from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- One thing the Leafs could use — a defenceman with a slapshot of consequence. When you look at scoring highlights around the NHL night after night, somebody is always scoring tip-in goals, rebound goals off slapshots, and even wide slapshots resulting in offensive plays. Toronto doesn’t score that kind of goal very often.

- Teams that can win the Stanley Cup this year: Boston, Toronto, Tampa, Rangers, Colorado, Vegas, Dallas and Winnipeg.

- This is historically odd: The Nashville Predators have drafted Shea Weber, Ryan Suter, Roman Josi, Seth Jones, Mattias Ekholm and Ryan Ellis, a bevy of superb NHL defencemen, but have never drafted a forward who scored more than Scott Hartnell.

- What a crazy season this has been for Erik Karlsson, playing for the bottom-feeder San Jose Sharks. If you can believe this, he leads the NHL in even-strength points while playing defence, which is rather startling. That’s more points than Connor McDavid, more than Sidney Crosby, more than Jack Hughes, who has one more than Jason Robertson and two more than David Pastrnak … On the other end of the spectrum, Karlsson is also last in the NHL in goals against at even strength, with 65, and no one is even close to him there.

- Joe Pavelski of Dallas, who doesn’t seem to age, has the best even-strength numbers overall in the league. He has a goal differential of +30. McDavid, alongside Alex Ovechkin, is +4.

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