the fantasy clock is ticking, as Brandon Montour in particular seems likely to return before the New Year and would be hard-pressed to give up his PP1 role he earned on the march to the Cup Final last season.

• Jamie Drysdale - Drysdale was injured at the end of the Carolina game, but after starting out on the top pair with Cam Fowler through two games, Drysdale’s minutes looked very solid for one of the most promising defensive prospects in the league. Unfortunately for fantasy players, this may be one of those situations where last year’s injury will keep him from the offensive/fantasy production his stellar two-way game could maximize, as Pavel Mintyukov is on the scene and as of their most recent game has leapfrogged Cam Fowler onto the top PP unit. Given the skillsets involved, I would be surprised to see Mintyukov cede PP1 work to Drysdale upon his return, but Drysdale will be a fixture on the Ducks blue-line for a long time.

• Corey Perry & Nick Foligno - After several years of declining play and reduced minutes, Perry and Foligno signed “character” contracts with the rebuilding/tanking Hawks and.. have been a good duo, playing with Jason Dickinson on a line that is getting second-line-type minutes? Well, that’s can’t be right… but it is. So far. This is relatively speaking, of course, as they are still slightly below breakeven in aggregate, but these two faring ~1% better in GF% and ~3% better in xGF% in relative metrics would have been downright shocking to me two weeks ago, all things considered. The ~17 minutes a night I still don’t believe even though I’m staring right at it. Especially with Perry’s PP1 net-front gig, I find it hard to think this stops anytime soon though, so these two are interesting fantasy pick-ups, particularly in leagues that value hits/don’t dock you for losing the Corsi battle.

• Sean Durzi - Similar to OEL, Durzi shouldn’t be a surprise, but unlike OEL, it’s hard to see this train coming to a halt any time soon. Without a clear PP1 alternative, Durzi appears to be locked in for what appears to be an electric ARI PP1 alongside Clayton Keller, Logan Cooley, Nick Schmaltz, and Barrett Hayton. Averaging 24 minutes a night, good for 22nd in the league, Durzi has made the most of his trade to Arizona from Los Angeles, where he flashed the sort of per-minute production (both fantasy and real-life) but never had the sort of opportunity Arizona offered. Good on Durzi for grabbing hold of his chance, and good on us for spotting this early in the offseason. Now my only regret is not taking more of him in the last round of Best Puck drafts.

• Frank Vatrano - It is hard to fathom Frank Vatrano being a 20-minute-a-night player. That said, it was hard to fathom Vatrano being the near-17-minute-a-night player he was last year, after bouncing in the 10-15 range for several years, always flashing per minute fantasy dominance. So far, Vatrano has a hat trick, a shots bonus, and a blocks bonus in three games. That’s pretty good. Depending on your circumstances, however, it may upset you to learn that these all came in the same game, against Carolina of all teams, leaving his other two games a bit lacking in the game logs. In any case, 20 minutes with secondary PP and PK time for a player who shoots at the same rate (based on the past two-plus years, since start of 2021 season) as Kucherov, Eichel, and Tavares, to name a few players. It’s very possible Vatrano is this year’s Travis Konecny, the player who does it all but never quite has the role to do so until now on a team that needs quality minutes filled.

• Seth Jarvis - Seth Jarvis playing 20 minutes a night for a Carolina team that loves to distribute their minutes somewhat evenly is a bit surprising. It’s less surprising with the context that Svechnikov remains out as he recovers from a torn ACL and that Sebastian Aho has missed the past two games, but Jarvis does appear to have officially arrived. Drafted #13 in 2020, Jarvis had a wonderful playoff run in 2021-2022 to announce his NHL breakout but largely disappointed in 22-23, which isn’t to say he wasn’t a quality NHL player but rather that his fantasy relevance was very hit-or-miss. Since his role (even pre-Svech returning) doesn’t appear to be all that similar to the role he had in the 21-22 playoffs (where he was a one-time option on the PP1), it’s hard for me to get excited about the next great grinder and mucker on the Canes PP1 (see: Stefan Noesen in last year’s playoff run), but with Jarvis’s skillset and pedigree, perhaps I’m being unnecessarily pessimistic on a player who is currently generating tons of chances from the goaltender’s doorstep, playing with very talented players no matter who is in or out of the lineup.

• Cam York - York has been a direct beneficiary of Tony DeAngelo’s departure (see, I told you I’d get back to this!) as well as Ivan Provorov’s, blossoming into a true #1 for John Tortorella and the Philadelphia Flyers. We are still waiting for the counting stats, but the vision, skating, and decision-making is all there at age 22. His effortless game plays at the NHL level, and it seems that not even Torts is denying that. While there’s not a strong chance York has top-ten fantasy defenseman type upside, there’s still that chance that he becomes a minutes-and-points guy, in the mold of Adam Fox or Miro Heiskanen, for a team that should only continue to improve.

• Evan Bouchard - Strangely, after opening the season with two 24-minute efforts, Bouchard’s role has been cut back in the past two games at just 17 and 19 minutes. There’s some risk in projecting a true #1s role onto Bouchard at this point, but fortunately he doesn’t need it, as playing on the Edmonton PP1 alongside McDavid and Draisaitl is an incredible role for any defenseman, fantasy or otherwise.

• Mason McTavish - I was stunned to see McTavish on this list, though I suppose having Vatrano (his 5v5 linemate) makes sense. After opening up last year’s rookie campaign as primarily a PP guy (playing ~15 minutes per night despite a PP1 role in which he held a top-20 shot rate among all PP players league-wide), the script has flipped entirely for the 2021 3rd Overall selection of the Ducks, where he’s seemingly lost his PP1 job to Leo Carlsson but is dominating 5v5 ice time. McTavish’s effectiveness last season on the PP would leave me surprised if he’s frozen out of the first unit for long, but it is undeniable that the Ducks are in good shape down the middle in the long-term.

• Kasperi Kapanen - Speaking of surprises, Kapanen crossed my radar when Buchnevich went down to injury. With a newfound PP1 role, Kapanen was only strengthened by the realization that in the first few games of the year, Craig Berube was using him as a bonafide second-liner, quite the reward for a player who is notoriously dis-liked by coaches and fans alike. Kapanen’s role has increased by ~3.5 minutes per night, as he’s being deployed on both the PP and PK (even with Buchnevich in the lineup, those things seem like they could stick) and has kept a role alongside Captain Schenn so far, a pairing that even survived the Great Shakeup of Friday after Thursday’s 6-2 drubbing at the hands of the Coyotes.

• Auston Matthews - If Matthews wants to play 23.5 minutes a night, I say you let him. For context, Connor McDavid led all forwards with 22.4 minutes per game last season. I don’t think Toronto has wanted to do this, either, they’ve spent a lot of time in trailing game-states so far, something I wouldn’t imagine lasts for long. This is likely circumstantial, though Matthews is locked into a top ten-ish TOI role on the year, which to go with a monstrous offensive toolkit that he’s flashed early on should scare McDavid year-end Awards bettors. Matthews looks fully recovered from last year’s wrist injury that sapped him of his superhuman shot and offensive trademarks.

• Thomas Harley & Nic Hague - Two young guys taking advantage of their opportunities in last year’s playoffs have parlayed those successes into legitimate roles for their teams at the start of this season. Nic Hague’s story is a bit cleaner, as he started the year paired with Pietrangelo while Martinez was out, and then skated with Martinez last game with Pietrangelo out of the lineup. Assuming Pietrangelo’s stint on the IR is short (no news has been delivered on what exactly he’s dealing with, though it’s seemingly related to a puck-up-high he took toward the end of his most recent game.. ironically deflecting off of Nic Hague’s stick), Hague’s role could shrivel up if he’s moved back to the third pair alongside Ben Hutton while Zach Whitecloud (who with Hague actually led the Golden Knights in 5v5 ice time as a pair in 2023’s playoffs) recovers from his own injury. Thomas Harley, on the other hand, seems to be jumping on an opportunity that isn’t going away any time soon. Although Nils Lundkvist has strangely held onto the PP2 job to this point, Thomas Harley appears to be Pete DeBoer’s new #2 defenseman, as he’s jumping around the pairings at 5v5 and has supplanted Ryan Suter’s minutes, which was something necessitated by Suter’s poor performance toward the end of the Stars’ postseason run last year. With the pedigree Harley carries, it’s hard to see him going away, but there’s also a natural ceiling with Miro Heiskanen around. Thomas Harley’s and Nic Hague’s emergence as two-way forces capable of eating big minutes makes both of their clubs better in both the short and long term, however, so their three-and-a-quarter minute increases in TOI this season are positive indicators that these teams are serious about winning.

• Torey Krug - Torey Krug has started the year out manning the STL PP1 unit, which fits nicely alongside his role as partner to known-minutes-muncher Justin Faulk. Astute beat writers have noticed that Krug is also spending time on the PK with Faulk, something new to this season. This likely explains how Krug went from 19 minutes a night last year to over 21.5 this year. With top-pairing rates in his career, Krug’s main issue has been a lack of true top-tier minutes. While 21.5 isn’t elite, it’s more than enough to warrant a hard look in fantasy circles.

There’s nothing that NHL coaches love more than General Nonsense, so it’s very possible that these trends evaporate into nothing in short order. However, with the context I’ve applied to these situations, I think each of the players I’ve highlighted on the positive end of things have something actionable going on under the surface, especially from a fantasy perspective.

If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share it with your fantasy-obsessed friends, or even your crazy uncle who gets drunk at Thanksgiving and insists Ryan Suter is the best defenseman on the Dallas Stars. Maybe we’ll gather another convert to the Church of Thomas Harley.

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