Ramblings: Suzuki’s Power-Play Opportunity; RNH’s Resurgence; UFA Thoughts on Ehlers, Boeser & Tavares (June 23)

Brennan Des

2025-06-23

In today's Ramblings we'll review a couple of playoff storylines before discussing the fantasy outlook of some pending UFAs. Let's get right into it!

Big PP Nick

Which player enjoyed the highest share of his team's power-play time this postseason? Historically, the safe answer to that question would be Alex Ovechkin, but this year, it was none other than slick Nick Suzuki. Montreal's captain led the league with a monstrous 97.3% share of the Canadiens' postseason PP time. That might not seem like a big deal considering the Habs only played five playoff games, but it was actually an extension of a trend we saw late in the regular season. From March 6th to April 17th, a span of 21 games, Suzuki saw 96.3% of his team's total PP time – Ovi was the only player in the league with a bigger proportion (99.2%).

With all this extra opportunity, is Suzuki's power-play production set to skyrocket next year? Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The reason Suzuki started double shifting on the power play in early March is mostly because Kirby Dach, who saw time on both PP1 and PP2, got injured in late February. Dach's expected to be ready for the 2025-26 campaign, so there shouldn't be as much of a need for Suzuki to double shift on the power play next year. With Ivan Demidov flaunting his power-play prowess this postseason, the Habs should have 10 players capable of managing PP duties right now. Lane Hutson, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, Demidov and Suzuki as a potential PP1, and then Brendan Gallagher, Patrik Laine, Alex Newhook, Mike Matheson and Dach on PP2. Of course, if one of those players gets injured, don't be surprised to see Suzuki double shifted again. He's such a smart player, coach Martin St. Louis can trust him with any assignment, and that leads to unique opportunities like this one.

RNH's Resurgence

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins entered the 2024-25 campaign with an impressive floor of 65 points, at least that's the pace he posted in each of the last three years. Unfortunately, he couldn't repeat that feat and his offense took a nosedive this past regular season, where he posted a mediocre 52-point pace. That's not the kind of output you expect from a player skating beside Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the power play. Fortunately, RNH bounced back in the postseason, racking up 20 points over 22 appearances. Those numbers become all the more impressive when you consider he was playing with a broken hand in the Stanley Cup Final. Now, since fantasy leagues typically focus on regular-season production, there's a good chance RNH flies under the radar due to last year's poor production before the playoffs, and that might allow you to snag him at a discounted price. Let's just hope he didn't extend his injury recovery time too much by playing through that broken hand.

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Nikolaj Ehlers

Over the past three years, Ehlers has averaged 15 minutes and 48 seconds of ice time per game. Among forwards who've made at least 100 appearances over the past three seasons, he ranks 184th in ice time. It doesn't take a genius to conclude that Ehlers is a top 100 forward talent in the NHL, so there's an obvious case of underutilization here. Whatever team spends big on Ehlers this summer will want to maximize return on their investment, which will mean deploying him in a much bigger role than he's seen with Winnipeg (assuming he leaves). Now, three more minutes of ice time per game won't magically make him a hundred-point player, but it could make him a more well-rounded fantasy asset. Take the 2021-22 campaign for instance, where Ehlers skated a career-high 18 minutes a night and managed a career-high 4.0 shots per game.

It's hard to put too much stock into past production when a player joins a new team, where so many variables change. However, I don't see that as a huge concern with Ehlers. He's faced a variety of circumstances in Winnipeg and has managed to produce at a high level consistently. This past season, he spent most of his even-strength minutes beside Vladislav Namestnikov and Cole Perfetti. Sure, Perfetti's growing into a strong player, but it's not like Ehlers was carried by his linemates this year. While he may have been slightly sheltered from tougher matchups playing on Winnipeg's second line, his quality of competition was still formidable this year, so I think he'll be able to produce if both his linemates and opponents are a little better.

One fantasy hockey ideology I've been harping these past few years is avoiding UFAs joining new teams. The way I see it, these players get so much coverage before signing their contracts, every fantasy manager is paying attention to them, and that leaves little room for them to fly under the radar, or for you to get a discount on them in fantasy leagues. To build on that, fantasy managers tend to be gamblers, and we get excited about best case scenarios when thinking about a free agent joining a new team, which artificially inflates the cost to acquire many of these players. I'm a little less concerned about that with Ehlers because there's so much room for his deployment to improve, but monitor the hype surrounding his signing before pulling the trigger on draft day.

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Brock Boeser

The 28-year-old winger has a reputation for being a goal-scorer, and there's certainly some merit to that perception. Since Boeser entered the league in 2017-28, he ranks 38th overall with 200 goals in 545 games. However, it's worth mentioning that outside of his 40-goal campaign in 2023-24, Boeser hasn't crossed the 30-goal threshold in his career. That's seven of eight seasons where he's scored less than 30 goals. In fairness, he's fallen victim to injury a few times, but fantasy leagues don't reward players for production they were on pace for, only what they actually produce. I do believe Boeser has a lethal release, but from a fantasy perspective, I think his acquisition cost is greater than his actual accomplishments. You're paying extra for potential, but does that really make sense now that he's 28-years-old? At this point, it seems likely that he leaves Vancouver for a different team, and while it's certainly possible Boeser finds perfect chemistry with a playmaker on that new team, he was already in a pretty good situation with the Canucks – plenty of ice time, top PP duties, and exposure to high-end players like J.T. Miller, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes. I think it was fair to expect a bounce back from Boeser after everything went wrong for the Canucks this past season and he posted an uncharacteristic and career-low 1.9 shots per game. However, my concern is that once Boeser joins a new team, people will forget how much of a struggle this past year was, automatically valuing him as a 40-goal scorer again. Such inflation wouldn't leave much room for him to outperform his fantasy draft cost, which is why I'd avoid him in fantasy leagues this year.

John Tavares

This one has less to do with a potential change in surroundings, and more to do with Tavares' underlying numbers this past season. In the five years leading up to 2024-25, Tavares held an average shooting percentage of 11.9%. This year, he scored on 19.1% of the shots he took – a significant deviation from normalcy. Another red flag is the fact that the Leafs scored on 11.4% of their shots at 5v5 while Tavares was on the ice. In recent years, that number hovered around 8-9%. It may not seem like a huge deal, but over the course of a season that's probably 12-18 extra goals. Let's say Tavares got a point on half of those extra goals, that's six to nine more points than you'd expect. Putting aside the nerdspeak for a second, the puck simply went in more often than normal for Tavares this year, and there wasn't really a tangible explanation for why that might be a lasting change. In these cases, we expect things to go back to normal, so I imagine he'll finish around the 70-point mark next year if he stays in Toronto. Current reports indicate that Tavares and the Leafs aren't close on an extension just yet, but I still think it's more likely than not he re-signs.

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Thanks for reading! Hope you have a great week ahead!

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