Frederik Andersen was back in net for Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final and was back to the form he had in the first two rounds as the Carolina Hurricanes shut out the Florida Panthers 3-0, extending the series to a Game 5. Andersen stopped all 20 shots he faced for the blank sheet, his second of the postseason. He has now allowed two or fewer goals against in nine of his 12 games, though that was the first time in this series.

Logan Stankoven scored the game-winning goal on an absolute snipe over Florida goalie Sergei Bobrovsky's shoulder, making it Stankoven's fifth goal of the postseason. That makes 10 goals in 33 total games with Carolina since making his way over from Dallas in the Mikko Rantanen trade after scoring just nine goals in 59 games this season with the Stars.

Jordan Staal and Sebastian Aho added empty netters to seal the win. Aho finished with seven shots and a hit in nearly 22 minutes of ice time.

Neither Sean Walker nor Jalen Chatfield suited up for Carolina, resulting in Alexander Nikishin playing 18:15 for the Hurricanes. He assisted on the Stankoven goal, had one shot, two PIMs, and four hits.

Bobrovsky allowed just the lone goal on 26 shots, so he was very solid again and kept Florida in the game as they were outplayed through the first two periods.

Game 5 is set for Wednesday night back in Raleigh.

*

In Friday's Ramblings, we reviewed the difference between my fantasy projections for forwards and what actually happened. While we have been looking at specific players over the last few weeks, this one was a macro view of the top-285 forwards, what went right, what went wrong, and what we can learn (if anything).

Today, we're doing the same macro view, but this time for defencemen. 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 and using a cut-off of 20 projected points. That gives us a sample of 119 defencemen to work with.

To start, let's get right into the goals. Like the forwards, my projections for these 119 players overshot what they actually produced:

Unlike the forwards, the gap here is a lot smaller: The projections were over by 7.5%, compared to the 11.6% we saw with the forwards. Given that defencemen score fewer goals, this isn't unexpected.

Remember with the forwards how we saw fewer goals from the top guys overall, compared to last year, with more from the depth? That was true for the defencemen as well. Below is how many defencemen registered at least 10 goals in 2023-24, how many reached that mark in 2024-25, and the total number of goals scored from those groups in each season:

Overall, the 2024-25 season saw 21 fewer goals scored from all defencemen compared to the year before. However, among the defencemen that scored at least 10 goals in either season, the drop in goals scored from that group scored was 98. In other words, the lower-scoring defencemen added, year-over-year, 77 goals.

That is why I am not up in arms about missing the goal projections from defencemen by 7.5%. The top producing defencemen, which are the ones we draft in fantasy, scored far fewer goals in 2024-25 than they did in 2023-24.

This is a very big shift. In each of the three seasons from 2021 through 2024, there were anywhere between 32 and 35 defencemen score at least 10 goals, a number that fell to 25 in 2024-25. That total of 25 defencemen with at least 10 goals is the lowest total in a full 82-game season since the 2013 lockout.

While the changes in goal-scoring are interesting, the assist projections are what really caught my eye here. Between forwards and defencemen, the gap between projected assists per 82 games from defencemen, and actual assists from defencemen, was the largest from either group at 12.8%:

Of course, there were changes to what defencemen produced in 2024-25 compared to recent memory – that was basically the theme for the entire league this season. Here are the total assists from defencemen in each of the last four seasons, their rate of assists per 60 minutes, and the year-over-year changes in those two areas compared to the season before:

In 2024-25, there were 215 fewer assists from defencemen compared to the year prior, a drop of nearly 5%. Defencemen are still more involved in the goal-scoring than they were before the pandemic (each season from 2013-2019 saw under 4000 assists from the blue line, while each of the last four seasons have seen totals over 4100), but the helper production from the back end this past season is a stark deviation from the three prior years.

Similar to the forwards, the top guys that have been negatively impacted the most. Here are the totals from the last four seasons in four group: Total number of defencemen with at least 30 assists, total number of defencemen with at least 40 assists, and the total assists produced from each of those two groups:

Not only did we see far fewer defencemen produce at least 30 assists in 2024-25, those defencemen produced 377 fewer assists in total, or a drop of nearly 23%. Overall, of the defencemen who produced at least 30 assists in 2024-25, they averaged 42.2 assists this season. The year before, that group averaged 43.2 assists. So, not only were there far fewer rearguards to reach that 30-helper plateau, and not only did that result in far fewer assists overall, but the production per player also fell. That is quite the triple whammy.

Seeing that the top assist defencemen produced nearly 23% fewer assists than in 2023-24, that my projections overshot assist rates by 12.8%, and that the 119 defencemen included will necessarily include far more elite producing defencemen than the middle- or lower-class of defencemen, it makes sense that we missed the mark by so much there.

We overshot on goals by a bit, assists by a lot, so the 82-game point projections went over what these 119 defencemen actually produced on an 82-game basis:

As we saw with the forwards, the change in power-play opportunities had an effect here. Since 2013, there have been 10 seasons with a full 82-game schedule (excluding the shortened 2019-20 season and the 2021 Bubble campaign). In 2024-25, we saw the lowest total of power-play ice time and power-play points from defencemen in that 10-season stretch. So, despite defencemen producing roughly the same power-play points/60 rate as they have for years now (4.29), there were under 1000 total PP points from blue liners for the first time since 2013:

Total PP points from defencemen fell by 132 when compared to the 2023-24 campaign, or about 12.5%. Naturally, this hurt the top PP producers a lot, especially compared to recent seasons: the top-30 power-play point producers from the blue line fell under 600 combined power-play points for the first time in four years, and fell under 6000 total power-play minutes for the first time in that stretch, too:

Notice that the top-30 power-play point producers actually saw a four-year high in points per 60 minutes, but the drop in power-play time, driven either by a lack of power-play opportunities league-wide or changes in PP formations, had a huge effect on total production. Had those top-30 PPP producers skated 7000 minutes on the power play, and they produced points at that mark of 5.85/60 minutes, there would have been about an extra 100 power-play points to those 30 players alone.

The production issue extends beyond the power play, too. Despite defencemen skating more total ice time at even strength in 2024-25 than at any point since the 2021 Bubble season, they produced fewer even-strength points, and had a four-year low in even-strength points per 60 minutes:

Like we have seen everywhere else, this affected the top producers a lot. Here are the total number of individual seasons from a defenceman in each of the last four seasons where they produced at least 25 even-strength points, how many total EV points that group produced, and the same for those with at least 35 even-strength points:

Fewer seasons of defencemen producing at least 25 or 35 even-strength points led to far fewer points produced from those players. As with the forwards, the top producing defencemen got hit pretty hard with points drops in the top group.

There is a lot to take in from this article so let's summarize this:

• The total number of defencemen with at least 10 goals scored in 2024-25 was 25, a large drop from the 35 defencemen to score at least 10 goals in 2023-24. That number of 25 defencemen with at least 10 goals scored was the lowest number since the 2013 lockout. 
• The defencemen who scored at least 10 goals individually combined for 98 fewer goals in 2024-25 than the year before while those who scored under 10 goals added 77 goals. So, the top guys saw their goal-scoring drop while the middle- and lower-end defencemen saw their goal-scoring rise.
• The 2024-25 season saw defencemen post 215 fewer assists than the year before, a drop of nearly 5%.
• There were just 30 defencemen to produce at least 30 assists in 2024-25 after three straight seasons of 38 or 39 defencemen to reach that mark. That group of defencemen saw their combined assist total drop by 377 helpers, or nearly 23%.
• There were just 13 defencemen to produce at least 40 assists in 2024-25 after three straight seasons of 17-20 defencemen to reach that mark. That group of defencemen saw their combined assist total drop by 240 helpers.
• Defencemen produced under 1000 total power-play points for the first time since the 2013 lockout. That total fell by 132 PP points in 2024-25 when compared to 2023-24.
• The top-30 power-play point producers on the blue line combined for under 600 power-play points, the first time that number was under 600 in four years.
• Defencemen produced fewer even-strength points than in any season since the 2021 Bubble campaign, and that resulted in a four-year low of even-strength points per 60 minutes.
• The number of defencemen to produce at least 25 even-strength points was just 36, the first time there were under 40 such defencemen since the 2021 Bubble campaign.
• The number of defencemen to produce at least 35 even-strength points was just nine, a three-year low.

Combining this with what we've seen from the forwards, and the 2024-25 was a wildly unique campaign in everything from shot rates, to point production, to how goals and assists were divided between the top producers and everyone else. That should influence how we approach the 2025-26 season, but there's no guarantee those changes stick, as this season has shown us. It will make for some very interesting projections as we look ahead to next year.