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The Edmonton Oilers have traded winger Evander Kane to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a fourth-round pick. Alex had his breakdown of the trade here.

This seems as if it may be insurance for Vancouver in the event that Brock Boeser signs elsewhere. If that is indeed the case, Kane has a path to top-6 and top PP minutes with the Canucks in 2025-26. That would be pretty valuable for fantasy, he'd be in a contract year, and he'd finally be healthy for the regular season for the first time in year. For now, this is a situation to monitor because my instinct is he'll be undervalued in drafts come September.

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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 us fantasy owners:

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

That is each NHL team, but what about fantasy managers? On Tuesday, I went over a few players who had breakout seasons and what individual owners should do about those players in keeper/dynasty leagues. Today, we're going in the other direction and looking at those with down years. Data is from Evolving Hockey and Frozen Tools unless otherwise indicated.

Elias Pettersson (Vancouver Canucks)

In the 2024 offseason, we found out that Pettersson played the last few months of the 2023-24 season with knee tendinitis. That helped explain why he had 64 points in 49 games to start that season and finished with 31 points in the next 46 games including playoffs. He also stated in that article that he had to "train around [the] knee injury]" in the offseason, and that it was still bothering him going into training camp for the 2024-25 season. That was a huge red flag, and it's pretty obvious it affected him all year again (team off-ice issues aside): Here are the tracking numbers from NHL Edge, focusing on top skating speed and speed bursts. The grey line is the 2022-23 season when he was healthy, and the black line is 2024-25 when he was not. There is a drastic change in those skating metrics:

This really puts fantasy managers in a tough spot. If this worst-case scenario and it's a knee issue that doesn't go away, Pettersson may never reclaim the production levels he had a couple years ago. If this is something they can fix over the summer, then he represents a very good buy-low opportunity for fantasy managers. The problem is that we have no idea if it's going to persist and leave him as a 20-goal, 60-point option, get modestly better to allow him to be a 30-goal, 75-point guy, or go away completely and get him back to being a 35-goal, 90-point player.

If I had Pettersson on a keeper roster (I don't), and I can flip him for a top-50 player like Sebastian Aho or Jake Guentzel, I would be pretty tempted to do that. If the best I could do is a fringe top-100 player like Bo Horvat or Matty Beniers, I would probably hold and hope for the best. Everything depends on the return available, but this is a very volatile situation with no clear, good answer.

Connor Bedard (Chicago Blackhawks)

Goals, assists, and shots per game all declined for Bedard, which makes it a down year. He doesn't turn 20 years old until July, so it is hard to imagine a keeper manager with Bedard on their roster panicking just yet. And, for fun, looking at centres with at least 100 games played as a teenager since the 2013 lockout season, there is one centre whose teenage years had rates of goals, points, and shot attempts (CF) that compare to what Bedard did (from Hockey-Reference):

It is easy to forget now that Nathan MacKinnon is a perennial MVP candidate that his first four years in the league saw him average 21 goals and 36 assists every 82 games. MacKinnon eventually made changes to his game and the Avalanche took years to rebuild around him, which is something Bedard is going through right now. Maybe there is some consternation around the young Chicago star not having an immediate 40-goal season like Auston Matthews or point-per-game season like Connor McDavid, but age matters too. Bedard was still 17 years old three months before making his NHL debut; Matthews was 19 years old when he made his NHL debut and McDavid turned 19 during his rookie season. Bedard won't take off for a few years yet as Chicago takes time to rebuild, but this is a player to buy in keeper leagues, not sell, with the long-term view in mind.

Travis Konecny (Philadelphia Flyers)

Konecny started the season with 20 goals and 25 assists in 41 games, he had 37 PIMs and 52 hits in that span so there was some solid peripheral value, and he looked on his way to another very successful fantasy season. Then he had four (!) goals and 27 assists in the next 41 games with 16 PIMs and 42 hits.

The goal-scoring drop isn't ideal, but it's worth noting his 52 assists were by far a career-best mark (37 in 2019-20) and his 17 power-play points were the most for him this decade. The reason for all the assists is that Konecny has undergone a genuine shift in his playstyle over the last couple of years. Using tracking data from AllThreeZones, we can see how his rate of assists on teammate scoring chances at 5-on-5 (SCA/60) has increased considerably over the last two years while the rate of shot attempts Konecny takes as a percentage of all the attempts the Flyers take when he's on the ice (Market Share) is declining:

To put it simply: Konecny is trying to become a better playmaker to elevate his teammates while focusing less on his own goal scoring; Anze Kopitar did something similar this season. Whether that persists under a new coach remains to be seen, but if Konecny keeps focusing on the playmaking he may genuinely be a 25-goal, 50-assist option rather than someone who can push for 35 goals. We won't know if these changes stick until well into the 2025-26 season, so fantasy managers need to decide what they need from Konecny and whether he's worth holding onto, trading away, or trading for. I would hold, considering Matvei Michkov is a year older and Trevor Zegras has been added, but it all depends on return.

Adam Fox (New York Rangers)

After posting three straight seasons with over 10 goals and over 70 points, Fox managed 10 goals and 61 points in 2024-25. His per-minute rate of shots, hits, and blocks all declined (though the first two were by very small numbers). All in all, it was a down year for Fox despite having a season that would be very successful for 97% of NHL defencemen.

The big problem was the power-play production. He had just 18 PP points in his 74 games compared to 31 PP points in 72 games a year ago. From 2021-2024, he averaged 29 PP points every 74 games, so if we add the 11 PP points he lost in 2024-25, he lands at a 72-point season, and right in line with recent years. The reason for the decline becomes very clear when looking at team power-play opportunities compared to share of power-play time and point rate:

New York was a top-10 power-play team by PP goals per 60 minutes each season from 2021-2024, and top-5 in two of those seasons. They also had a solid start in 2024-25, ranking 9^th by PP goals/60 through the team's first 20 games before that power play, and the entire team in general, collapsed for 40 games afterwards.

This puts keeper/dynasty owners in a bit of a bind. The Rangers are overhauling its group as Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, Jacob Trouba, and Ryan Lindgren were traded away during the season, they traded for JT Miller, Carson Soucy, and Will Borgen, and they sent Chris Kreider to Anaheim a couple weeks ago. New York went from one of the most consistent scoring environments to a big question mark. And the issue for Fox, specifically, is he needs those points for fantasy value. He is not like MacKenzie Weegar or Darnell Nurse where the peripherals are so strong that even a 35- or 40-point season means very good fantasy value; Fox has never had a season with either 160 shots or 50 hits. If the Rangers take another step back scoring-wise, Fox doesn't have the peripheral value to be a top-10 fantasy defenceman.

Managers with Fox on their roster should be cautious here. He isn't a guy I dump in fear that he's on a personal decline or anything like that. He is also a guy that has questions about his near- and medium-term fantasy value because of the team around him. As if with Pettersson, if I can get a high-quality defenceman back in a trade – Rasmus Dahlin or Lane Hutson – I would probably make that deal. But Fox is not a player I'm just looking to get rid of for a top-25 guy like Miro Heiskanen or Vince Dunn, and maybe the Fox manager is panicked, making this offseason a good time to buy low on him.

Here’s Dobber with 60 seconds on Zach Werenski