The Anaheim Ducks hired Joel Quenneville to be their next coach after firing Greg Cronin last month at the end of the regular season. I wrote about that hiring here.

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Connor McMichael intercepted a puck in the neutral zone, sped past the Carolina defenders, and scored on Frederik Andersen to give the Washington Capitals a 1-0 lead in Game 2 of their second round matchup. John Carlson then scored on the power play early in the third period and those two tallies were all the Caps needed as they hung on for a 3-1 win, tying the series at one game each. That goal from McMichael was his fourth of the postseason in just his seventh game, and he totaled a block, two PIMs, and a hit in the win.

Tom Wilson assisted the Carlson goal and then scored in the empty net to seal the win. He had three total shots, two blocks, and two hits in the victory. He is now up to seven points in seven games so far in the postseason.

Logan Thompson wasn't as busy as he was in Game 1, but held the fort, stopping 26 of 27 shots faced.

A Shayne Gostisbehere power play goal was the only puck to get past Thompson. Ghost finished with six total shots in the game. In fact, Carolina defencemen accounted for 16 of the team's 27 shots on goal. It is a good thing to get your defencemen active and all, but that is far too few shots from the forwards.

Frederik Andersen gave up just two goals, facing 20 shots, and took the loss.

Game 3 is Saturday night in Raleigh.

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Vegas fought back from a 4-2 third-period deficit to force overtime in their Game 2 matchup against Edmonton, but Leon Draisaitl pulled out win in overtime, finishing a 2-on-1 pass from Connor McDavid. That gives the Oilers a commanding 2-0 series lead as they head back to Edmonton for Game 3 on Saturday night.

Vasily Podkolzin scored his first career NHL playoff goal and an added an assist on a goal by Jake Walman. Podkolzin played under 10 minutes in a game with over total minutes, but had those two points, two blocks, and two hits. He has been able to provide great depth for a team that has often lacked it over the years.

The other two goals came from Evander Kane and Darnell Nurse. Nurse finished the game with five shots, three blocks, and a hit in a tremendous multi-cat night. Kane now has three goals and five points in seven games since returning from his surgeries. He has been a very underrated addition to a forward group that needed the depth mentioned alongside Podkolzin.

Calvin Pickard was solid in net for the Oilers, stopping 28 of 32 shots.

With Pavel Dorofeyev still out, Victor Olofsson was on the second line alongside Tomas Hertl, as well as the top power-play unit. That role amounted to two power-play goals, one assist, four shots, and a hit.

Alex Pietrangelo had a multi-point night of his own with the game-tying goal, an assist, two shots, and two blocks. William Karlsson scored the other Vegas goal.

Adin Hill took the loss, allowing five goals on 37 shots.

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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, those who exceeded expectations, and ended the forward discussion on those where projections aligned with actual production. Earlier this week, the discussion on defencemen debuted, discussing the underperformers. Today, we are moving on to which defencemen overperformed 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. Then we are extrapolating all point totals to a full 82-game season to try and put everyone on the same footing.

Here are five blue liners who exceeded their 82-game point projection by at least 40%:

It is an interesting mix of options.

Jackson LaCombe (Anaheim Ducks)

This is a case where I was high, to different degrees, on the Anaheim blue line, but targeted the wrong guys. I had high hopes for Olen Zellweger (still do), and thought Pavel Mintyukov could be a dark-horse producer. LaCombe was not high on my list, but he had one of the true breakout performances in the regular season with 14 goals and 29 assists in 43 games. He led Ducks defencemen in power-play ice time overall, and finished second on a per-game basis, just 15 seconds behind Zellweger.

Without going too deep on all the ways LaCombe found success this season, the long and short of it is that, per the tracking from AllThreeZones, LaCombe was excellent at breaking the puck out of the defensive zone. Not just compared to his teammates but compared to some of the top puck-movers in the league. To make that point, here are the defencemen with similar rates of zone exits at 5-on-5, whose team possessed the puck on at least 70% of those exits, and whose zone exits failed less than 20% of the time (including botching retrievals on dump-ins):

Shout out to Alex Vlasic here, but that's a pretty great list for LaCome to find himself.

There are still questions to be answered here, namely who will run the team's top PP unit when October rolls around. It seems the smart money is on LaCombe right now, but Zellweger is true competition and that gives them another option if they want. Regardless, with how much Anaheim's offence improved, how much more it should improve in seasons to come, and LaCombe asserting himself as the team's top defenceman, he can push for 50 points even without a significant PP role. It will be interesting to see where his ADP lands in September.

Lane Hutson (Montreal Canadiens)

Mike Matheson was on the list of guys who grossly underperformed their point projection, and a big reason was losing his PP role in late November to Hutson. It was not something I envisioned, and it's why Hutson's name is here on the overperformer list.

As with LaCombe, there are a lot of underlying numbers supporting the excellent rookie season from Hutson (not that just watching him play a few games couldn't tell us the same thing). There is no need to run long here: Hutson is Montreal's top puck-mover, their top PP option, and the future of their blue line. The only question is how much his peripherals improve to help fantasy managers in multi-cat formats.

Michael Kesselring (Utah Mammoth)

This is a case where Kesselring is a player I had hopes for, but didn't think he'd get enough of a role to really have much production. Well, he didn't have a big role (sixth on the Utah blue line by ice time per game), but he still managed 29 points in 82 appearances. He did that because he figured into 52.1% of the team's 5-on-5 goals with him on the ice. Of the 138 defencemen with at least 1000 minutes played at 5-on-5, that was 8^th overall, making him 1 of 8 defencemen to figure in on over 50% of the goals. Here are the other seven:

• Luke Hughes (58.1%)
• Cale Makar (57.3%)
• Zach Werenski (55.8%)
• Rasmus Dahlin (54.3%)
• Quinn Hughes (53.9%)
• Shea Theodore (53.7%)
• Jackson LaCombe (52.9%)

Luke Hughes is a young player with huge upside, and LaCombe may have been the breakout defenceman of the season. The other five names are a veritable who's-who of elite puck-movers.

That is one reason why it's hard to believe in Kesselring's season even if he's a guy I was relatively high on anyway (I was) and even if he had good underlying data to support this performance (there is). It is a huge, huge leap from "this guy could be a good puck-mover on a second or third pair" and "this guy is among the elite puck-movers in the league". It is also hard to see him supplanting Mikhail Sergachev on the power play, or either Sergachev or Sean Durzi in ice time, so expectations need to be tempered here. And boy, do I hate tempering expectations when a guy I'm keeping tabs on has a good season.

Moving on, let's quickly look at a trio of defencemen who over-performed their point projection by 30-40%:

Alex Vlasic (Chicago Blackhawks)

That earlier graphic in the section on LaCombe had the name Vlasic which is pretty important to point out. With Seth Jones now in Florida, Chicago's blue line is wide open. Artyom Levshunov was promoted late in the season and saw some top PP time, which is a tough break for Vlasic, who may have been in line to take over Jones's PP role. Also, it is worth noting that while Vlasic was great on breakouts in 2024-25, he was also good in 2023-24, so we now have two years of solid performance there. Levshunov sure seems as if he has the inside track to the top PP unit, but Vlasic is starting to round into an excellent defenceman. This is someone to keep an eye on when fantasy drafts roll around.

Rasmus Sandin (Washington Capitals)

Since getting to Washington, Sandin has generally been good in transition play, but the big reason his production soared was that the team's goal-scoring soared. A rising tide lifts all boats and all that, but this is a case where Sandin had a good year, the Capitals had a great year, and that was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

For 2025-26, Sandin may be in tough because John Carlson is still around and Jakob Chychrun is signed into the next decade. However, next year is Carlson's last on his current contract and he will be going into his age-37 season as a free agent. Sandin may need another year before taking another step production-wise, but the building blocks are there for more success in 2026 and beyond.

Dylan Samberg (Winnipeg Jets)

This was a superb campaign from Samberg, but for fantasy hockey, I still have some reservations. Josh Morrissey has three years left on his current contract and Neal Pionk just signed an extension going through 2031. Like Kesselring, Samberg could provide excellent results for the team but his position in the pecking order is going to limit his fantasy upside. It is nice to see him have a breakout year of sorts, but this seems to be a case where he'll have much more real-life value than fantasy value.