This week we are continuing our MVP series with right wings. I have included a small snippet from last week's article below that outlines the process we are using in this series.

'Most Valuable' is a tricky term that is going to be completely dependent on the league specific context. For the purposes of this article, we are going to use standard Yahoo point scoring to calculate fantasy points for each player. This year the stats include goals, assists, power-play points, shots, blocks and (unfortunately) plus/minus. Obviously, this means there might be some general deviations to your league, based on your settings, but it is at least a good starting point. In order to grab all of this data I am exporting the Multi-Category and Big Board Reports for the full season, and doing a bit of rearranging so I can have only the pertinent fields.

The table below contains the top five fantasy producers at the right wing position for the 2024-25 season. We start with basic player information on the left (name, position, team) then get into some season stats (games played and Yahoo fantasy points per game). The fantasy points column is using points per game to attempt to take into account players who had big changes in value because they missed time.

Like with centers, we can't be too surprised by who is on this list. Nikita Kucherov and David Pastrnak are perennial first-round picks. Mitch Marner has been putting up 100-point seasons for five years now and while William Nylander and Jake Guentzel had slightly lower point paces compared to 2023-24, they are still elite right wings capable of 90-100 point pace seasons.

The thing that is notable with this list is who is absent. Mikko Rantanen and Matthew Tkachuk are ranked #7 and #8, just ahead of Tage Thompson and Kirill Marchenko. Not exactly what we thought going into the season. Tkachuk was injured for big chunks of the season, but very much seemed to be experiencing a Cup hangover. He had two incredible stretches: one in early February, and one in late November/early December where he put up 24 points in 10 combined games. Outside of those stretches where he probably won you two weeks, he was either injured or on a 64-point pace. Rantanen has his life turned upside down with a midseason trade. In Colorado, he was on a 108-point pace. Between Carolina and Dallas, he managed just a 60-point pace. There are some big question marks for him going into next season now for sure.

Our next table contains the players who provided the most value once we account for where they were drafted. I have included their ADP data, the fantasy points that were expected given that ADP and then the difference between those numbers.

We still have a couple of big names, but some really interesting production from Kirill Marchenko and Rickard Rakell.

Marchenko and honestly essentially all Blue Jackets were avoided on draft day, and for good reasons. Ultimately though almost to a man the top six provided some incredible value. Marchenko built on some very strong runs in 2023-24 and ended with a 77-point pace. He saw career highs across the board; time on ice, shot rates, power-play time, points participation, everything was going right. He ended the season with some fortunate numbers, like his team shooting percentage, but generally most of the production aligns with the increased deployment he got.

Rakell has his best season since 2017-18 in Anaheim. He spent a lot of time with Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust, both at even strength and on the power play. He saw the most overall time on ice and power-play share since 2018-19. Unfortunately, it was also his highest shooting percentage since 2016-17. If that had been more reasonable, we might have expected something closer to a 60-point pace. If he maintains the deployment, we might get another season or two of 60ish points, plus solid peripherals, but at 32 the decline will come at some point soon.

I did also want to mention Mark Stone. He makes the list mostly because he played 66 games. He always falls in drafts because of the injury scares, but on a per-game basis he is obviously an effective player.

Now we move on to the least valuable. These guys all underperformed their draft slot by significant margins.

Philipp Kurashev and Gustav Nyquist were riding high after 2023-24 because of their deployment opportunity. Kurashev had a lot of time in prime deployment next to Connor Bedard, while Nyquist was on a revelation of a top line with Ryan O'Reilly and Filip Forsberg. Given changes to their respective teams neither were really projected to keep that deployment so we should have expected things to fall back to earth, but clearly, we as a collective didn't downgrade them enough at the draft table.

Alexis Lafreniere finished 2023-24 strong and there was every reason to think that he might finally be breaking out. Unfortunately, he did not. He fell all the way to a 45-point pace and less than two shots per game. The Rangers as a whole disappointed, and Lafreniere didn't fall off in his deployment so perhaps he gets another shot to break out in 2025-26, but the trail of disappointing evidence is getting pretty long at this point.

Brock Boeser again had an excellent 2023-24 buoyed by a 19.6% shooting percentage. That alone should have knocked him down draft boards as we couldn't really expect that to continue. Except it kind of did. He finished 2024-25 with a 17.1 shooting percentage. The problem for Boeser was a Vancouver problem. Elias Pettersson was not good, Quinn Hughes missed time, JT Miller was traded, and just generally the team was plagued by dysfunction. So even though he maintained his time on ice deployment and his high shooting percentage, he still dropped 20 points in his season pace.

Finally I will wrap the column with a couple of players who provided the most value but generally weren't drafted.

We can kind of group Pavel Dorofeyev and Kent Johnson together here and say that these were players who had some flashes in the past, but were really given a much more significant role on their respective teams this season. The result of the increased time and player quality was very solid runs for both of them, and depending on the depth of the league season holds right out of free agency.

While it was technically Zack Bolduc's second season (played 25 games in 2023-24) we basically have two rookies breaking onto the scene between him and Matt Coronato. Both had inconsistent deployment, but spent significant chunks of time on their team's respective top power plays. They were both able to translate that time into point production and fantasy relevance for chunks of the season.

That is all for this week. Do your part to support organizations working to make hockey for everyone.

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