Welcome fantasy managers to another edition of the Eastern Edge. This week we'll be taking a look at Nikolaj Ehlers' first season in Carolina, Logan Stankoven's continued evolution, Jack Hughes' dominant campaign despite injury and lastly the Philadelphia Flyers' Trevor Zegras.

Let's get to it!

Nikolaj Ehlers certainly made the most of his first season with the Carolina Hurricanes as the speedy Dane enjoyed a career best campaign with 71 points in 82 games played. The exciting part for fantasy managers is there may still be more in the tank for Ehlers seeing as he received less than 17 minutes a night being deployed often on the team's third line alongside captain Jordan Stall and winger Jordan Martinook while also slotting on the club first power play unit.

If Ehlers can ever get an extended run with players such as Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, or Seth Jarvis he just might be able to push the 80-point plateau despite the fact that coach Rod Brind'Amour prefers to spread out the ice time amongst the forward group.

Sticking with the Hurricanes, diminutive forward Logan Stankoven continues to impress with his relentless engine and dogged determination at both ends of the ice. Stankoven had himself a rather solid season in 2025-2026 as the former Dallas Star increased his point total for the third straight campaign finishing with 44 points in 81 games played while seeing minimal power play time on the team’s second unit. The encouraging part for both team and player is the chemistry between himself and fellow youngster Jackson Blake with both players surpassing the 20-goal plateau.

The manner in which Brind’Amour spreads out his ice time could somewhat cap Stankoven's ceiling moving forward, however, if Stankoven can see even a slight increase at both five-on-five as well as on the man advantage I can see a 60 to 65-point season as early as next year. Book it!

New Jersey Devils star forward Jack Hughes had a very productive campaign this year regardless of the disappointment from a team perspective. Hughes enjoyed his greatest triumph scoring the overtime winner for the United States at the Olympic winter games but was also the driving force behind a stagnant New Jersey offense that closed out the campaign ranked 27th overall at 2.76 goals per game played. The Olympic hero was exceptional over the last quarter of the season with 32 points in his last 18 games played (1.78PPG).

The biggest concern for fantasy managers has nothing to do with production so much as the American's ability to stay healthy for an entire campaign as Hughes has never played a full 82-game slate over the course of his 7-year career. Over the last three years, Hughes has played no more than 62 games in any one season and has a career average of 61 games played per year.

The soon-to-be 25-year-old is just now coming into his prime years and if the under-sized Hughes can manage to remain healthy for an entire campaign it's safe to say that we could be looking at adding yet another player to 100-point mark in the not-too-distant future.

The main piece coming back to the Philadelphia Flyers in the Ryan Poehling deal was enigmatic forward Trevor Zegras who had stumbled to a paltry 47 points over his last two seasons combined. A renewed sense under first year head coach Rick Tocchet seems to have the desired effect on the 25-year-old as he put up career highs in points (67), power play points (23) as well as power play time-on-ice (2:59) while falling just short of his career high in overall ice time set back in 2022-2023 of 18:50 a night (he finished with 18:43 in 2025-2026).

Philadelphia turned things up coming back from the Olympic break as the club went on an 18-7-1 run down the stretch with Zegras potting 18 points in his last 25 games played to help Philadelphia to a playoff berth that many did not think possible. Regardless of how this season ends for the Flyers their future remains bright with a nucleus of Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Matvei Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Porter Martone, Dan Vladar as well as the aforementioned Zegras.

If Tocchet can continue to preach his defensive system on this young core of talented players, the Flyers will become an even bigger problem than they already are.  

Thanks for reading and feel free to follow me on X @mikeouellet9 or BlueSky @mikeouellet9.bsky.social

(All stats courtesy of: Dobber's Frozen Tools)

See you all again next Tuesday!