The NHL Entry Draft takes place this weekend in Los Angeles and to get prepared for the draft, be sure to grab a copy of the 2025 Dobber Fantasy Hockey Prospects Report! It has a breakdown of this year's crop of draftees, an in-depth look at each NHL team's prospect pool, and a whole lot more. Help support what the Dobber Prospects team works on year-round by heading to the Dobber Shop and buying a copy of the Prospects Report. 

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After months (years?) of speculation, the Anaheim Ducks traded forward Trevor Zegras to the Philadelphia Flyers. This was the full deal:

Poehling, 45th this year and 4th next year https://t.co/09Yynp7Ct1

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) June 23, 2025

Zegras put up back-to-back 23-goal, 60-plus-point seasons at 20 and 21 years old before injuries caught up and limited him to just 88 games in the last two years. He gets a fresh start in Philadelphia, and there's a certain winger whose last name rhymes with Pitchkov that is probably happy to see another skilled forward added to the roster.

Brennan had his take on the trade here.

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The Boston Bruins extended defenceman Mason Lohrei for two years with an average annual value of $3.2-million per season. Lohrei had 33 points in 77 games last season and had a 30-game stretch playing well over 20 minutes a night due to injuries on the blue line. With Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm healthy, it's a question if Lohrei can earn too much more ice time than he did in 2024-25, so there are still big question marks around his fantasy value.

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Earlier this month, I went division by division, team by team, to see where they can improve in the offseason and help out us fantasy owners:

• The Atlantic Division
• The Metro Division
• The Central Division
• The Pacific Division

That is what each team could do. But what should fantasy hockey players do? Over the next couple of Ramblings, I want to take the time to go through players that had breakout performances, players that had letdown performances, and what managers in keeper or dynasty leagues should do about them. Today, we are focusing on breakout players. They can be players with a few seasons under their belts establishing career-highs or young players having their first impact year.

Player data is from Evolving Hockey and Frozen Tools with tracking data from AllThreeZones. In a mailbag last week, I wrote about Lane Hutson so we'll exclude him from today's breakout discussion. We will also exclude Aliaksei Protas and Dylan Holloway as they were covered in a review of preseason point projections. Ditto for Jackson LaCombe.

William Eklund (San Jose Sharks)

It was a good year for Eklund with career marks in goals (17), assists (41), shots (151), and hits (54). Skating 19:33 per game certainly helped, but his primary assist rate at 5-on-5 was 0.92 per 60 minutes, or a 91^st percentile mark among all regular forwards (minimum of 750 minutes). His overall 5-on-5 assist rate jumped over 50% from the year prior. One season doesn't make a career, which is why it's worth pointing out that over the last two seasons, Eklund's rate of assists on teammate scoring chances (SCA/60) and high-danger passes (passes from behind the net to the slot or passes across the slot) compared to two all-star wingers:

Eklund is turning into one of the premiere playmakers in the league, and he's not far off already. The problem is two-fold:

1. San Jose's rebuild is still at its early stages so there's a big difference between playing on the top line with Macklin Celebrini and anywhere else.
2. Related to that first point, the Sharks' blue line is devoid of competent puck-movers and while they have good prospects on the way, none are there yet, and they traded their best puck-mover in Jake Walman.

This is a case where keeper/dynasty owners will need to be patient. By virtue of high levels of ice time and skating with Celebrini some at even strength and on the power play, Eklund can be a 20-goal, 40-assist guy. But it will take a couple years, at least, for him to really take off as the team around him improves so while the breakout portends good things down the road, it likely won't be in 2025-26. He has the potential for Robert Thomas-like seasons but, like Thomas, it will probably take a couple more years to get there. That should illuminate whether to target him in a trade as a rebuilding keeper/dynasty manager or trade him away to push for a title in 2025-26.

Kirill Marchenko (Columbus Blue Jackets)

There are two things true about Marchenko's breakout 31-goal, 43-assist season:

• The great play from Sean Monahan up until his injury in January really helped boost Marchenko's production.
• Columbus still scored very well when Marchenko had other players as his centre, so it's not all Monahan.

To that last point, Marchenko had 8 goals and 9 assists in the 25 games Monahan missed, or a 26-goal, 30-assist pace every 82 games. A clear drop, but still good. That is also backed up by the fact that not only did Marchenko's 5-on-5 individual expected goals rate improve without Monahan as his centre, but it increased a fair amount:

Having Zach Werenski really helps Marchenko keep his offensive profile afloat regardless of line mates.

Marchenko turns 25 years old in July. The team shot 11.7% with him on the ice at 5-on-5, and that's fairly high (though not close to league-leaders like Protas and JJ Peterka). But the team around him is growing, his role is cemented as a top-line winger, and offseason additions could make Columbus a playoff team. I wouldn't expect much more than the 30-goal, 40-assist season he just had, but concerns about reverting back to a 40- to 50-point player are long gone. This is a player to hang onto.

Logan Cooley (Utah Mammoth)

Cooley followed a solid 44-point rookie season with a very good 65-point season as a sophomore. Adding just over two minutes per game in ice time helps, but his goals/60 rate jumped 21% and his assists/60 rate jumped 61%. At 5-on-5 only, those jumps were 45% and 69%, so the production increases weren't just because of ice time or power-play points.

It also wasn't just a function of the team around him carrying Cooley's production. There were significant improvements under the hood as the tracking data has his rates of scoring chance assists and total scoring chance contributions (SCC/60) increase 62% and 39%, respectively, from the 2023-24 season:

Another key here is that Cooley averaged 16:45 in ice time per game up until the Christmas break and then 18:46 per game the rest of the way. There were still some periods of downtime (17:27 per game in April) but he was a 20-year-old centre playing top-line minutes for over half the season on a team that was pushing for a playoff spot. That kind of speaks for itself.

The question here is less 'Is The Breakout For Real?' and more 'How High Is This Ceiling?'. I think looking to his teammate Clayton Keller is helpful here. Keller had a great rookie year with 65 points in 82 games, but it would take five years for him to be a point-per-game player. It may not take that long for Cooley because the NHL is a higher-scoring environment than it was 5-6 years ago, and this Utah roster is better than the Arizona rosters of 4-5 years ago, but I wouldn't expect an immediate 30-goal, 50-assist season from Cooley. Those are coming, but it could very well be another year or two of the 25-ish goals and 40-ish assists we just saw. 

Simon Edvinsson (Detroit Red Wings)

With 1.01 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, Edvinsson finished in the 77^th percentile of regular NHL defencemen. That is basically a number-2 defenceman rate, which is pretty good for a 21-year-old defenceman playing on a team that finished 30^th by goals-for per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. In fact, when looking back to 2007 for seasons from a defenceman age-21 or younger, two names pop up comparing Edvindsson's rate of goals, assists, hits, and blocks per 60 minutes at 5-on-5:

While neither of those names have been elite fantasy options, both have had several very productive fantasy seasons. One difference is that Justin Faulk was a PP1 defenceman for many years in Carolina while Noah Hanifin hasn't had the same high levels of PPTOI as Faulk, but has generally been a power-play option his entire career. Detroit seems committed to Moritz Seider as the top PP guy, Erik Gustafsson has another year left on his contract, and Axel Sandin Pellikka is looming as a prospect. Edvinsson will be very hard-pressed to approach the 50-point mark anytime soon due to the lack of PP role, so despite a successful first full NHL season, he may very well fall into the 'Better In Real Life Than In Fantasy Hockey' bucket that many defencemen fall into.