We can stop calling the Utah franchise whatever we were calling them before (it was never Hockey Club in my book), as the team announced on Wednesday that the franchise is officially named the Mammoth. Overall, not a bad choice. The name is kind of fun and the logo looks good. That logo does kind of remind me of Nashville's, only with a longer nose and inverted teeth, but not bad overall:

The Ice Age movie crossovers have to be coming, right?

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The Toronto Maple Leafs extended their series lead over the Florida Panthers with a 4-3 win on Wednesday night. This win came with Joseph Woll in net as he relieved Anthony Stolarz in Game 1 and Stolarz was not even dressed for this one. Woll stopped 26 of 29 shots he faced in the victory, and he looked sharp from the moment the puck dropped. That is a sigh of relief for Leafs fans concerned about the team's goaltending.

Both Max Domi and Max Pacioretty registered a goal and an assist, including a sick between-the-legs tip-in goal from Patches. He finished the game with seven hits to go with his two points, and he now has six points and 18 hits in his last three games dating back to the end of the Ottawa series.

Mitch Marner and William Nylander had the other goals for the Leafs.

Aleksander Barkov, Brad Marchand, and Anton Lundell had the goals for the Panthers, with Lundell assisting on the Marchand goal. That Florida third line has now been on the ice for four of the team's seven goals through the first two games.

Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky looked about as solid as a cargo net, allowing four goals on 20 shots.

Game 3 is Friday night back in Florida.

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Both Mark Scheifele and Jason Robertson returned to the lineups of the Winnipeg Jets and Dallas Stars, respectively, on Wednesday night. Both are big deals and now these top rosters are getting closer to full strength, with Josh Morrissey and Miro Heiskanen still missing from action.

Their game saw another unreal performance from Mikko Rantanen as he registered a natural hat trick in the second period, all within eight minutes, to lead the Stars to a 3-2 win. That gives him a hat trick in back-to-back games after his sublime night in Game 7 against Colorado, and he now has 14 points in his last four games. With 15 points overall, Rantanen now leads the postseason in goals and points.

Thomas Harley had an assist on Rantanen's second goal, adding two shots and three blocks along the way. With how good Rantanen has been, it overshadows the fact that the Stars are now plus-3 with Harley on the ice at 5-on-5 in the postseason, making him the only Stars defenceman with a positive 5-on-5 goal differential.

Robertson skated on a line with Wyatt Johnston and Mason Marchment, and was back on the top PP unit. It looks like he may take the place of Roope Hintz. Robertson skated just 13:44 as the team is clearly easing him back in.

Jake Oettinger was stellar in net again, stopping 25 of 27 shots in the win. He has posted a .910 save percentage in six of Dallas's eight postseason games thus far. Oettinger is providing stellar, consistent performances that is keeping Dallas in nearly all of their games.

Scheifele and Nino Niederreiter had the goals for the Jets. Scheifele finished with seven shots, a block, and a hit in 22:36 of ice time.

In the absence of Morrissey, Haydn Fleury was in the lineup once again and had an assist, two blocks, two PIMs, and two hits.

Connor Hellebuyck allowed three goals on 24 shots for the loss.

Game 2 is Friday night.

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My Ramblings over the last couple weeks have been reviewing preseason projections. We started with forwards who underperformed goal-scoring expectations, those who overperformed with their goal totals, and some forwards whose goal tally was close to their preseason projection. Then we moved to point totals to look at the forwards who fell short and those who exceeded expectations, before finishing with forwards whose point projection was very close to their actual performance. Today we are averting our gaze to the blue line and seeing which defencemen underperformed their point projections.

We are using Natural Stat Trick for end-of-season data to compare to my preseason projections. We are also limiting the sample to defencemen projected for at least 15 points and who appeared in at least 41 games, which gives us a sample of 152 players. Then we are extrapolating all point totals to a full 82-game season to try and put everyone on the same footing.

Here are the 10 defencemen where I missed the mark by at least 80%:

The biggest misses are depth guys who just had bad seasons (man alive, Ryan Graves), so it's not something I'm too worked up about. There was one big miss who was often a top-25 defenceman off the board in fantasy drafts, though.

Mike Matheson (Montreal Canadiens)

Full disclosure: My assumption was that Matheson would hold the top power-play role for the majority of the season while Lane Hutson got his reps in on the second unit. That was definitely not the case as Hutson took over the top PP unit a few days before American Thanksgiving and remained there for the rest of the season.

Also playing a role here was a bit of bad luck. At even strength, Matheson had not had a season below 30% goal participation since his rookie year, and had been over 40% for three straight seasons from 2021-2024, and over 50% from 2022-2024. This season, that number cratered to 25.6%. Even just a normal (for him) mark of 45% would have added 15 points to his final season total. That, plus the gap in PP points between him and Hutson (16), is 31 points missing, or nearly the entire difference between my projection and his actual tally (33 points). It is why I don't feel too bad about missing on Matheson by so much. My bigger regret is underrating Hutson's impact.

Brock Faber (Minnesota Wild)

Like many Wild players, Faber was off to a strong start – 20 points in 38 games through the end of December – and then the injuries piled up. Faber went on to post four (!) points in the next 33 games before finishing strong in April.

This is another where I don't feel so bad about missing the mark. Faber was probably going to reach at least 40 points had the team stayed relatively healthy, but they didn't, and he didn't, so here we are. The point projection would have still been too high, but it would have closed that gap by a lot. Not helping the cause was the fact that he also put up far fewer blocks (115) and hits (36) than his rookie year (150 and 65, respectively) despite just 57 fewer minutes played. He will be an interesting case to project for the 2025-26 season, especially with Zeev Buium around now.

Cam York (Philadelphia Flyers)

After averaging 30 points/82 games across his first three seasons, I thought the Flyers would take a step forward offensively, mostly due to adding Matvei Michkov to the lineup. The expectation is York would be given top-pair minutes and accumulate close to 10 power-play points.

Well, uh, he was technically given top-pair minutes, but Travis Sanheim was given nearly four more minutes per game than any other Flyers defenceman. After him, York (20:46), Rasmus Ristolainen (20:31), and Jamie Drysdale (19:55) all had TOI levels within a minute of each other. In effect, the Flyers had a number-1 defenceman (Sanheim) and then three number-3 defencemen.

Also, York was given almost no power-play time. He finished sixth among Flyers defencemen in percentage of power-play time, per Frozen Tools, with only Nick Seeler and Erik Johnson getting less. Maybe things change under a new coach, but none of these developments are good for York's fantasy future.

From here, let's move on to a pair of defencemen who were often taken somewhere in the 10-20 range in fantasy drafts:

Miro Heiskanen (Dallas Stars) and Charlie McAvoy (Boston Bruins)

We are lumping these two players together not only because of their fantasy draft slotting but because of how they mirrored each other in a lot of ways. Both are their team's blue-line anchors, both are infrequent shooters, both got injured for a lengthy stretch in the 2024-25 season, and both grossly underperformed besides that.

While there were numerous reasons why, injuries aside, each underperformed in the fantasy realm, one throughline is the power play. Here is the difference in the goals-for rate at 5-on-4 in the regular season with Heiskanen and McAvoy on the ice compared to the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, as well as the difference in their personal points rate:

From 2022-2024, Heiskanen averaged 30 power-play points every 82 games. In the 2024-25 season, he had seven power-play points in 50 games, or 11-12 PPPs in a full season. That is a cataclysmic drop-off and considering how good the power play was with Thomas Harley running things (the goal rate more than doubled), Heiskanen may have just lost his top PP role for good.

While McAvoy wasn't as prolific on the power play as Heiskanen, he did average roughly 19 PPPs every 82 games from 2022-2024. This past season, he had four PPPs in 50 games, or 6-7 PPPs in a full season. Again, a cataclysmic drop.

If I were a betting man, I would say that Heiskanen has lost his top PP role to Harley (though the rest of the playoffs may tell a different story). That isn't the same for McAvoy as Boston's power play improved with Mason Lohrei but still wasn't good (or even average). Maybe McAvoy gets another kick at the can but given what we saw this season from both he and Heiskanen, these are two guys who now have giant question marks over their fantasy value moving forward.

Dougie Hamilton (New Jersey Devils)

I won't go long here, but I do want to highlight that I missed big on Hamilton: projected for 78 points in 82 games, but finished with 40 points in 64 games, or 51 points in a full season. The basic idea here was that I wasn't as concerned with Luke Hughes taking over the top PP role was some people were, and that was true as he basically held the top PP role until his injury in early March.

Two things hurt Hamilton when he was healthy:

1. He registered a power-play assist on just 28% of the PP goals scored with him on the ice. Across his first three seasons with New Jersey, that number was over 48%. That alone probably cost him 7-8 PP assists in his 64 games. 
2. He shot 4.8%. That isn't the lowest of his career (4.6% in 2021-22), but it is just the second time he shot under 5% in his 13 seasons and he had averaged 6.8% in his prior three seasons with the Devils. That probably cost him about four goals in his 64 games.

Overall, those two things left Hamilton with about 11 fewer points than he otherwise should have had. It didn't happen, we can't award phantom points, and an additional 11 points wouldn't have brought him near the projected 78-point pace, but it is worth noting there's a bit of bad luck here.

On the downside, Luke Hughes is a real threat for the top PP role now, so even if that variance improves in 2025-26, Hamilton may not be in a position to greatly benefit from it.