We got the list of injuries from the Philadelphia Flyers and as we see with a lot of teams, it was extensive. There was a fractured wrist for Emil Andrae, which will require surgry, a fracture foot for Noah Cates, fractured ribs for Cam York and Travis Konecny, internal bleeding (!) for Owen Tippett, among others. These are all serious-ish injuries, but it looks like all affected players should be ready to go for training camp in September.

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Montreal and Buffalo went back and forth in the first half of Game 5, going from 1-1 to 2-2 to 3-3, then a pair of Canadiens goals late in the second period gave them a 5-3 lead that they would not relinquish. The Habs ended up with a 6-3 win, and now have a 3-2 series lead with Game 6 on Saturday night back in Montreal.

The top guys for Montreal carried the goal-scoring load as Nick Suzuki had a goal and two assists, Juraj Slafkovsky had three helpers, Ivan Demidov had one of each, and Cole Caufield also scored. After going six games without a point in the first round, Demidov now has five points in his last five games – his play has improved as the postseason has progressed.

Jakub Dobes had a tough start to the game, allowing three goals on the first four shots, but kept Buffalo off the board the rest of the way, stopping 33 shots in total.

Konsta Helenius, Josh Doan, and Jason Zucker scored for the Sabres.

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The Vegas Golden Knights wrapped up their series with the Anaheim Ducks thanks to a 5-1 win in Game 6. Vegas now moves on to face Colorado in the Western Conference Final, which will start on Wednesday.

As was the case for the second round, Pavel Dorofeyev (two goals), Mitch Marner (one goal, one assist), and Brett Howden (one goal) led the way for the Golden Knights in Game 6. For his part, Marner scored the prettiest goal we've seen this postseason:

wanna see some magic? 🫢 pic.twitter.com/uA5Lip0D3e

— Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) May 15, 2026

Marner was a force in the matchup with the Ducks, posting five goals and six assists in six games.

Shea Theodore also had a goal and an assist in the win. He had a great series with five points in six games and the Golden Knights outscored the Ducks 5-0 with Theodore on the ice at 5-on-5 in the series (per Natural Stat Trick).

Goalie Carter Hart stopped 31 of 32 shots for the win. Hart posted a .935 save percentage in the second round.

Mikael Granlund scored the lone goal for the Ducks.

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The season review continues in today's Ramblings. Recently, we have covered a lot of ground. In yesterday's Ramblings, we discussed the involvement of defencemen for their respective teams' power play, and that was after going over the forwards. Also contained in that Ramblings are links to the four articles where we discussed shot volume changes:

• Forward improvements from names like Connor Bedard, Shane Pinto, and Leo Carlsson.
• Forward Declines from names like Brady Tkachuk, Jack Drury, and Connor Zary.
• Defence improvements from names like Mattias Samuelsson, Bowen Byram, and Darren Raddysh.
• Defence declines from names like Quinn Hughes, Noah Dobson, and Nils Lundkvist.  

Today, we're again looking at just the forwards, and searching for players who are, or could be, under-valued in your fantasy leagues. These are players who did not have a great 2025-26 season, but their raw production is masked by improvements under the hood.

We are going to use tracking data from All Three Zones and player/team data from Evolving Hockey. This is all at 5-on-5 unless otherwise indicated.

Dmitri Voronkov (Columbus Blue Jackets)

It was a bitterly disappointing season for Voronkov who became a frequent healthy scratch in the final quarter of the campaign once head coach Rick Bowness took over, playing just 7 of the final 26 games of the season. Here is the funny thing: Voronkov scored 1.16 goals per 60 minutes at all strengths, a rate higher than his average across the prior two seasons (1.07), leading to a slight increase in his points rate. His season decline didn't come from worse production, but a diminished role.

That is why it's also important to highlight what he did under the hood. Here are a few 5-on-5 tracking stats we look at:

• Scoring Chance Assists Per 60 Minutes (SCA/60) – How often a player assists on a teammate's scoring chance.
• Rush Contributions Per 60 Minutes (Rush/60) – How often a player assists on a teammate's shot off a rush play or that player takes the shot themselves.
• Cycle+Forecheck Contributions Per 60 Minutes (Cycle+Forecheck/60) – The same type of contributions as the rush, but this time off the cycle or forecheck.
• Attempts Per Expected Goal (iCF/ixG) – How many shot attempts a player needs to generate one expected goal. Lower numbers are better because they show efficiency.

Those stats help show a player's playmaking ability, how he can contribute to the two styles of offence, and how efficient his shot selection is. That is why we're highlighting what Voronkov did in 2025-26:

The tracking sample from this season isn't big, but that there are improvements across all the key areas, and fewer shot attempts per expected goal generated, indicates a player who took some steps forward.  

Voronkov will be going into his age-26 season, and he crossed the 200-game threshold back in January. With Bowness getting an extension in Columbus, it is an uphill climb for the winger because for whatever reason, he clearly does not have the coach's trust. Maybe we see Voronkov traded because Bowness just does not believe in him, but the scoring winger's fantasy hockey value has taken a massive hit. He wouldn't be expensive to acquire in a trade, and he brings multi-cat value with career rates of 47 blocks and 101 hits every 82 games.  

Anton Lundell (Florida Panthers)

This feels like a 'two things can be true' situation for Lundell:

1. Putting up 44 points in 64 games despite skating over 19 minutes a game isn't very good production.
2. The injuries the Panthers sustained hurt the production of all the healthy players.

Lundell saw a much bigger role with Aleksander Barkov missing the entire season, but Matthew Tkachuk missed 51 games, and both Brad Marchand and Seth Jones both missed 30 games each. By the time Lundell and Sam Reinhart were shutdown for the final month, the damage had been done. With that said, it is important to note that not only was Lundell one of the players who saw a sizeable improvement in his shot volume, and he paired that with a big increase in his scoring chance assists:

Here we run into a similar problem as we saw with Voronkov. Where Voronkov has to earn his coach's trust, Lundell will head into the 2026-27 season with a healthy Panthers roster, so it seems nearly impossible he skates 19 minutes a game again. If he's back to the 16- to 17-minute mark, with secondary PP time, the best we can hope for is a 60-point season.

All that said, it might be worth checking out what the manager with Lundell on their roster wants for him. He just had a disappointing season and that owner will know that Lundell is going to have to deal with a healthy Panthers roster. If he can be had for cheap, it is worth taking a chance that he can leapfrog Sam Bennett on the depth chart. It is unlikely, but as a cheap gamble, it might be worth it.  

Alex Turcotte (Los Angeles Kings)

The Los Angeles Kings have Anze Kopitar retiring and Phillip Danault was traded during the season. It seems very likely that the franchise returns with Quinton Byfield and Alex Laferriere as their top two centres, but if they don't bring back Scott Laughton, there is a third-line centre role up for grabs.

Turcotte is an interesting player because his limited NHL career (162 games across five seasons) has shown some good underlying tracking processes, but a lack of consistency, or at least perceived consistency, has kept him from a regular, meaningful role. It has also kept the number of games in the tracking data from accumulating, but there were improvements in his cycle+forecheck contributions, his rate of zone entries, and how often he carried those entries into the zone:

The big problem here is that even if Turcotte does earn a third-line role, there isn't a lot of scoring depth on the Kings' roster. Even with a healthy Kevin Fiala, the team has six top-6 forwards they'll lean on, and then a bunch of guys they hope can fit in.

Rebuilding fantasy hockey rosters should take an approach similar to what smarter teams do in real life: acquire several low-cost players they think are undervalued and hope a couple of them pan out. If I'm in a deep-ish dynasty league, and I'm rebuilding my team this offseason, Turcotte is one of those players to circle.

Simon Holmstrom (New York Islanders)

In the Ramblings discussing forwards being heavily involved in their team's power play linked at the top, Mathew Barzal was mentioned because of his heavy usage for the Islanders. What wasn't mentioned was what Holmström did. Because Barzal had much heavier usage, he had much more involvement in things like PP zone entries, but we should highlight that Holmström was by far the most involved Islanders forward not named Barzal:

• Non-Barzal NYI forwards tracked 5v4 zone entries: 36
• Holmstrom tracked 5v4 zone entries: 23

Of the 59 tracked zone entries that did not belong to Barzal, Holmström was responsible for nearly 40% of them. He got a bit of top PP time through the year, and with a new coach in town, he could be in line for a much more impactful role in 2026-27.

Aside from Holmström’s power-play involvement, it matters that he was really looking to facilitate for his teammates. He saw sizeable improvements in his rate of scoring chance assists as well as how often he carried the puck into the offensive zone:

The question for Holmström revolves around his role. The Islanders traded for Brayden Schenn, who has two years left on his contract. Calum Ritchie saw a key role down the stretch, Victor Eklund came over from Sweden and was over a point-per-game player in limited AHL action, and Kyle Palmieri will be healthy. Including the top forwards in Barzal and Bo Horvat, and then secondary options like Anthony Duclair and Emil Heineman, there will be a lot of competition for top-6 and top power-play minutes. It is going to be an uphill battle for Holmström, but he has the ingredients to take another production step. Just beware that a lack of peripherals like shots, hits, and blocks make him much more valuable in points-only fantasy formats than multi-cat leagues.