In Tuesday's Ramblings, I started talking about my personal projections. I have written several Ramblings over the summer about doing season-long projections, and now we are going to finally talk about the (mostly) finished product. In those Tuesday Ramblings, we discussed the first eight teams in the league from Anaheim through Colorado. Today's Ramblings will discuss one player from each of the next eight teams from Dallas through New Jersey (this goes by abbreviations, so N.J comes before NSH for Nashville).

As a reminder, all players are projected for 82 games, and there are still some small adjustments to come like age-related progression/decline and adding rookies.

Data for the projections are from Evolving Hockey, AllThreeZones, and Frozen Tools.

*** Be sure to grab a copy of the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide, available now in the Dobber Shop! ***

Dallas Stars

Let's start with Thomas Harley, a guy who has shown nothing but elite upside since the moment he stepped into the NHL:

Despite the modest power-play production – the model is assuming he splits power-play time with Miro Heiskanen – Harley's 82-game projection is for 61 points. It has him inside the top 10 defencemen in both even-strength goals and even-strength assists. On the back of that elite performance at even strength, the overall projection pushes him to the 60-point mark for the first time in his career.

This might seem lofty but over the last two seasons, Evolving Hockey has Harley as the top defenceman in the league by both even strength offence and goals-for impact, and the tracking data has him as a tremendous defenceman in transition. The 2024-25 season saw a rise in his shot volume at even strength and Dallas should again be one of the top offensive teams in the league. If Harley posts something close to what this projection shows, he's a top-10 fantasy defenceman.  

Detroit Red Wings

Let's check in on a player I've done a complete 180-degree turn on over the last two years in Detroit's Lucas Raymond:

This shows Raymond pacing for close to 85 points in 82 games, giving him the first point-per-game season of his career. It really isn't all that much different from his 2024-25 season, adding a goal and a few assists, but the key here is that even with a projection of 34 power-play points, that is a downturn from 2024-25 (he had 37). It takes him from about 46% of his production from the power play, which is very high for a forward, to about 40%, which is a lot more reasonable. The reason is that Detroit turned around their even-strength offence under new coach Todd McLellan, and the idea is that the turnaround under McLellan carries over in 2025-26. With a better team at even strength, Raymond looks primed for his best offensive season to date despite a small decline from the power play.

This can go very wrong if the Detroit offence reverts to what it was before McLellan arrived, so etching this in stone is too much faith, but Raymond certainly looks like the next winger to join the point-per-game club.

Edmonton Oilers

There isn't much point giving projections for Edmonton's superstars because they aren't much different from most places. Rather, let's look at Trent Frederic, and intriguing player for multi-cat leagues:

This isn't too far off his 82-game paces from the last three seasons (16 goals and 16 assists), but there is a solid shot total and massive hit total. Last year, Frederic had an 82-game pace of 222 hits, and the expectation is that he floats somewhere on the second and third lines, something like Viktor Arvidsson last year. It is pushing Frederic close to 14 minutes a game, and that is giving him his solid peripherals.

From 2021-2024, Frederic shot 12% at 5-on-5 and his line mates shot 8.7%. In 2024-25, he shot 10% at 5-on-5 and his line mates shot 5.2%. It seems as if there was a bit of bad luck going on in a season where he was injured and the Boston Bruins had a cataclysmic decline. He might not get a lot of time with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, but he'll get some, and those percentages should improve. He should be able to push past 30 points with a massive hit total.

Florida Panthers

There is one defenceman I am (or was) circling on a lot of draft lists and it's last season's big trade acquisition in Seth Jones:

If a defenceman can put up 15 goals, 40 assists, 20 power-play points, and over 400 combined shots, hits, and blocks, then he can be a fringe top-10 defenceman in multi-cat formats. That is why I'm high on Jones.

The problem is the Matthew Tkachuk injury. We don't know how long he'll be out post-surgery, but the rumoured timeline has been somewhere around/after Christmas, so he could very well miss half the regular season. Looking at Florida's goal-scoring rates at 5-on-5 over the last two seasons, they score 76% more often when Sam Bennett has Tkachuk on his wing than when he doesn't, and Florida's power play scores 31% more often when Tkachuk is on the top unit than when he isn't. This is still a very talented team, but Tkachuk is one of the best wingers in the league, and as good as Brad Marchand, Eetu Luostarainen, and Mackie Samoskevich are, there is no one on the roster that can replace him.  

Taking Tkachuk out of the lineup for half the season is going to have a big impact on production for both Bennett and the top power-play options. I would be more inclined to believe Jones will be a 10-goal, 30-assist defenceman than a 15-goal, 40-assist defenceman.

Los Angeles Kings

I'm going to be honest, this projection for Quinton Byfield is a bit heartbreaking:

Once age adjustments are made, maybe he gets close to 24 goals and 25 assists, but either way, there isn't much change here from last season despite his strong finish when he had 31 points in 32 games. There are three problems coming up.

The first is the Los Angeles power play. While things were much better once Andrei Kuzmenko arrived, the 5-on-4 power play improvement was on the back of the top unit shooting a preposterous 23.5% (for reference, Detroit's top PP unit was elite last year and shot 21%). It will be near-impossible to repeat anything close to what they did over the last six weeks of the regular season, and the top unit was flat-out bad before Kuzmenko.

Related to the power play is Byfield's role. Los Angeles sometimes used a five-forward PP unit down the stretch, and Byfield was the fifth forward. That's great. But when they used a four-forward power play, Byfield was moved to the second unit. Over the final 20-plus games of the regular season, the core four PP forwards all averaged over 70% of the PPTOI share, and Byfield was under 45%. If the Kings decide to stick with either Drew Doughty or Brandt Clarke on the top unit, Byfield probably gets the short end of the stick.

The final problem is the offseason changes. According to Evolving Hockey, over the last two years, the even strength offensive drop from Jordan Spence to Cody Ceci is about 35% and from Vladislav Gavrikov to Brian Dumoulin it's about 52%. As it is, Mikey Anderson, as great as he is defensively, is a poor offensive defenceman, so at least half this blue line cannot move the puck. It is hurting everyone's projections and that, along with the power-play problems, is why Byfield's projections aren't very good. I think he is a tremendous player who is going to have among the lowest-quality offensive minutes on any team that isn't heading for the Draft Lottery. I really hope I'm wrong because Byfield is genuinely one of the most fun players to watch in the league, but I have a lot of concerns about his team context.

Minnesota Wild

Brock Faber's projection really stuck out to me:

Though I haven't added rookies yet, the assumption here is that Minnesota's top PP unit progression looks something like this:

1. Four Forwards + Zeev Buium
2. Five Forwards
3. Four Forwards + Jared Spurgeon
4. Four Forwards + Brock Faber

In essence, the assumption is that Faber doesn't really factor into Minnesota's top PP unit this year, which is why his projection is for one power-play point. He is not a good offensive defenceman yet, and Minnesota is not a high-end offensive team. To this point of his career, Faber has received 34% of his point production from the man advantage. If that PP production basically disappears, there isn't really an avenue for him to be relied upon as a 40-point blue liner.

There are ways Faber can still get prime power-play time – Buium can't hold onto the top PP role, Spurgeon can't stay healthy, etc. But if Faber doesn't have that prime production spot, he plays among the emptiest fantasy minutes for any heavily-used defenceman.  

Montreal Canadiens

With Lane Hutson's breakout and the trade for Noah Dobson, I was wondering what Mike Matheson's projection would look like. It doesn't look good:

The assumption for Matheson is that with Dobson in the fold, he is now the number-3 option for power-play defencemen and a second-pair option at even strength. It takes nearly all power-play production away from him and cuts about a minute per game of even-strength ice time. It effectively gives us his 2024-25 season (31 points) without the power-play production (10 PPPs).

I think Matheson ends up somewhere between 25-30 points assuming Kirby Dach is healthy, and Ivan Demidov has the impact a lot of us think he can have. It could give Montreal a genuine second scoring line, and that'll help. But Matheson seems to be a prime candidate for a big cut in offensive fantasy minutes and being on the wrong side of 30 years old won't help.

New Jersey Devils

I was curious what Jack Hughes' projection would look like, and it looks really good:

This is basically what he did in 2022-23 when he tallied 43 goals and 56 assists in 78 games. It has him shooting 13.7%, which is high compared to his last two seasons, but he has shot 12.3% over the last four years, so it's not as if it's unrealistic. A big boon for him is the power play which pushes him from a point-per-game guy to a 100-point threat.

What isn't included here are concerns about his health. He has missed 20 games in each of the last two seasons and has played just 76.5% of New Jersey's regular season games over the last four seasons. He obviously can't miss 20 games and be a 100-point threat, and how healthy his shoulder is after the injury last year is an ongoing concern.

Another problem is there isn't much of a discount on Hughes's ADP. Last year, he was a fringe top-12 pick, often going in that 9-14 range. For this season on FanTrax, his ADP so far is 13.8, and it's 11.4 on Underdog Fantasy. He may go lower in other leagues on different sites, but those two have him going basically where he was going last year, and the health concerns are very real. If I don't get one of the Big Four centres – Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl – I would be tempted to just skip the Hughes/Jack Eichel tier entirely and wait until the Tage Thompson/Brayden Point tier.