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.
I started the opening paragraph before the Blues game ended and got punished for it. I was already writing about Dylan Holloway, but his night got a lot better late improving his stat line. Holloway was playing his first game since January 18th, and only his second since December 12th, and he delivered the best game of his career. Holloway had a hat trick and an assist with five shots in the 5-1 win over the Kraken. Holloway broke out last season with 26-37 in his first year with the Blues, but this season has been a huge disappointment both for him and the team. The Blues are out of the playoff picture, so it's hard to say who will be traded and who will stay. Holloway is one of the few players that I'd be surprised if they moved. The 24 year old has the upside of a bottom end hold in 12'ers, as he showed last season. The Blues play a bunch of poor defenses in the short term, so for now, Holloway is an elite stremer. Let's take a look at what else happened in the first two nights back from the Olympic break:
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:
Hello again, Razzball faithful!
I’m very excited to be back on the hockey side of things for the 2025 season! When Viz sent out the ‘puck-beacon’ into the night sky, asking if anyone was down to help write some words about our beloved frozen fandom, I got that Flame in the belly again.
After I realized it was not indigestion, or Jarome Iginla, all it took was a quick message from Grey asking if I’d be interested in jumping back in on the word-Zamboni, and I was in.
Some of you might remember me from a few years ago when I wrote up some DFS for Viz here. Since then, I’ve been hammering out words on the baseball side most recently as our Top 100 Starting Pitchers writer for the last two years. You can check that stuff out here if you have a lot of time on your hands and/or have read through the divisional preview 25 times already.
As for me, I told Viz that I would be happy to preview the divisions and bring you names and some notes to help you get your squad up to snuff for the 2025-2026 season. After that, I’ll be coming back each Wednesday to do the Tuesday night recaps.
