In an 82-game regular season, fatigue is bound to set in. Some players tend to deal with the workload better than others, but, at a certain point, even the league’s best get worn out.
Aleksander Barkov averaged the most ice time in the Eastern Conference among forwards in each of the past two seasons. (22:04 mins/GP in 2017-18 and 22:21 mins/GP this past year)
With the amount of hype surrounding the club after an exciting offseason, a playoff berth should finally be in the team’s headlights. Can they really expect their captain to maintain his elite performance while playing extraneous minutes every night if they make a deep playoff push?