Alumni in the pros 25-26

[arugula]

I missed it but Sullivan Mack is back in the AHL with Hartford to finish out their season.  In three games since his recall he's scoreless. 

The Rangers called up half the Hartford roster, so there was some room there.  Good for Sully.  Had an excellent year in the ECHL. 

[stereax]

Filipovic on Malinski:

Sam Malinski's Development This Season
The importance of Sam Malinski's evolution throughout the season from luxury piece on the 3rd pair to essential top-four contributor can't be overstated. It's probably one of the most difficult jumps in the game for a young player to make in this league. There's a lot of defenders that can churn our sparkling underlying numbers in carefully managed usage. The list of defenders who can translate that success when that role changes is significantly shorter.

Malinski made that jump rather emphatically this year. He was being utilized as their 6th defenseman in the team's first 39 games leading up to the New Year, averaging just under 15 5v5 minutes per game in that time. In the next 43 games they played from January 1st on, that number got scaled up to 17:09 per game, which only trailed Cale Makar by 18 seconds per game for the team lead.

Armed with the benefit of fun chess pieces to play with, a comfortable cushion in the standings, and time to spare before the postseason in which they could gain potentially useful information to circle back to later, we saw Jared Bednar mix and match with different combinations atop the defensive depth chart along the way. When Devon Toews missed a month's worth of games, Malinski took his spot on the top pair next to Makar. After Brett Kulak arrived via trade, Malinski played with him right out of the gate.

Even before Makar's recent absence due to injury, there was a good chunk of action where they took a long look at Malinski with Toews, and Makar with Brett Kulak instead. Those minutes went very, very well for Malinski, Toews, and the Avalanche. In the 244:28 they've played together at 5v5, the team posted the following shares via Natural Stat Trick:

69.2% of the goals (nice)

66.5% of the expected goals

67.7% of the high danger chances

63.8% of the shots

Malinski's 5v5 numbers across the board for the season are outlandishly good. He finished the year with 38 5v5 points, which is tied for the 6th highest total at the position with Jakob Chychrun. That's just 1 point behind Makar, in roughly the same number of minutes played. The Avalanche won his minutes by a 73-31 goal margin. That's a 70.3% goal share, which was just the 8th time since 2007 that a skater topped the 70% threshold while playing at least 1000 5v5 minutes (out of 3,928 qualified skaters in that time).

Another one of those 8 was Nathan MacKinnon at 70.6% this season. Both Malinski and MacKinnon were dominant in their minutes apart, but the times they shared the ice together were particularly special. They outscored opponents 33-10 in those shifts, creating north of 4.8 goals per hour of play. Having Malinski out there with MacKinnon supercharged Colorado's offense, serving as a force multiplier for their attack. ...

The rest of it is paywalled.

[sah67]

Malinski vs Malott in game 1 of the Colorado-LA series. Sam had a strong first period, leading the Avs with 3 of their 9 SOG.

[sah67]

In other Malott news... his brother Mike won his UFC main event fight last night: https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/mike-malott-first-ufc-main-180000852.html

[stereax]

Listening in. I wonder why they don't add the NCAA rule that a first failed challenge charges your timeout.