Max Domi was fined $5 000 for his hit on Aleksander Barkov in the waning seconds of Game 4 on Sunday night. If nothing else, Game 5 should be a lot of fun because that fourth game saw Toronto start pushing back physically, so it'll be interesting to see how Florida reacts to that. If I had to guess: Not calmly.

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Taylor Hall scored on a breakaway with a little under 12:30 remaining in the third period, and then assisted on a Sean Walker goal about eight minutes later, to help seal Carolina's 5-2 win over Washington on Monday night. That win pushes the Capitals to the brink of elimination, and the Hurricanes, now with a 3-1 series lead, have three chances to send home the Eastern Conference's top team from the regular season.

Hall had the one goal on five shots, the assist, and two PIMs in the win. He is up to six points in nine postseason games, including three in four games in this series alone.

Seth Jarvis and Shayne Gostisbehere had two of the other goals for Carolina while Andrei Svechnikov added the empty netter. That gives Svechnikov seven goals in nine games so far in the postseason. After a couple of down years, he has been a difference-maker for them these playoffs.  

Walker assisted the Hall goal, so he had two points to go with four shots and two blocks.

Frederik Andersen stopped 19 of 21 shots faced in the win.

Jakob Chychryn and Alex Ovechkin (PP) had the goals for Washington. Chychrun also assisted on the Ovechkin goal, totaled three shots, managed three blocks, and put up a pair of hits.

Logan Thompson gave up four goals on 36 shots in the loss.

Game 5 is Thursday night back in Washington.

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Edmonton bounced back from their literal last-second loss in Game 3 to take Game 4 by a 3-0 margin at home to Vegas. Stuart Skinner was back in net for the Oilers, and stopped all 23 shots he faced for his second career playoff shutout. Edmonton needed a solid game from their netminder, especially with Calvin Pickard still injured, and Skinner gave them exactly what they needed.

Adam Henrique scored less than 90 seconds into the game and then added another goal before the end of the first period. Evander Kane added the exclamation point in the second period, but they already had all the cushion they'd require on this night.

Henrique finished the game with two goals on three shots and added a block to his name. Kane assisted the second Henrique goal, managed five shots, had two PIMs, and an Oilers-high six hits on the night.

Evan Bouchard assisted the Kane goal, added two shots, and managed three blocks in the win. He is up to 12 points in 10 games in these playoffs, tying him with Mitch Marner for sixth in postseason scoring.

Connor Brown assisted on the first Henrique goal with a nifty play from behind the net. Corey Perry, Brown, and Kane are already up to seven points apiece so far this postseason, or 21 points in all. Those three players had 17 points in Edmonton's entire playoff run last year and are a big part of the secondary scoring that has been the story of the Oilers' 2025 postseason thus far.

Adin Hill was in net for the Vegas loss, giving up three goals on 32 shots. He is now sporting an .872 save percentage through four games against Edmonton, and an .876 save percentage in the playoffs overall.

Vegas will be back at home for Game 5 on Wednesday night.

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My Ramblings over the last few 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. We then moved to point totals to look at the forwards who fell short, those who exceeded expectations, and those who came very close to their projection. Then the discussion turned to defencemen, and we looked at both the underperformers and the overperformers by point projections. Today, we are moving on to which defencemen came in very close to their preseason outlook for point production. 

We are using Natural Stat Trick for end-of-season data to compare to my preseason projections. We are also limiting the sample to rearguards 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 defencemen who finished right around, or less than 5% above, their projection. That means if a blue liner was projected for 30 points, they came in somewhere between 30-32 points. If they were projected for 50 points, they came in between 50-53 points, and so on:

How about we start with someone who was traded during the season.

Seth Jones (Chicago Blackhawks/Florida Panthers)

It isn't that the projection for Jones was anything special – a lot of places had him somewhere in the mid-40s – but how he got there is the interesting part: Of Jones' 27 points in Chicago, 15 of them came on the power play. Overall, he posted 36 points in 63 games, and 19 of them came on the man advantage. That marks the first time in his career where at least half his points came on the power play, and the first time since 2017-18 he got at least 40% of his production through PPPs.

This is what makes Jones' future interesting. In 2024-25, Florida finished 23^rd by goals per 60 minutes at even strength with 2.53. The gap in even-strength goals/60 between them and Chicago (2.38) was smaller than the gap between them and 17^th-place Montreal (2.69). The year before, the Panthers were in the middle of the league by EV goals/60. Ostensibly, it should be a better scoring environment than Chicago, but the question is how much better is it really going to be? Also, if Aaron Ekblad is re-signed, is Jones going to earn regular top power-play minutes? He often has so far in the postseason, and when healthy, the 30-year-old defenceman had a fine campaign. There are still a lot of question marks for 2025-26, though, even if he's on a much better team.

Brandt Clarke (Los Angeles Kings)

When doing my projections, two things were true:

• Given Clarke's likely talent, if he could be a regular top-4 defenceman with top PP minutes, he would have a realistic shot at breaking 50 points.
• There was very little chance Clarke would earn a consistent top-4 role and he would likely share PP duties once Drew Doughty returned.

The first part proved true: Clarke averaged 1.56 points/60 minutes at all strengths. At 21 minutes a game for 82 games, that is a 45-point pace. A bit shy of 50 points, but close enough where a bit of good luck would get him there.

The second part also proved true as the Kings, especially when Doughty returned, relied heavily on a top-4 group of Doughty, Vladislav Gavrikov, Joel Edmundson, and Mikey Anderson. And following the return of Doughty, Clarke was relegated to second PP unit duties.

Clarke is easily Los Angeles' best offensive defenceman, and that's not hyperbole – here are his closest comparables this season, per tracking data from All Three Zones, by things like zone entries and exits, how often those entries/exits are with possession, assists on teammate scoring chances, and overall contributions to scoring chances (assists and shots):

But the Kings do not trust Clarke defensively (yet). Gavrikov is a free agent, so maybe a spot in the top-4 opens up, but even if that's the case, it sure seems as if Clarke would go into next season as the number-4. And it isn't a sure thing that Clarke gets a lot of top PP minutes. This is another player with high upside if he can earn the right role, but that role has a lot of question marks around it right now.

Shayne Gostisbehere (Carolina Hurricanes)

Like Jones, Gostisbehere got a huge percentage of his production (60%) from the power play. Though, in Ghost's defence, this isn't nearly as big a surprise given his likely role with the Hurricanes from the outset, as well as just coming off a season in Detroit where he got 52% of his points on the man advantage.

As with the other two, there is a wrinkle here for the 2025-26 season, and his name is Alexander Nikishin. While it's far from a certainty that Nikishin earns a regular top PP role with the Hurricanes, it is plausible, and we have already seen the team trust rookie Jackson Blake with such a role. Gostisbehere seems to be a safe bet for those prime production minutes, though low overall ice time will still cap his upside.

Okay, let's look in the other direction and defencemen who finished slightly under their projected point total:

At the top is a fascinating name from Ottawa.

Thomas Chabot (Ottawa Senators)

Chabot had a 55-point season in 2018-19 and averaged 50 points every 82 games from 2021-2024. But Jake Sanderson is there now, and Sanderson took the lion's share of the top PP time in 2024-25. So, after averaging 18 PP points every 82 games from 2021-2024, Chabot had just eight in 2024-25. Considering Sanderson had 30 (!) power-play points, that was the difference between Chabot posting a very respectable 45 points or potentially pushing for 70. It is still often very underrated how much impact a player's role has.

The problem is that Sanderson is the real deal. A lot of the tracking data shown for Clarke earlier is similarly very, very strong for Sanderson, with the difference being Ottawa has a lot of trust in Sanderson's defensive play. Those skills are going to keep him as the number-1 defenceman for a while.

This situation has turned into a Colorado situation (not in terms of the players themselves, just the specific situation) where Devon Toews might be a bona fide number-1 defenceman on at least one-third of the teams in the league, but is perennially stuck as the number-2 defenceman behind Cale Makar. So it goes for Chabot and Sanderson.

Simon Edvinsson (Detroit Red Wings)

Considering it was Edvinsson's first full year, it was his age-21 season, he was on a non-playoff team that finished 29^th in the league in even strength goal scoring, and he got very little meaningful power-play time, Edvinsson putting up 31 points in 78 games feels like a minor miracle. He led Detroit defencemen by even strength points per 60 minutes at 1.21, far, far ahead of Moritz Seider's second-place 0.8 EV points/60. That mark of 1.21 points/60 minutes at even strength was in the 81^st percentile of regular defencemen, or a high-end number-2 blue liner. Again, considering all the conditions we just laid out, that is fantastic.

Like most everyone else in this article, there is still a huge question mark about his future fantasy value. He has averaged 141 blocks and 98 hits every 82 games in his short career, so there is peripheral value. But if Detroit can't fix its even-strength scoring problem, and Seider keeps taking the top PP minutes, there is a cap on what Edvinsson can bring. Even a 40-point season, in those conditions, would be a success.