It was locker clean out day for the New York Rangers and we got some news on what was ailing winger Chris Kreider all season. There had been talk that there was some back issue(s) that had been bothering him towards the middle of the season, but it was more than that as we got a full list of the injuries he was playing through:

Seems to me that, given how ineffective he was compared to how he usually plays, that this was not a wise decision, but that's how it goes.

We also got news that defenceman Braden Schneider was playing through a torn labrum for which he had surgery. He is hopeful to be ready for the start of the 2025-26 season.

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The Seattle Kraken fired coach Dan Bylsma after just one season behind the bench. The team didn't really progress very far after moving on from Dave Hakstol, so maybe a new voice will help, or maybe it's just the roster itself.

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Connor Hellebuyck turned in a great performance for the Winnipeg Jets in Game 2 as he turned aside 21 of the 22 shots he faced in a 2-1 win over St. Louis. This gives the Jets a firm 2-0 lead in the series as the teams head to the States for Game 3 on Thursday night.

Winnipeg's top line did the damage again as Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor scored both goals, both their second of the postseason. Scheifele assisted on Connor's goal, had two shots, three blocks, and two PIMs in a great fantasy night.

Jimmy Snuggerud scored his first career NHL playoff goal, a power-play tally late in the first period, which was the only puck to fly past Hellebuyck.

Jordan Binnington gave up just the two goals on 22 shots but that's all Winnipeg needed on this night.

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Alex Ovechkin played the hero for Washington in Game 1 as their home game against Montreal went into overtime, where Ovechkin scored just over two minutes into the extra frame to lift the Capitals to a 3-2 win. It was Ovechkin's second goal of the game on his fourth shot, having scored on the power play in the first period. He also assisted on an Anthony Beauvillier goal to give him a three-point night, and each point was needed in this one.

Logan Thompson was back in net for Washington after having not played since April 2^nd, and he stopped 33 of the 35 shots thrown his way to earn the win.

Beauvillier finished the game with the one goal on five shots while adding four hits along the way. Dylan Strome had a pair of assists in the win, including on Ovechkin's OT winner.

Cole Caufield (PP) and Nick Suzuki had the goals for Montreal, both coming in the second half of the third period as they erased a 2-0 deficit to force the overtime.

Sam Montembeault gave up three goals on 32 shots to take the loss.

Game 2 is Wednesday night in Washington.

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Dallas fought back from a 3-2 deficit midway through the third period to win Game 2 by a 4-3 score in overtime. Colin Blackwell, inserted into the lineup over Mavrik Bourque for the game, was the overtime hero by scoring with just over two minutes left in the first extra frame.

Tyler Seguin (PP), Thomas Harley, and Evgenii Dadonov had the other three goals. Harley finished the game with that one shot and one hit in nearly 36 minutes of ice time, and Jake Oettinger took the win by preventing 34 of the 37 shots he faced from entering the net.

Colorado got goals from Nathan MacKinnon (PP), Jack Drury, and Logan O'Connor. O'Connor also assisted the Drury goal and added two PIMs and two hits for a solid multi-cat night.

Mackenzie Blackwood gave up four goals on 39 shots to take the loss.

Game 3 is Wednesday night.

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Game 1 between Edmonton and Los Angeles did not disappoint in the slightest. The Kings got out to a 4-0 lead late in the second period before Leon Draisaitl replied in the waning seconds of the frame. The teams exchanged goals to start the third period and then Edmonton peeled off three straight, including two in the final couple of minutes, to tie things 5-5. And then, with 42 seconds left in the game, Phillip Danault capped off a wildly entertaining contest to give the Kings a 6-5 victory:

The Kings were dead after the McDavid tying goal but Moore-Danault-Foegele saves the day.

What a game!

pic.twitter.com/NF1cUo2AOM

— Russell Morgan (@NHLRussell) April 22, 2025

That was Danault's second goal of the game, adding three hits along the way. Both Adrian Kempe and Andrei Kuzmenko had a goal and two assists, each registering a power-play point, while both Quinton Byfield and Kevin Fiala had a goal and an assist.

Darcy Kuemper held on, giving up five goals on 25 shots but fending off the Oilers long enough for the Kings to take the win.

Connor McDavid had a goal, three assists, three shots, and five hits in the loss. Both Leon Draisaitl and Corey Perry each had a goal and an assist as Zach Hyman and Mattias Janmark added single tallies.

Evan Bouchard posted three helpers, fours hots, and two blocks in 28:20 of ice time.

Stuart Skinner took the loss, allowing six goals on 30 shots.  

Game 2 is Wednesday night.

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The NHL playoffs are underway but there were just four games, and now is a good time to start the regular season review. To start with, I want to give myself some accountability and review my personal preseason projections. Final season data is from Natural Stat Trick.

For today, we will look at goal totals from forwards, and which ones grossly under-performedrelative to my projections. We will use a cut-off of 41 games played and forwards with at least 10 projected goals – for fantasy purposes, I am not overly concerned about projecting some fourth liner for seven goals and they actually score three. I also extrapolated their actual goal total from however many games they played to 82 games to equalize games-played totals for everyone.

To begin, there were 15 forwards where I over-projected their 82-game goal total by at least 100%. That means if I had someone projected for 20 goals, they scored 10 or fewer. Here are nine key names from that group:

Let's talk about a few of these.

Alex Holtz (Vegas Golden Knights)

I write a weekly newsletter and, back in February, wrote about what was happening with Holtz. This isn't to absolve myself – this was a huge, huge miss no matter what – but that Holtz was not getting quality shots to take undoubtedly hurt his production this year.

This also highlights how much players are at the mercy of percentages, especially players at the margins like Holtz. He shot 12.3% across 110 games with New Jersey and then shot 5.8% in 53 games with Vegas. If he A) shoots 10% and B) plays 75 games, he more than doubles his goal total. So it goes.

Holtz was a player I had high hopes for the moment he was drafted. He has 39 goals in his last 82 AHL games, so he's clearly a talented offensive player. The concern is that he's going the way of players like Martin Frk or Riley Barber where he has the skill to dominate lower levels but can't put it all together at the NHL level.

Nils Hoglander (Vancouver Canucks)

I don't feel too bad about this one because Vancouver was not a team I was high on, generally, speaking for fantasy purposes. That largely worked out.

Despite factoring in a sizable drop in shooting percentage, the reason Hoglander's projection was for nearly 22 goals was an improvement in his role, particularly on the power play. I had him penciled in on the second PP unit, but a guy that would jump to the top PP unit due to injuries/lineup changes. Basically, the expectation was that Höglander would be something like what Jake DeBrusk and Pius Suter were for the Canucks, at least offensively. That did not work out, even down the stretch: Over Vancouver's final 27 games, Höglander received 20.3% of the available power-play time, ninth among Canucks forwards with at least 10 games played in that span. In terms of PP usage, Höglander was closer to Dakota Joshua than Jonathan Lekkerimaki. Make of that what you will.

This makes Höglander's 2025-26 outlook, from a fantasy perspective, pretty bleak. If he can't even be a fringe top PP guy with JT Miller traded, and both Filip Chytil and Elias Pettersson oft-injured, then it's hard to see him ever getting a meaningful PP role on this roster. He also got a lower share of the even-strength ice time in 2024-25 (22.3%) than the year prior (23.1%), so this was a pretty discouraging year for Höglander's future with the franchise.

Nick Bjugstad (Utah Utes)

We won't go long here but Bjugstad lost over five minutes of ice time per game compared to the year prior. He also went from a three-year average of 11.8% shooting to just 7% in 2024-25. If he skates 17 minutes a game and shoots just 10%, he scores 20 goals. So it goes.

Carter Verhaeghe (Florida Panthers)

Without getting too granular with Verhaeghe's season just yet (there are reasons for his decline besides just bad luck), it is absurd how little the Panthers scored with him and Aleksander Barkov on the ice at 5-on-5. Here is how Florida performed offensively with Verhaeghe and Barkov on the ice at 5-on-5 from 2021-2024, and how they performed this past season, by shots, expected goals, and actual goals-for per 60 minutes:

They had better goal rates skating apart, but still nowhere close to what they had done in recent years. There were genuine across-the-board declines in their offensive performance at 5-on-5 and it really hurt the fantasy values of a lot of key players. Injuries aside, what they did when they were in the lineup together was really disappointing.

Jared McCann (Seattle Kraken)

In one of the recent Spider-Man movies, MJ says, "If you expect disappointment, you'll never be disappointed." In an unrelated note, it's time to talk about the Seattle Kraken.

My hope was that the 2024-25 Kraken, under new coach Dan Bylsma, would not resemble the prior incarnations where most forwards skated relatively even ice time with split power-play units. The good news is the team did start using the top of the lineup more as Matty Beniers (30.3%) and Jaden Schwartz (29.8%) had a higher share of the even-strength ice time than any forward from the 2023-24 edition of the Kraken. The bad news is those names aren't Jared McCann. The worse news is they split the power-play units again.

A big underlying assumption in my projections was that McCann would be heavily used both at even strength and on the power play, leading to roughly 19 minutes a game. That clearly never happened. He also shot 10.9%, a five-year low and a huge drop from the 15.4% he averaged across the prior three seasons. If he skates 19:17 instead of 17:17, and shoots 15% instead of 10.9%, he pushes for 35 goals. Then again, if I had a billion dollars, I'd be a billionaire. So it goes.