The Los Angeles Kings' general manager search did not last long as they hired former Oilers boss Ken Holland to take over the direction of the team. Given Los Angeles' struggles against Edmonton in the playoffs in recent memory, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess? The forward group is largely fine, so Holland will be in charge of re-tooling the blue line, whether with free agent Vladislav Gavrikov or not.

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One coaching vacancy was filled as the Vancouver Canucks announced that Adam Foote, former defenceman and assistant coach under Rick Tocchet, would take over the head coaching role.

All told, it's hard to say whether this will be a good or bad move to have Foote as the coach because a lot of what could make this team a Cup contender again (a healthy Elias Pettersson and Thatcher Demko, a good offseason of signings and trades) has nothing to do with Foote himself. If he can make Quinn Hughes happy, then great, but the outlook of this team relies on things that are out of Foote's control, so this hiring is a big 'ok, sure' for now.

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Staying with the Canucks, they signed prospect Tom Willander to a three-year entry-level deal. Willander turned 20 years old this past February and is coming off two seasons with Boston University where he amassed 49 points in 77 games. Without further changes, there is a spot on the third pair for Willander if he can assert himself, but he is likely to have competition if/when the team fills out the roster over the summer.

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Another coaching position was taken as the Philadelphia Flyers brought Rick Tocchet over from Vancouver to take the spot left open by John Tortorella. Tocchet is a coach who likes his teams to slow things down and play opportunistic hockey, so the big question is if he can build a solid defensive team both at even strength and on the penalty kill to help out their goaltenders. If he can do that, this is a team that could fight for a playoff spot next season. Assuming RFAs Noah Cates, Tyson Foerster, and Cam York are brought back, the roster will look largely the same in 2025-26 as it did in 2024-25, so it's a matter of the young guys improving and squeezing more out of the veterans. Tocchet did that well in Vancouver, so let's see how this goes in Philadelphia.

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For a team with the litany of playoff letdowns that they do over the last decade, the Toronto Maple Leafs had one for the ages on Wednesday night as they got absolutely blasted by Florida 6-1, allowing the Panthers to take a 3-2 series lead. The lone saving grace was a goal from Nick Robertson with 66 seconds left in the game or it would have been another blank sheet for Sergei Bobrovsky.

Aaron Ekblad, Dmitry Kulikov, Niko Mikkola, AJ Greer, Jesper Boqvist, and Sam Bennett (PP) had the goals for the Panthers. Ekblad also assisted on the Bennett goal, giving him a multi-point night with six shots, 14 PIMs, and four hits. There were a few 10-minute misconducts handed out in this one, of which Ekblad was among the recipients.

Sam Reinhart had a pair of assists, six shots, and a block in the win. He is now up to 10 points in 10 playoff games thus far in the postseason.

Bobrovsky stopped 31 of 32 shots for the win.

Joseph Woll was pulled halfway through the third period after giving up his fifth goal on 25 shots.

Game 6 is Friday night back in Florida.

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The Edmonton Oilers are the first team to advance to either Conference Final thanks to a 1-0 overtime win on Thursday night that lifted them to a 4-1 series win over the Vegas Golden Knights. The irony is this game may have been Vegas' best game of the entire round, but they had dug such a big hole already that they couldn't afford to get unlucky again. So it goes.

Kasperi Kapanen, of all people, was the overtime hero for the Oilers. He banged home a rebound under a scrambling Adin Hill, scoring his first goal of the postseason, and the biggest goal of his hockey career.

Leon Draisaitl and Darnell Nurse had the assists on the goal which was started off a great ice-length breakout pass from Jake Walman. Draisaitl finished the game with that helper, five shots, two blocks, and a hit, while Nurse had three shots, two blocks, and four hits.

Stuart Skinner was in net again for the Oilers and stopped all 24 shots he faced for the shutout, his second in as many games. He gave up just four goals in his three games against Vegas, so maybe he's finally turned things around?

Hill had possibly his best game of the postseason, certainly of the second round, but took the loss, giving up that one goal on 32 shots.

Edmonton now waits for the winner of the Dallas/Winnipeg series, which could end as early as Thursday 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. Then we shifted to point totals and the forwards who fell short, those who exceeded expectations, and those whose point production was close to their preseason target. Then the discussion turned to defencemen, and we looked at both the underperformers and the overperformers before finishing with those we got right. Today, let's get away from individual preseason projections and look at things that had a big influence on those goal and point totals.

We are using Evolving Hockey for seasonal data.  

How about we start with one of the big developments: Shot totals.

In 2024-25, we saw the lowest rate of shots on goal generated per shot attempt at 5-on-5 in the analytics era. This has been declining for a few years now, after nearly a decade of stability, and has plummeted from 0.55 shots on goal per shot attempt in 2021-22 to just 0.47 this season:

Despite the fact that that teams shot 8.96% at 5-on-5 (the highest since the 2013 lockout and the ninth straight season with an increasing shooting percentage), and despite the fact there was more 5-on-5 ice time this season than any year since the 2013 lockout (thanks to declining power play opportunities), there was a four-year low in goals per 60 minutes and overall goals at 5-on-5. Rising shooting percentages helped soften the blow, but losing over 10% of the league's 5-on-5 shots on goal in the last three seasons is a huge decline. 

Overall, it meant 97 fewer goals at 5-on-5 in 2024-25 than the year before, and 225 fewer goals at that strength than in 2022-23. That is important for us fantasy managers and here is why.

Since the 2013 lockout, there have been 5389 forwards to have individual seasons with at least 20 games played. While things can change from year to year based on available 5-on-5 ice time, top-6 forwards generally play over 12:05 per game at that strength. Here is the goal-scoring rate of forwards playing less than that, or bottom-6 forwards, from 2013-2023 compared to the last two seasons:

To add to that, as is often discussed in these Ramblings, the nature of the defence position has changed drastically over the last decade. In fact, not only has goal scoring from the bottom-6 risen over the last couple of seasons when compared to the decade before, but goal scoring from defencemen has risen, too:

So, we have a league where 5-on-5 goal scoring has been declining for a couple years now, but 5-on-5 goal scoring from both depth forwards and defencemen has been increasing. Well, guess who is taking the brunt of the decline, then?

There are a multitude of reasons why the 2024-25 season saw just one player reach the 120-point plateau (Nikita Kucherov, 121) after having two such players in 2022-23 and four of them in 2023-24: Power play opportunities are disappearing, which disproportionately hurts the production opportunities of top producers, and depth forwards and defencemen are scoring a larger share of the 5-on-5 goals. To illustrate this, here are the number of players to reach 55 points at 5v5 in each 82-game season since 2013 (excluding the two shortened seasons):

There were half the players to reach the 55-point mark at 5-on-5 in 2024-25 compared to just one year ago, and one-third the number of players to reach that mark compared to just two years ago.

Things are changing fast in the NHL – the on-ice product of 2025 is nowhere close to what it was even 6-7 years ago. We have seen similar changes in major sports as analytics have come to the forefront, it's just taken hockey a while to catch up. Eventually, maybe the pendulum swings back and the game reverts to an environment that is more favourable for its top stars, but even with a more shot quality-focused approach in general, the way the goals are being distributed is hurting those players.

Just thinking out loud, this might be the best opportunity for fantasy managers to start looking around the league at depth options. Those are often players we look to, anyway, when thinking about things like penalty minutes and hits, but if they are going to be getting a larger share of the goals, there might be some hidden production gems. We aren't going to suddenly be looking at a slew of players who come out of nowhere for 20-goal, 45-point seasons, but maybe players like Will Cuylle and Kiefer Sherwood are going to be more abundant than we're used to. If that's the case, it is a chance to find some hidden gems deeper in drafts, where a lot of fantasy leagues are won or lost.

Speaking of those peripheral stats, a big reason why we're seeing fewer shots on goal, especially per shot attempt, is that players are blocking more shots. While the number of total blocks at all strengths declined from 2023-24, as did the 60-minute rate of blocks, the 2024-25 campaign saw a higher rate than at any time since 2013 except last year. We also saw our third straight year of declining hit rates and that is now at its lowest point since the start of the 2013 campaign:

Just for posterity: Those changes in block and hit rates are mirrored at 5-on-5, as blocks have been rising (though down slightly this past season) while hits have been dropping. The earlier graphic is at all strengths just to show the league-wide changes, but seeing as we discussed 5-on-5 shot/goal rates earlier, it was worth mentioning that the rises/declines are similar at that strength, too.

The interesting part is the change isn't split among positions. Rather, forwards are blocking more shots per 60 minutes than at any point since 2013, and hits per 60 minutes have increased in each of the last two seasons:

While the 2024-25 season saw small declines in both hits and blocks per 60 minutes at all strengths overall, those rates both increased slightly among just the forwards. So, the decline has all come from defencemen as they've become less involved in the peripheral categories.

This is all very important for fantasy managers to keep in mind, so let's summarize what we've found so far:

• At 5-on-5, there are fewer shots on goal than at any point in recent memory, as teams are requiring far more shot attempts to achieve a shot on goal.
• Despite nine straight seasons of increasing shooting percentages at 5-on-5, and despite more 5-on-5 ice time overall because of declining penalty rates, the 2024-25 season saw a four-year low in both goals per 60 minutes and total goals scored at 5-on-5.  
• Bottom-6 forwards and defencemen have seen their 5-on-5 goal-scoring rates increase in the last couple of seasons, so the drop in overall goals is coming from top-6 forwards.
• The 60-minute rates of both blocks and hits declined slightly in 2024-25 compared to the year before.
• Those declining blocks and hit rates from this season can be attributed to defencemen being far less involved because the block and hit rates from forwards actually increased.

The NHL is in a fascinating place because of how much the game is changing each season. We are seeing new approaches to offence, the distribution of goal-scoring changing, and peripheral categories like shots, hits, and blocks are in constant flux.

Again, while we do need to adjust our expectations for shot/hit/block totals, I think the big takeaway for fantasy owners is that, in multi-category leagues, there are going to be more useful depth forward options than before. Top fantasy players are still there, and still crucial to fantasy success, but the waiver wire may not be as barren, and the late-round draft picks are growing in importance.