As teams did for the Four Nations Face-Off, individual countries participating in the men's ice hockey portion of the 2026 Olympic Games in Italy named their first six roster spots. We won't dig into every team's decisions, but there were some notable changes made worth highlighting.

One country that didn't change anything was Finland, naming the same six players as the Four Nations Cup with Aleksander Barkov, Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho, Miro Heiskanen, Esa Lindell, and Juuse Saros. Sweden, however, did make some changes:

• Victor Hedman and William Nylander are holdovers.
• Removed from the first six names are Erik Karlsson, Gustav Forsling, Filip Forsberg, and Mika Zibanejad.
• Replacing those four names are Rasmus Dahlin, Adrian Kempe, Lucas Raymond, and Gabriel Landeskog.

It isn't much of a surprise to see Karlsson and Zibanejad not among the first six (and I suspect both will be named to the final roster) with Dahlin and Landeskog replacing them. It is a bit odd that both Forsling and Forsberg aren't on this list, but they will also be there as long as they're healthy. This really speaks to the development of Lucas Raymond over the last couple of seasons.

I thought Team Germany had five locks: Philipp Grubauer, Leon Draisaitl, Tim Stutzle, JJ Peterka, and Moritz Seider. Team Germany had other ideas as Peterka was not named among the first six, but Lukas Reichel and Nico Sturm were. Okay then.

No real surprises from Switzerland: Timo Meier, Kevin Fiala, Nico Hischier, Nino Niederreiter, Roman Josi, and Jonas Siegenthaler. That is a pretty good squad so far and with both JJ Moser and Lian Bichsel likely being added to the final roster, the defence group could be solid here with enough scoring punch up front for some upsets.

Czechia named David Pastrnak, Martin Necas, Pavel Zacha, Ondrej Palat, and Radko Gudas as five skaters, with Lukas Dostal in net. I thought Karel Vejmelka might get the nod in goal, but considering the season Dostál just had, it's tough argue with it.

There was a mix of young players and veterans named to Slovakia with Juraj Slafkovsky, Martin Pospisil, Simon Nemec, and Martin Fehervary named alongside Tomas Tatar and Erik Cernak.

Canada had five of the six same players named at the Four Nations Face-Off also named for the Olympic team: Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Brayden Point, and Cale Makar. The one change was taking off Brad Marchand's name and putting Sam Reinhart on. Even with Marchand's exceptional postseason, this is likely the right decision because Reinhart is going no matter what and at Marchand's age, it's worth waiting for the first half of the 2025-26 NHL season to see how he's holding up.

As with Canada, the United States made one change from its initial six players at the Four Nations Cup, keeping Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk, Quinn Hughes, and Charlie McAvoy while swapping out Adam Fox and swapping in Brady Tkachuk. Fox will almost assuredly be there in Italy, so this doesn't feel like a big deal.

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Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers is tonight. With the end of the postseason being this week at some point, let's take time to highlight some league-wide notes, player performances, and whatever else comes to mind about the 2025 NHL Playoffs.

Defencemen Have to Move the Puck

If there is one thing that really, really stuck out both in the playoffs and regular season is that teams probably need good puck-moving defencemen to have success. Generally speaking (there are always exceptions), it means more than having a guy on each of the top two pairs who can move the puck and that's it. Being able to move the puck means having one (ideally two) guys on every defence pair be able to get the puck out of the zone and/or jump into the attack. Long gone are the days where teams have 1-2 guys on the blue line responsible for transition play; there needs to be 1-2 guys on every pair.

To make this point, I looked at 5-on-5 tracking data from All Three Zones. In that tracking data, five categories were picked out:

• Scoring Chance Contributions/60 – The 60-minute rate at which defencemen produce individual scoring chances or assist on teammate scoring chances.
• Entries/60 – The 60-minute rate at which defencemen are responsible for an offensive zone entry (carried, passed, or dumped in).
• Carry Entry% – The percentage of a defenceman's zone entries that are carried in by that defenceman.
• Possession Exit% – The percentage of a defenceman's defensive zone exits where his team has possession of the puck.
• Retrieval Exit% – The percentage of a defenceman's defensive zone dump-in retrievals that lead to his team exiting the zone.

All 32 teams were ranked 1-32 in each category and then we did an overall rank by the average of those five categories (it isn’t mathematically rigourous but gives us a good idea of where each team stood). The bottom-half of the league in overall rankings (17 teams because there was a tie for 16^th) produced just six of the playoff teams (in bold):  

This means the top 15 teams in the defencemen puck-moving ranks had nine playoff teams and six of them advanced past the first round. If you had an above-average puck-moving team in the regular season, you had a 40% chance of reaching the second round of the playoffs. If you had a below-average team, that was reduced to a 12% chance. If it wasn't evident to puck-watchers over the last decade, defencemen aren't just important in their own end, and it can't just be a couple of guys tasked with all the puck-moving duties. This is a team effort now, and it seems unlikely that trend will reverse anytime soon.

Wyatt Johnston

It was a tale of two playoffs for Wyatt Johnston as he had three goals and seven points in seven games against Colorado, followed by one goal and two assists in 11 games from there against Winnipeg and Edmonton, going pointless in nine of those 11 games. We can chalk it up to some bad luck, but he had the lowest individual expected goal rate at 5-on-5 of any of their top-9 forwards. He also had poor tracking numbers as his rate of assists on teammate scoring chances (SCA), his overall scoring chance contributions (SCC), and offence created off the rush were all down significantly from the regular season:

These kinds of tracking numbers declining in the playoffs against tougher competition isn't a surprise – among forwards across the league anywhere within 10% is normal – but these are declines of 35-40%. It was a genuinely poor performance at 5-on-5 for Johnston despite that strong first round. He does have three full seasons under his belt now, though, and is the team's top centre. It isn't a concern about his future, but there were genuine reasons why he struggled to produce in the postseason, especially after the Colorado series.

Andrei Svechnikov

At the opposite end of playoff performances from Johnston is Carolina winger Andrei Svechnikov. At 5-on-5, he led Carolina by goals (4), shots (26), individual expected goals (3.66), and tied Sebastian Aho for points (6). Svechnikov also led the team in overall goals (8) and individual expected goals (8.12). It was a drastic turnaround from what was his worst regular season, from a production standpoint, since his rookie 2018-19 campaign. The good news is there was also good under-the-hood stuff to support his production as he saw a drop in assists on teammate scoring chances (though a 15% decline isn't unreasonable) but increases in overall chance contributions, and offence both off the rush and cycle/forecheck:

Like a certain Colorado winger we'll discuss a little later, Carolina isn't in the business of moral victories, but that Svechnikov generally looked so good after such a down year in the regular season has to be a big takeaway. It will be interesting to see where his ADP lands when September rolls around. 

Ryan Leonard

With just one assist in eight games, including some healthy scratches, it wasn't a breakthrough postseason for Ryan Leonard. All that aside, we must point out he finished third among their forwards by shots per minute at 5-on-5, fifth by individual expected goals rate, and he was credited with eight assists on teammate scoring chances. That was as many Andrei Svechnikov, William Karlsson, and Auston Matthews:

It was surprising to see Leonard not rack up a few more points because in my recollections of watching the Capitals (and I did watch all their playoff games), he always seemed to make a couple plays every game that led to a good chance, either for him or his line mates. This is one of those performances that won't stand out just reading box scores, but I think there is a really, really good player here that showed what he's going to be capable of not just 3-4 years down the road, but as soon as October.

Gabriel Landeskog

Colorado isn't in a position for the franchise to take away moral victories from a first-round loss, but it has to be genuinely heartening just how good Gabriel Landeskog looked once he got back in the lineup. He had four points in five games, saw his ice time increase in each game, boosted the possession numbers of the second line, and didn't seem to suffer any setbacks. There is a difference between preparing all season just to play five games and preparing for an 82-game regular season schedule, plus the Olympics, plus a hopeful deep playoff run. Landeskog has played five games in the last three years and, assuming an Olympic appearance and a couple rounds in the playoffs, is staring down 100 games in an 8- to 9-month span. How he responds to that remains an open question, but it's hard to be anything but optimistic about his 2025-26 season given how good he looked in his brief playoff appearance.

Tyler Kleven

When watching the Ottawa defence group, Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot will always stand out. But it seemed as if Tyler Kleven had a good postseason, and a lot of the data backs that up. Ottawa exited the zone with possession of the puck more often on Kleven's exits than any of their defencemen (slightly higher than Chabot) and Kleven was second by defensive zone puck retrievals (only Sanderson higher). That helped lift Kleven and Nikolas Matinpalo to the best expected goal and actual goal share at 5-on-5 of the team's three defence pairs:

This pair didn't get the tough matchups against Toronto that the other pairs did, but succeeding in a sheltered role is the first step to bigger things. There is still more work to do – the Kleven/Matinpalo pair wasn't very good in the regular season – but it's a positive sign that the defensive depth the team has lacked for years may be rectified next season.

Simon Nemec

Finally, we get to a big decision-making point for the New Jersey Devils. Simon Nemec struggled in the regular season, which is why he was sent to the AHL, but he showed well in the postseason. Or, well enough considering the injuries and returns the team was dealing with. The tracking data was solid, the on-ice differentials (shots and expected goals) were about average for their blue line, and he had a plus-3 goal differential at 5-on-5. Nemec has one year left on his entry-level deal, which would make him a very cheap piece either on the New Jersey blue line or someone else's. He could be part of this team for the long haul, or he could be dealt for help up front. It was just four games, but I thought Nemec looked more like the guy he was as a rookie rather than as a sophomore. It will be fascinating to see what the team decides to do because if he has another bad year, it would nuke his trade value. On the flipside, if the playoff performance was a glimpse of the improvements to come, he would be a top-pair defenceman for the next decade. Decisions, decisions.