In yesterday's Ramblings, we covered changes in market share of shots and expected goals among forwards. To get everyone up to speed, the term 'market share' refers to the percentage of a team's shots or expected goals taken by a specific player when they're on the ice. So, if Cale Makar is on the ice for 1000 shots for Colorado, and he personally takes 200 of them, his market share of shots is 20%.

The reason we do this is to capture players who may not be on the ice for a lot of shots, but take a big percentage of them, indicating a diamond in the rough whose fantasy value can rise in the right spot. It also helps capture skills improvements from players who might otherwise go unnoticed.

Today, we are moving to the blue line and market share changes among defencemen. We are limiting the sample to defencemen with at least 1000 minutes across the 2023-25 seasons, and at least 500 minutes thus far in 2025-26 (a sample of 159 defencemen). We are using data from Evolving Hockey unless otherwise indicated, looking at market shares of both shot attempts and expected goals. The red and blue dotted lines are the barriers for being one standard deviation above/below average, which means a positive change higher than the 84^th percentile or a negative change worse than the 16^th percentile.

As mentioned yesterday, the changes mentioned are relative changes, not raw changes. That means if a player goes from 25% to 30% in market share of shots, the increase is 20% ([30 – 25] / 25) and not 5% (30 – 25).

Rasmus Andersson (Vegas Golden Knights)

The largest improvement in market share of shot attempts of the 159 defencemen in our sample also had the third-largest improvement in market share of expected goals. It is Andersson, who started the season in Calgary and has since been traded to Vegas:

Importantly, there hasn't been much change in his short Vegas tenure compared to what he did with Calgary to start the season: Andersson took 23.2% of shot attempts in 48 games with the Flames and that number is 22.6% in eight games with Vegas. Across the prior two seasons, he took just 17.6%.

For a frame of reference here, Zach Werenski took 23.9% of Columbus' shot attempts when he was on the ice across the 2023-25 seasons while Quinn Hughes took 22.9% of Vancouver's attempts. Andersson is currently at 23.2% between Calgary and Vegas this season, so if he can stay anywhere around the 23% mark, it would put him among some of the top offensive producers around the league.

This isn't to say that Andersson will be as productive as Werenski or Hughes – they are clearly in a higher tier offensively. Additionally, the worry is that a 29-year-old defenceman facing unrestricted free agency hasn't genuinely changed his approach to the game but is trying his hardest to get that one last, big contract of his career.

For now, anyway, it does provide Andersson with a bit of security in the fantasy realm, even without top power-play time. There is more than enough scoring among Vegas' forward group to push him close to the 40-point/82-game plateau, he always blocks a lot of shots, and the shots per game are up around 15% from the last couple of years. It should make him a valuable defenceman down the stretch, even without that power-play time. The worry is that the shot boost is temporary and reverts to where it usually is wherever he signs this summer.

Bowen Byram and Mattias Samuelsson (Buffalo Sabres)

When looking at the highest changes in market shares, we don't get a lot of pairs of teammates, especially among defencemen. That isn't the case this year as we have a couple of Buffalo blue liners in Byram and Samuelsson. The former is among the 25 largest changes in market share of shot attempts and top-3 by expected goals, and the latter is top-3 for largest increase in market share of both shot attempts and expected goals:

Just 7 of 159 defencemen in our sample have an increase in both areas that is higher than the 84^th percentile, and two of them come from the Sabres. This might be something we expect from Byram, given his success earlier in his career, but Samuelsson's increase is certainly not one we could have seen coming.

It is important to note that Samuelsson's increase hasn't been at the expense of Rasmus Dahlin, by far his most common defence partner. Dahlin's market share from 2023-25 was 20.1% and that has increased to 21.9% this season. That means the forwards are taking far fewer of the shots, but it hasn't really hurt the team's scoring. In fact, the team's 60-minute scoring rate with Dahlin on the ice is up 10% from the last two years.

Of course, the issue is what does this look like once Samuelsson stops shooting 14.5%? It will be interesting to see if he starts deferring his shots more often once the pucks stop going in as they have.

Byram's market share of expected goals across the 2023-25 seasons was just 9.1%, a rate that has jumped considerably to 12.6% this season. He still isn't shooting very much – his rate of shot attempts is in the bottom 30% of the league's regular defencemen – but he is getting more quality looks which has helped him to 14.1% shooting. That is high for a defenceman, but he also shot 13.1% across 145 games from 2021-2024, so this isn't anything new for him. If Byram can retain these shooting improvements, he will be a perennial threat for 15 goals.   

Tony DeAngelo (New York Islanders)

Though he technically didn't qualify as his improvement in market share of expected goals was a smidge below the threshold, it is worth including DeAngelo here because he was so close:

It is also worth including him because of the change in his situation:

• Through the end of December, he skated just 17:55 per game for the Islanders, earned just 31.5% of the power-play time (from Frozen Tools), and managed just 13 points in 40 appearances.
• Since the calendar turned to 2026, DeAngelo is averaging 20:39 per outing, has 38% of the power-play time, and has 11 points in 18 games.

That DeAngelo is taking a larger share of shots than usual, has a high improvement in shot quality, and is getting a lot more ice time over the last six weeks is a big deal. The Islanders are not a high-scoring team but any defenceman skating 20-21 minutes with nearly 40% of the power-play time and a bigger share of the shots is worth keeping tabs on. Frozen Tools has DeAngelo rostered in fewer than 20% of Yahoo! leagues and fewer than 10% of ESPN leagues.

Alright, let's gaze in the other direction and find defencemen with the largest market share declines. We have 10 defencemen with a drop in market share worse than the 16^th percentile of both stats, and here are a few of them.

Dmitry Orlov (San Jose Sharks)

It stuck out to me that the largest decline in market share of shot attempts, and second-largest drop in market share of expected goals, belongs to Orlov:

This isn't great for Orlov's shot volume as he's currently under 1.0 shots per game for the first time since his rookie season in 2011-2012. However, at even strength, Orlov's most-common forward line mate is Macklin Celebrini (39.4% of ice time) with both William Eklund (30.4%) and Tyler Toffoli (25.5%) on the ice for over one-quarter of his EV TOI. If Orlov is shooting less and instead deferring to the likes of Celebrini, Eklund, and Toffoli, it's hard to argue against it. To that end, he already has as many assists this season (22) as he had last season (in 21 fewer games played) and is on pace to reach the 30-assist plateau for the first time in his career. With 1.0 blocks and 1.5 hits per game, Orlov brings other peripherals, and if he can be a 35-point guy, that makes him playable in depth fantasy formats.

Jonas Brodin and Jacob Middleton (Minnesota Wild)

We have one pair of teammates among the 10 largest drops in both categories, and they come from the Minnesota Wild in Brodin and Middleton:

The interesting part here is that they aren't common defence partners, so these are guys on separate pairs taking far fewer shots. As a team, Minnesota is generating 2% more shot attempts per minute compared to the prior two seasons, and the entire group of Minnesota defenceman are taking slightly fewer shots as a percentage of the team's shots than the prior two seasons. That leaves more shots for the forwards both in terms of what the team is generating as a whole, and what is left over when factoring how often the blue line is shooting.

At 3.25 goals per 60 minutes, the Wild are scoring at their highest rate since 2021-22, and at a rate 14% higher than their two-year average prior to this season. There is more to it than Brodin and Middleton shooting less, but it's hard to argue with the results.

Gustav Forsling (Florida Panthers)

With one of the five largest drops in market share of both shot attempts and expected goals, Forsling is perhaps the most negatively impacted defencemen in our group outside of Orlov:

So far this season, Forsling is averaging 8.4 shot attempts per 60 minutes. In each of the prior four seasons with Florida, he averaged between 11.8 and 13.8 attempts per 60 minutes, and his average across the 2023-25 seasons was 13.7. The team's shot rate has plummeted with him on the ice, which is to be expected when losing Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk to lengthy injuries, but it's not just that the team is shooting less often overall, but Forsling is shooting a lot less relative to the team's decline.

Things haven't gotten better since Tkachuk's return to the lineup as Forsling is at 9.1 attempts/60 minutes in those 10 recent games. Considering Forsling scored at least 10 goals in each of the prior four seasons, and may not even reach five goals in 2025-26, this seems to be a lost season for him fantasy-wise.

Adam Larsson (Seattle Kraken)

The last name we'll discuss briefly is from the Kraken, a team in the thick of the playoff race in the West. He has seen the largest decline in market share of expected goals among the 159 defencemen in our sample, with one of the 25 largest declines in share of shot attempts:

Unlike the Minnesota guys, this isn't really helping the Kraken offensively, at least with Larsson on the ice – the team is scoring 2.2 goals per 60 minutes with him on the ice, a stark decline from the 3.2 goals/60 last season, and 2.7 goals/60 across the prior two seasons. This hasn't hurt Larsson's fantasy production as his 0.27 points per game are right in line with his 0.28 points per game across the previous two campaigns, but he's also shooting a career-high 8.3%. Once that starts going down, the lack of goal-scoring with Larsson on the ice is going to greatly limit his offensive output.