It was hard for the Edmonton Oilers to ask more from their opening game of the Western Conference in Dallas against the Stars… at least through the first 40 minutes. Goals from Evan Bouchard and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had opened a 3-1 lead for the Oilers going into the second intermission as they were poised to open the round with a win on the road.

Then it all fell apart in the third period. A pair of power-play goals from Mikael Granlund and Miro Heiskanen in the first four minutes of the frame tied things up, and then Matt Duchene scored his first of the playoffs two minutes after that to give the Stars the 4-3 lead. Tyler Seguin scored his second goal of the game 10 minutes later and Esa Lindell sealed the 6-3 win with an empty-netter, and Dallas earned the 1-0 series lead.

Leon Draisaitl had the other goal for Edmonton.

Seguin had a monster game for the stars with those two goals, one assist (PP), and five shots in under 16 minutes of ice time. Granlund also had a multi-point game, assisted on the Heiskanen goal while totaling four shots, three blocks, and six hits. That gives him four goals and seven points in his last five playoff games.

Heiskanen had a PP goal, a PP assist, two shots, a block, and a hit in over 24 minutes of ice time. The Stars went back to a 12/6 alignment as Alex Petrovic was sent to the press box and it really seems as if Heiskanen has found his footing after returning from injury.

Jake Oettinger was good enough for Dallas, stopping 25 of 28 shots faced in the win.

Draisaitl got in on all three Oilers goals with a tally, two helpers (one PP), four shots, and a hit.

Nugent-Hopkins also had a multi-point game with, adding an assist to his goal, while racking up four shots, a block, and a hit.

Stuart Skinner allowed five goals on 27 shots as the Dallas power play shredded the Edmonton penalty kill.

Game 2 is Friday night in Dallas.

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It happens every year: Players who have improved underlying numbers that suggest they should be having productive fantasy seasons, but for whatever reason(s), they don't. That is why it's worth going through some players who genuinely made improvements in some key underlying stats but didn't have the fantasy production to go with it. For this, we will be using player data from Natural Stat Trick or Frozen Tools, and tracking data from AllThreeZones. Because we are looking for improvements from prior seasons, there won't be any rookies from the 2024-25 season included.

For the tracking data, we are limiting players with at least 250 tracked minutes across the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons and 100 tracked minutes in 2024-25, all at 5-on-5.

How about we start with the forwards who, per the tracking data, added at least 10% to their rates of offence created both off the rush and off the cycle/forecheck:

Readers will notice that a lot of these players – Alex Laferriere, Barrett Hayton, Kent Johnson, Ryan Donato, Matt Duchene, Jake Neighbours, Matthew Knies – saw production improvements. Not everyone did, though, so let's talk about three of them.

Lukas Reichel (Chicago Blackhawks)

There may not be a more fascinating player in the NHL right now than Lukas Reichel. He set a career-high with 22 points in 70 games this season but was skating on the fourth line for most of the season. He also improved his 5-on-5 points per 60 minutes (1.56) compared to the two prior seasons (1.23). However, often skating on the fourth line for a bottom-3 team in the league at the age of 22 is hard to classify as a successful fantasy season.  

The reason why Reichel is a fascinating player is because he saw improvements almost everywhere. In fact, there were eight tracking stats we looked at for this article, and they are as follows:

1. Scoring Chance Assists (helpers on teammate chances)
2. Scoring Chance Contributions (those assists plus individual chances)
3. Rush Offence
4. Cycle/Forecheck Offence
5. High-Danger Passes (across the slot or from behind the net)
6. Shots off High-Danger Passes (shots taken off those specific types of passes)
7. Entries
8. Percentage of Entries Carried In

Of those eight categories, Reichel improved in seven of them. The only one there wasn't an improvement was his percentage of entries carried in, which fell from 70.9% all the way to… 68.1%. In that respect, he fell from 21^st in the league to 23^rd, so he basically maintained that carry-in percentage while improving everywhere else. In fact, the tracking data has Reichel's 2024-25 season not far off from the season Kent Johnson had in Columbus:

Maybe this is a player who just has some specific skills that don't translate to positive impact on the team (Andreas Athanasiou was like this). Given all these improvements, though, his genuine ability to enter the zone with control, and the fact he's been stuck on a god-awful team for his entire career, this is a player I would bet on.

Summer could be very telling here. Reichel has one year left on his current RFA deal, so maybe Chicago wants to give him one last chance, but this is the type of player a rebuilding team not named The Chicago Blackhawks should kick the tires on.

Kyle Palmieri (New York Islanders)

With 24 goals and 24 assists, it wasn't a bad year for Palmieri, but it is a drop from the year before (30 goals and 24 assists), and that was while skating 1:18 more per game. He saw his points/60 rate at 5-on-5 across the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons (1.84) fall to 1.67, which isn't a large decline, but it is a drop, and against all the tracking data improvements, it is notable.

The curious part here is the assist total. At 5-on-5, Palmieri managed 0.78 assists per 60 minutes, a drop of 12% compared to the prior two seasons. It is curious because there were gigantic improvements in his playmaking data as he was 1 of 18 forwards in the sample to at least double their rate of scoring chance assists:

Overall, Palmieri's line mates shot 8.8% at 5-on-5 in the 2024-25 season, compared to 8.6% across the prior two seasons. The problem is that the team managed 26.7 shots per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 with him on the ice, his lowest mark in a decade. Each of the prior three seasons in New York, the team averaged over 30 shots per 60 minutes with him on the ice. So, despite his improved playmaking, and slightly improved teammate shooting percentage, the team just wasn't generating enough shots to boost his assist totals.

There is also the power play. Palmieri had nine power-play points in 82 games after posting 20 in 82 games the year before. If he had 20 power-play points, and the team generates shots at 5-on-5 that they normally do with him on the ice, Palmieri could have pushed for a 65-point season.

It is important to highlight all this because Palmieri is now a free agent. Maybe he returns to the Islanders, who have the first overall pick, and could make other improvements in the offseason. He is also going into his age-34 season and we know the age-related decline can hit at any time. We have to see where he lands for next season, but there are reasons for both optimism and pessimism.

J.T. Miller (Vancouver Canucks/New York Rangers)

Setting aside any off-ice issues in Vancouver, there are two reasons why Miller's production tanked:

• A lack of shots led to a lack of goals. He shot 16.1% between the two teams, right in line with what he did the prior three years (16.2%). But those three seasons saw him average 2.6 shots per game, or 211 shots in an 82-game season. In 2024-25, that shot rate fell to 1.9 per game, or 156 in a full season. That drop in shot volume, setting everything else aside, would cost him about nine goals.
• He managed 22 power-play points in 72 games, or 25 PPPs every 82 games. The prior three seasons, he had totals of 40, 30, and 38 PPPs, or 37 PPPs every 82 games.

Add the drop in shots (thus drop in goals) with the declining power-play production, and here we are.

We have to wait and see what happens with new Rangers coach Mike Sullivan, but it's worth noting that Miller is a player who, by the tracking data, heavily relies on offence created off the cycle/forecheck: from 2022-2025, forwards generally created around 29% more offence off the cycle than off the rush – Miller was at 75%. Similarly, individual teams averaged 20% more offence off the cycle than the rush, but Sullivan's old team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, was just shy of 34%, and 1 of 9 teams over 30%:

This is notable because over the last two full seasons with Peter Laviolette behind the Rangers bench, New York created the second-most offence off the rush in the league. If they adopt Sullivan's approach, it would wildly change how the team has approached their offence but be in line more with how Miller plays.  

Who knows what the Rangers offseason brings, and who knows if the players will fit under Sullivan's scheme, but Miller does seem to be a Sullivan-type that would rebound well in this environment.