The Florida Panthers are heading to their third straight Stanley Cup Final appearance thanks to a 5-3 win over Carolina in Game 5 on Wednesday night. The Hurricanes had their chances to extend the series, taking a 2-0 lead in the first period and having a 3-3 game with eight minutes left in the contest, but Aleksander Barkov had a great individual effort to set up Carter Verhaeghe late in the third period to give the Panthers the 4-3 lead. A Sam Bennett empty net goal sealed the 5-3 win, giving the Panthers the 4-1 series victory.

Matthew Tkachuk (PP), Evan Rodrigues, and Anton Lundell scored less than five minutes apart in the second period, which gave Florida the boost they desperately needed in this game. Tkachuk finished the game with a goal, an assist, and two blocks.

Barkov had two helpers, also figuring in on the empty netter, to go with two hits in nearly 21 minutes of ice time.

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 20 of 23 shots, including a couple of key saves late in the third period, to lift the team to the Cup Final.

Sebastian Aho had the two first-period goals for the Hurricanes while Seth Jarvis had the third-period tally. Andrei Svechnikov had an assist, two shots, two PIMs, and four hits.

Frederik Andersen allowed four goals on 21 shots in the loss.

Carolina's power play finished 0-for-6 on the night as Florida's penalty kill was the difference in this game.

The Panthers now wait for the winner of the Edmonton-Dallas series, which could end as early as Thursday night. Regardless, it seems like the Cup Final won't start until sometime next week.

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Zach Hyman will miss whatever remains of Edmonton's postseason run due to an upper-body surgery (per Jim Matheson). It is a very unfortunate end to his season as he's not only a big part of the team but had seemed to find his scoring touch with four goals in nine games before the injury. The Oilers won't be able to directly replace him but this should mean a hefty dose of Corey Perry from here on out.

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The Utah Mammoth have signed both Dmitri Simashev and Daniil But to their entry-level contracts:

More on the Dmitri Simashev signing: https://t.co/Gcwff4jo0R

— Belle Fraser (@bellefraser1) May 28, 2025

The former was the sixth overall pick in 2023 while the latter was 12^th overall in the same draft. They are coming over from the KHL, fresh off a league championship, and both should figure into the long-term plans of the team. Of importance here is that including Maveric Lamoureux and Kevin Connauton, the Mammoth have nine defencemen signed for next season, which makes Simashev earning a regular, fantasy-relevant role a tall order. Something to keep in mind before you dynasty leaguers get too excited out there.

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The Winnipeg Jets announced that captain Adam Lowry underwent hip surgery and he will be out of action for 5-6 months. For those counting the months, that means sometime in October or November of next season.  

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We have spent the last month doing two things: Comparing my preseason projections with how things actually went, and the changes to the NHL environment in terms of goals and assists, the distribution of those points, rates of shots, hits, blocks, and more. Here are the links for the forward/defence projection comparisons: 

• Forwards who underperformed goal-scoring projections.
• Forwards who overperformed goal-scoring projections.
• Forwards whose goal-scoring landed close to their projection.
• Forwards who underperformed points projections.
• Forwards who overperformed points projections.
• Forwards whose point production landed close to their projection.
• Defencemen who underperformed points projections.
• Defencemen who overperformed points projections.
• Defencemen whose point production landed close to their projection.

After those comparisons were made, we moved to how the NHL changed in the 2024-25 season. This is what we looked at:

• Declining shot totals, changes in block/hit numbers, and improvement in bottom-6 scoring.
• Production changes from young players in the league.
• Players who saw some key improvements but did not produce well.

Finally, we finished with how those changes affected my projections:

• Goals from top-6 forwards, declining power-play production, and how the power plays affected the top players.
• Goals and assists from defencemen, and the rising middle- and lower-class of point-producing blue liners.

Seeing as the last month has been nothing but research, let's do something a bit more fun. How about we look at the fantasy hockey MVPs this season?  We are going to start with the forwards, and we're going to focus on value – the fifth overall pick performing as the third overall pick is great, but having guys that are 10^th or 15^th-round picks perform as fifth-round picks is what we have in mind. We are going to limit it to players who played at least 60 games, or about three-quarters of the season. That gives us 331 forwards to work with.

Also, we are going to try to get everything to one number. This is how we're going to do that:

• There were 6001 goals from the 331 forwards in the sample, or an average of 18.1 goals each. We are going to award or subtract 0.06 points for every goal above or below 18 goals scored (1/18).   
• There were 8169 assists from the 331 forwards, or an average of 24.7 assists each. We are going to award 0.04 points for every assist above or below 25 assists (1/25).  
• This process will be repeated for shots (0.007), hits (0.01), blocks (0.02), and power-play points (0.1).
• We are going to add the fantasy points from each category to get us to one number. Then we're going to multiply their average ADP across CBS, Yahoo, and ESPN (per FantasyPros) by that number of fantasy points to get to an overall value.

This is imperfect, of course, but considering the breadth of fantasy hockey leagues, it seems like a fair enough way to get close to where we need to go. It doesn't account for positional scarcity, so keep that in mind. There are also a lot of players without average ADPs who were very valuable, and we'll get to them later.

There are three forwards who separated themselves from everyone else:

Rickard Rakell (Pittsburgh Penguins)

Exactly when Rakell was drafted would have depended on an individual league, but there's little chance he was a top-150 pick and was frequently outside the top-200. For a guy that finished with 35 goals (career-high), 35 assists (tied a career high), 203 shots, 19 power-play points, 77 blocks (career high), and 116 hits, that is tremendous value. He had the kind of season where he wasn't elite in any one category, but was good-to-great in all of them, and that made him incredibly effective. He also got off to a slow start with 13 points in 24 games at the American Thanksgiving break, so some people probably plucked him off waivers and got a point-per-game player for over two-thirds of the season.   

Tom Wilson and Dylan Strome (Washington Capitals)

We won't go long here because there are a lot of Washington Capitals players, from the net on out, who were all immensely valuable. They had a huge turnaround from the 2023-24 season as the team improved their goal differential by 93 goals en route to finishing second in the league by goals scored with 288. Both Wilson and Strome had career years, and all this will make projecting the Capitals skaters next season very, very interesting.

After that top three, there was a group of eight forwards somewhat bunched together:

Martin Necas (Carolina Hurricanes/Colorado Avalanche)

It was a wild season for Nečas. He started the year in Carolina and posted 44 points in his first 30 games (he was leading the league in points at the Thanksgiving break). He then had just 11 points in his next 19 games before being traded to Colorado, at which point he turned things around again with 28 points in his next 30 games. Overall, he finished with 83 points, but I just know there was someone who panic-traded him after his down stretch in December/January and then saw Nečas get traded to Colorado. Pour one out for that person.

Projecting Nečas next season will be a trip because he's in one of the best spots in the league: Next to Nathan MacKinnon at all offensive strengths. Does he stay there all season? Something the team's moves in the summer will hopefully tell us.

Drake Batherson (Ottawa Senators)

There were many good seasons in Ottawa this year – it's part of the reason they got back to the playoffs – but Batherson had career-best marks in assists (42), points (68), power-play points (31), and hits (149). In fact, his 31 power-play points were as many as Brayden Point, and more than both Sam Reinhart and William Nylander (30 each). Pretty good!

That power-play production also raises the issue facing Ottawa: Their 5-on-5 goal scoring was quite poor, finishing 28^th in the league and worse than teams like Chicago and San Jose. We cannot rely on Batherson putting up 30 power-play points again, so the team needs to get a lot better at 5-on-5. It is an open question whether they will or not.

Mark Scheifele (Winnipeg Jets)

It was just a very good season across the board for Scheifele, much like Rakell earlier. His 39 goals and 48 assists were both the second-highest marks of his career, the 87 total points a career-best, he reached 60 blocks for the first time in a decade, and cracked 70 hits for the first time in a decade as well. He also posted a career-best of 25 power-play points and when we put it all together, he was immensely valuable all year.

Here is a fun fact about Scheifele's season: He only had two months where he wasn't a point-per-game player and that was November with 13 points in 14 games and April with 6 points in 8 games. So, the only two months he wasn't a point-per-game player, he had 19 points in 22 games. He was remarkably consistent, and I'm sure there are head-to-head fantasy owners that an attest to that.

Finally, let's look at three guys who didn't have average ADPs but were huge values.

Will Cuylle (New York Rangers), Kiefer Sherwood (Vancouver Canucks), Dylan Holloway (St. Louis Blues)

We won't go long here because all three players were covered earlier when discussing forwards who exceeded preseason expectations. Both Sherwood and Cuylle had massive hit totals that were supplemented by solid production while Holloway finished with 63 points in 77 games after making his way to St. Louis. All three are intriguing names for next year but I do wonder if their ADPs get inflated to a point where they lose too much value. We will find out in 3-4 months.

The next Ramblings will cover MVP defencemen.