The Florida Panthers have taken a commanding 2-0 series lead over the Carolina Hurricanes thanks to a 5-0 win in Raleigh on Thursday night. This game was never really in doubt as the Panthers jumped out to a 1-0 lead fewer than 80 seconds into the contest, and made it 3-0 with over four minutes to go in the first period. They would cruise from there to take the win, and head back to Florida needing to win just two of the next five games to make their third straight Stanley Cup Final appearance.

Sam Bennett was a huge factor in this game, posting two goals (one PP), an assist, and posting four hits as he was a very physical presence.

Matthew Tkachuk had a goal and an assist in the win, totaling two shots, a block, and two hits. Also with a multi-point game was Aaron Ekblad with two helpers (one PP), three blocks, and a hit. Evan Rodrigues had two power-play assists and two shots. Rodrigues was moved to the top PP unit at the end of the game as Sam Reinhart left the contest late in the first period after taking a leg-on-leg (knee-to-knee?) hit.

Carter Verhaeghe had a trio of helpers (one PP), two shots and two hits.

Aleksander Barkov (PP) and Gustav Forsling had the other goals.

Sergei Bobrovsky faced just 17 shots in the shutout win. He has allowed just six goals against in his last six playoff games.

Seth Jarvis was injured late in the third period, apparently after a hard hit from Niko Mikkola. Jarvis did return to the bench but it's something to keep an eye on for Game 3.

Frederik Andersen was pulled after allowing four goals on 16 shots.

Game 3 is set for Saturday night back in Florida.

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The Chicago Blackhawks ended their coaching search by hiring former Detroit Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill. I wrote about that yesterday here.

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The last few weeks of Ramblings have been reviewing preseason projections (all links contained in these Ramblings) as well as some changes to the hockey environment itself (peripherals here and usage of young players here). To wrap up the look back at preseason projections, let's combine those two things to see how the projections fared overall, how the environment changed those projections, and what it can tell us about next season.

As usual, end-of-season data is from Natural Stat Trick. We are again limiting the sample to those with at least 41 games played with the goal cut-off at 10 projected goals and the point cut-off at 20 projected points. All players were projected for 82 games played. Today's preseason-focused review will look at goal-scoring and point-producing from forwards.

Starting with the goals, we had 285 forwards projected for at least 10 goals. In reality, the 2024-25 season saw 284 forwards end up with at least 10 goals, though a lot more would have reached that mark had they been healthy (Tyler Seguin, David Perron, and Robby Fabbri, for example). Overall, here are the total projected goal totals for this group, their actual goals scored, and how those numbers work out on an 82-game basis:

I over-shot the average 82-game goal-scoring projection by about 11.4%. Why did that happen?

Part of it is the shot totals. There were about 5000 fewer shots on goal in 2024-25 than there were in 2023-24. We mentioned in a prior Ramblings that shooting percentages went up, and that helped balance things back the other way, but the rise in shooting percentage was not enough to make up for the drop in shot totals. The projections had these 285 forwards averaging 2.17 shots per game, and the reality was they averaged 1.99 shots per game. When factoring that shot gap with the change in shooting percentage, the drop in shots on goal cost the average forward in my sample of 285 forwards about 0.75 goals in a full 82-game season. That would bring the gap between actual goal production and my personal projections to about 1.7 goals per forward per 82 games.

The other part of it is where the goals are going. As I mentioned in that earlier Ramblings about the changing environment, there has been more goal scoring at 5-on-5 from both bottom-6 forwards and all defencemen over the last couple of years, meaning top-6 forwards are losing goals. To illustrate that point: one standard deviation above average would be the top-45 goal scorers, whether projected or actual, while one standard deviation below average would be the low-end goal scorers. Among the 285 forwards, here are the projected goal totals from the top-45 goal-scoring projections, the bottom-45, and what those two groups actually produced:

This is the best illustration I can give about how goal-scoring distribution changed. The top-45 projected goal scorers in my sample scored over six fewer goals per 82 games than their projection, while the bottom-45 projected goal scorers scored more than projected. When the elite goal scorers score less often as the low-end goal scorers score more often, that will have a massive impact on all the goals scored from a sample of the top-285 goal scorers.

The other part of it was also mentioned in passing in a recent Ramblings but bears repeating here: the drop in power play opportunities really hurt the elite producers. This past season saw the lowest total power-play opportunities per game in any season since they started tracking it in 1963 (per Hockey Reference). While power plays converted at a rate (21.6%) at a rate not seen in nearly 40 years (22.1% in 1985-86), the large drop in opportunities was not enough to make up the difference. That is why despite the highest PP conversion rate in nearly 40 years, the total number of PP goals scored by forwards in 2024-25 was the lowest of the post-COVID era, resulting in 115 fewer PP goals scored compared to just last year, and 154 from two years ago:

Top forwards, and thus top fantasy forwards, are the ones that typically eat the most power play time, so they are going to be the most affected by the drastic decline in power-play opportunities. We can't attribute all the power-play goals to just those top players, but it does help explain part of it.

All this is why I don't feel too bad about the gap between my goal projections and what actually happened. There was an unprecedented drop in shot volume (going back to 2007, anyway) and a decline in PP opportunities not seen since the late 2000s. The rise in bottom-6 scoring is part of it, but my depth goal-scoring projections were close to what we saw happen anyway, so that's a win. The miss was with the top guys, and the drop in shot volume and power-play chances really hurt.

To round things out, here is how we fared by the overall point projections of these 285 forwards. Like the goal-scoring projections, we went over the actual 82-game average of this sample, but instead of 11.4%, it was 6.5%:

As with the goal scoring described above, a big part of the problem here was the power-play production. Here is the gap between the projected 82-game power-play point pace and actual 82-game power-play point pace:

If we subtract that difference in power-play production from the overall point production, the gap falls from 6.5% to 2.9%. That means over half the gap between my overall point projections of these forwards against what they actually produced was attributable to the power play alone. So, if the power-play environment was consistent this season, the average gap between my forward projection and what was produced in the 2024-25 season was about 3%. When projecting hundreds of players in a game with a lot of variance and shifting rosters all season long, that is just fine for me.

On the flipside, all these things are why it's hard to peer into what we should do for 2025-26. My best guess right now is that we see a season somewhat similar to 2024-25, but that was also my instinct at this time last year and that was, in a word, wrong. NHL games changed at a fundamental level that we have not seen at any point in recent memory, and it's pretty clear in the data. Do offensive players focus even more on shot quality while defensive players focus even more on preventing rushes, getting in lanes, and forcing shots to be missed or blocked at a high rate again? Do coaches figure out a way to get through that? Do *some* coaches figure out a way to get through that? If so, which coaches? Do referees change the standard of officiating, resulting in more power-play opportunities? Will there be even fewer power-play opportunities? These are very important questions for projecting fantasy hockey production that I'm not sure there are any satisfactory answers to. I really, really hate that because it feels like throwing up your hands to the hockey gods, but I'm not sure what the better answer is.