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Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! Apparently, all we needed to do to wake up the sleeping Panther kitties was to reunite the Tkachuk brothers in the Sunshine state (even if one was only visiting) and to tell Linus Ullmark that he was back with the 2020 Buffalo Sabres. Our favorite Swedish goalie, whose name rhymes with a giggle-worthy body part, had one of the roughest starts of his career in Florida on Tuesday night.  Florida struck with pointed claws just 63 seconds into the game, and Mr. Ullmark was yanked after allowing 5 goals on just 16 shots. Oh, Linus.  It was a kick in the stomach for a surging Sens squad, who found themselves out of a wild-card spot by just two points when they started the day. By the end of the night, Ullmark and the rest of his Senators brethren were on the wrong side of a 6-3 loss to the back-to-back Stanley Cup champs.
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! Matthew Knies (2 G, +1, 2 PIM, 4 SOG, 2 H) is one of the only bright spots shining on the sinking ship that is the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season. His second-period shorthanded goal was a thing of beauty. Knies intercepted a weak Bruins pass, pushed aside Mason Lohrei, who looked a lot less powerful than his 6’5” frame would suggest, like an empty paper plate, and threw a nifty head fake on Jeremy Swayman before roofing a nice lickety-split wrister over the netminder’s glove. As much as this was a nice opportunity for the Bruins to pad their lead over Columbus, Montreal, and Detroit in the extremely tight playoff race, this tiny snapshot in time was an equally important reminder for Leaf fans that the team needs to do a lot of other “retooling or rebuilding” that DOES NOT involve trading their 23-year-old sniper.
It's no surprise that Nazem Kadri is the big winner of the trade deadline.  The surprise is how big of a winner that he is.  Kadri has played on the wing with MacKinnon and Necas instead of centering his own line, and it doesn't get better than that.  Kadri had a goalon two shots on Thursday in the win over the Kraken.  His 19:26 in a blowout win is the lowest TOI he's played so far.  There's a real chance that Kadri will be a top 50 player for the rest of the season if he stays in this spot, despite being available in 15% of leagues.  I assume your league's trade deadline has passed, but if it hasn't and you're making a push, Kadri is a top target.  
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! Well, fantasy baseball drafts are in full swing (pun relatively unintended), and I’m knee deep in preparations and writing for those. And I’ve been sick for three days. But…HOCKEY IS BACK! And I’m pretty excited to have an 11-game schedule of matchups to run down for y’all on the last Tuesday night of games before the Friday afternoon trade deadline. As for more names on the trade block? Well, I can guarantee this guy isn't going anywhere.
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! We’re smack-dab in the middle of Olympic chaos, and Wednesday’s playoff round looks like a doozy. I’m not even sure which game I’m looking forward to watching more: David Pastrnak vs Team Canada or the Swedish berries/fish/meatballs vs Team USA. Luckily, we don’t have to look into too much of that for right now, because it’s time to pair up last week’s trade deadline preview with the other side of the league. If you missed it last week, you can click the link here…
The first Winter Classic between the Sabres and Penguins in 2008 will always be the top outdoor game for me.  Everything about the game was perfection.  Sunday's Stadium Series game in Tampa moved to #2 on my list.  After Hagel scored 11 seconds into the game, Boston scored five in a row before Tampa mounted a huge comeback, winning 6-5 in a shootout.  There was even a goalie fight!  Boston's problem was that they couldn't stay out of the penalty box, and that's a death sentence against Tampa.  Unsurprisingly, it started with Nikita Kucherov, who had a goal and three assists with eight shots in the victory.  It might sound blasphemous, but Kucherov has a real chance to be the best European forward ever.  He'll certainly be in the discussion.  He's currently the #3 overall forward for fantasy behind MacKinnon and McDavid.  I had him ranked 4th going into the season in a tier with Draisaitl, who is currently 4th overall.  Very chalky season at the top besides the Celebrini big breakout.  Anyways, Kucherov is a top 5 player until further notice.  He's showing no signs of slowing down at 32.  Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! It was a night to remember for the Sabres and their franchise defenseman on Tuesday night. Rasmus Dahlin scored one in the first, one in the second, and then finished off the hat trick with an empty-netter in the third. The 3 goals and 2 assists were a career high single-game output for the 25-year-old Swede, and brought his point total up to a robust 42 PTS in 48 GP.  It wasn’t all Dahlin, though, as the rest of the Sabres brought their scoring sticks with them on their trip North of the border. Tage Thompson (1G, 1 A), Alex Tuch, Jack Quinn, and newly extended Josh Doan all tickled the twine for the Sabres, and helped to extend their newest win streak to 4 games. 
It's not that often that you see a team score 10 goals in a game.  In fact, it didn't happen all of last season.  It did on Saturday, with the Bruins smashing the Rangers 10-2 in the afternoon.  It's no surprise that the two highest game scores of the season were Bruins in this game.  It's definitely not a surprise that one was David Pastrnak, who dished a whopping six assists in the game, adding five shots on goal.  The huge surprise was Marat Khusnutdinov, who scored four goals and an assist, finishing +6.  While he didn't record any stats in Boston's game on Sunday, Khusnutdinov did have three assists in his previous four games.  He's currently on the first line with Pasta, so he's worth bumping into the middling streamer range.  There's some upside here, but he only had seven shots in his previous eight games combined, so that will need to drastically change for anything more.  Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! It was a short slate on Tuesday night with just 5 NHL games to recap. In Toronto, we didn’t even have Auston Matthews or William Nylander to check in on. The announcement on Tuesday afternoon was that both would be “out with a lower body injury.” Well, that’s certainly not a very Knies gift for Leaf fans this holiday season!
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! It’s been a bit of a wild ride for Morgan Geekie (2 G, +1, 3 SOG, 1 PPG, GWG). The Geekie Squad was the 67th overall pick in the 2017 draft and wasn’t considered much of a prospect after a 25-point season (in 66 games) for the 2015-2016 Tri-City Americans of the WHL. It was the following year’s breakout that put Geekie on the map (72 GP, 35 G, 90 PTS), and convinced the Carolina Hurricanes that he was worth a gamble in the third round of the NHL Entry Draft.
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a pretty popular show on Netflix these days that the kids are losing their ever-loving minds over. And as much as I was hoping to roll out a bit about Ivan Demi-dov-Gorgon, the Ottawa Senators had other plans (more on that below). Well, as they say, Stranger Things have happened than writing up a full round-up without a main star’s full stat-sheet to recount. And thankfully, a Motown defenseman gave us a performance to feature in our lede today. Moritz Seider took a page out of the alternate universe and flipped the Bruins into the upside down last night in Detroit with 1 G (4), 2 A (15), +1, 4 PIM, 1 SOG, 1 PPA, 4 BLK, and 22:55 of ice time.  It was a nice bounce-back of sorts for the big German blueliner, after being held off the scoresheet in his last 3 games. Seider led the charge for the Red Wings in this revenge game after he was beaten (on the scoreboard and in a fight by Mark Kastelic) on Saturday afternoon. But was that the only player worth highlighting from a Tuesday night 10-game slate?