In some positive injury news outside of the NHL playoffs, the Winnipeg Jets assigned defenceman Elias Salomonsson to the AHL. Salomonsson had suffered a concussion against the Dallas Stars earlier this month and missed the final seven games of the regular season. He won't be immediately inserted into the playoff lineup but that this decision was made is a good sign.  

*

The Ottawa Senators welcomed defenceman Tyler Kleven to practice in a full-contact jersey, per Alex Adams. Kleven was injured early in April and has not played since but given the injuries that blue line has endured, this is a positive step.

*

The Philadelphia Flyers have the Pittsburgh Penguins on the ropes thanks to a 5-2 win on Wednesday night. The series now stands at 3-0 for Philadelphia, and they have a chance to cap off the sweep at home on Saturday night.

Trevor Zegras posted a goal and an assist in the win, totaling two shots and three hits. He now has three points in three games so far despite skating between 13-16 minutes a game in each appearance.

Jamie Drysdale had a big fantasy night from the back end with a pair of assists, four shots, three blocks, and a hit. Both of his assists came on power-play goals, and if the Flyers can have even an average power play, it would add a whole other dimension to this team and make them that much more dangerous.

Dan Vladar was stellar in net again for the Flyers, stopping 28 of 30 shots faced.

Erik Karlsson and Evgeni Malkin had the Penguins goals. Malkin has now been involved in three of the four Pittsburgh goals in the series.

*

Wyatt Johnston deflected home a Miro Heiskanen point shot on the power play in the second overtime to lift the Dallas Stars to a 4-3 win over the Minnesota Wild. That was Johnston's second PP point of the night, assisting on Matt Duchene's game-tying goal in the third period. Johnston now has four PP points through three playoff games, more than picking up where he left off in the regular season.

Both Duchene and Jason Robertson managed a goal and two assists in the win. Those two and Johnston all have five points in three games.

Jake Oettinger faced just 31 shots through 92:10 of game time, and stopped 28 of those shots, for the win.

Joel Eriksson Ek, Marcus Johansson, and Michael McCarron all scored for the Wild. The second line of the Wild (Eriksson Ek, Johnsson, and Matt Boldy) have 6 of 11 Minnesota goals in the series.

Jonas Brodin had a solid multi-cat night with an assist, four shots, four blocks, two PIMs, and two hits.

Jesper Wallstedt allowed four goals on 36 shots in the loss.

Dallas has a 2-1 series lead and Game 4 goes Saturday.

*

With under five minutes remaining in a 4-4 game, Cutter Gauthier corralled a loose puck and fired home the game-winner as the Anaheim Ducks eventually earned a 6-4 win over the Edmonton Oilers. It was his second goal of the game, adding an assist on an Alex Killorn PP goal, for a big offensive night from the young winger.

Killorn had that goal and two assists while Ryan Poehling also scored twice. Jackson LaCombe had a trio of helpers, two shots, and two blocks in the win.

Lukas Dostal held the Oilers to four goals on 37 shots to even the series at one game apiece.

Leon Draisaitl posted a goal and an assist in the win and he now has four points in two games since returning from injury. Zach Hyman, Josh Samanski, and Connor Murphy tallied the other Oilers markers.

Game 3 is Friday night back in Anaheim.

*

In Tuesday's Ramblings, I started my fantasy hockey season review by going over the small success I had doing best ball teams. For more on names like Macklin Celebrini, Seth Jarvis, Jet Greaves, and others, go check that out.

Today's Ramblings continues that season review and we're starting with players I missed on. These are guys who, for one reason or another, I was relatively high on before the season and they did not pan out as anticipated. These will focus specifically on forwards before moving to defencemen tomorrow. We are also going to exclude players that missed significant time due to injury, and that will be players who missed more than 20 games (over 25% of the season).

Jonathan Marchessault – Vegas Golden Knights

We will start by going easy on myself and say that there was an article in mid-September that covered arbitrage opportunities. Basically, the idea was searching for players with average draft positions whom I thought could perform similarly to players with draft positions going several rounds earlier. The first pairing in that article was Jordan Kyrou (ADP of 80) and Marchessault (ADP of 147).

That Kyrou didn't have a good season doesn't absolve Marchessault's year. He finished with 12 goals, 31 points, and 132 shots in 62 games, the lowest goal-, point-, and shot-per-game marks of any season where he's played at least 50 games. That he skated a 10-year-low 16:42 per game doesn't matter, either, because his rate of goals, points, and shots per minute were all career-low marks as well.

Even worse was that things looked bad under the hood. Per 5-on-5 tracking data from All Three Zones, some key areas for Marchessault are the worst of the last five years by a wide margin:

To explain those stats:

• SCA/60 is his 60-minute rate of scoring chance assists, or how often a player assists on a teammate's scoring chance.
• SCC/60 is the rate of scoring chance contributions, or the chance assists plus his individual scoring chances.
• Entries/60 is simply how often he's responsible for an offensive zone entry.
• Carry Entry% is how often he carries the puck into the offensive zone on a zone entry.

The big problem is that all the declines are anywhere between 20-45%. He showed declines in 2023-24 and 2024-25 compared to the two years prior, but he was still good enough to score well. Now, they're at levels where true bottom-6 producers reside.

Whether Marchessault can bounce back is another question, but he is going into his age-36 season, and he's on a team with an aging core but has young players like Luke Evangelista, Zachary L'Heureux, and Brady Martin pushing for prominent roles. It doesn't paint a rosy picture for Marchessault's fantasy hockey future.

Dylan Larkin – Detroit Red Wings

This is another odd case where Larkin had a career-high 34 goals, saw an improvement in goals and shots per game when compared to 2024-25, but still came up short in my projections. In an early September article, I wrote about players with ADP's I thought were too generous, noting that Larkin was my 10^th overall centre. In standard Yahoo! leagues, he finished as the 17^th centre and was 12^th on ESPN. He wasn't awful, but he didn't live up to my expectations.

The problem was Detroit's 5-on-5 play. They finished 22^nd in the league by 5-on-5 goals per 60 minutes and Larkin was on the ice for 2.1 goals per 60 minutes, a five-year low and the lowest rate in any season where he's played 50 games since 2016-17. That led to 1.45 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, in range with Jordan Martinook, Michael Bunting, Ben Kindel, and Yakov Trenin (from Evolving Hockey):

It raises the problem that Larkin's points/60 rate at 5-on-5 has now declined in back-to-back seasons, and after posting a 67^th percentile rate from 2022-2024, he's produced at a 45^th percentile rate over the last two seasons. He turns 30 years old in July and has over 800 NHL games to his name. Is this the start of a true decline or a blip while skating on a team still trying to find the next level?

Sean Monahan – Columbus Blue Jackets

In that same article referencing Larkin, I brought up Monahan. He was my 29^th overall centre and his various ADPs had him somewhere between the 40^th and 50^th centre off the board. With 13 goals and 36 points, it's safe to say that he did not live up to the billing of a top-30 centre.

This one is kind of tilting because my expectation is Monahan would skate on the top line with Kirill Marchenko while Adam Fantilli skated on the second line. That is how the season started as Marchenko/Monahan was the top-line duo for the first month, and they were extremely good together, outscoring the opposition 11-1 in the team's first 13 games. However, the second line duo of Fantilli and Boone Jenner was getting annihilated with 5 goals for and 11 against (from Natural Stat Trick):

The team moved Fantilli to the top line, the third line of Cole Sillinger, Charlie Coyle, and Mathieu Olivier became the team's second line, and Coyle was eventually moved to the top PP unit for the second half of the season. Monahan went from top line/top PP in October, to third line/top PP in November and December, to third line/second PP for the second half.

There are months to figure out what Columbus' roster will look like in the fall and where Monahan stands, but Fantilli is now the clear top-line centre. If Monahan is a middle-6 centre without a top PP role, his days of fantasy relevance in most formats may be over.

Mason McTavish – Anaheim Ducks

In a September article that was searching for late-round values (outside the top-120 picks), McTavish's name was listed. The reasoning felt sound at the time because his four-year 60-minute goal rate compared to Tim Stutzle, his assist rate compared to J.J. Peterka, and his shot rate compared to Seth Jarvis. Add decent hit totals to that production, McTavish turning 23 years old with over 200 career games, and an Anaheim roster I believed was going to take a big leap, and I thought McTavish was in line for a career year. He responded with three-year lows in goals, assists, and shots per game.

Perhaps his contract situation played a factor here – he signed his extension 10 days before the season started – and maybe he needs time to get situated under a new coach, but no matter the cause, McTavish had a down year. Even worse is that with the Ducks roster growing around him, McTavish saw big declines in his share of power-play and even-strength time compared to the year prior (from Frozen Tools):

Things got even worse for McTavish in the second half as his even-strength usage from January 1^st onward was that of a fourth-line forward.

We run into the problem that Leo Carlsson is now the team's top centre of the future, and Mikael Granlund assumed top-6 centre duties with McTavish falling off. McTavish won't overtake Carlsson, and if the team can't trust him over Granlund, then McTavish is a bottom-6/second PP centre now. I still believe in his offensive talents, but his defensive impact has been awful for years and that will keep any coach from trusting him with big minutes.

Ville Koivunen – Pittsburgh Penguins

Before the season started, I wrote an article looking at deep draft targets. A few of them were successes (Jimmy Snuggerud, Philip Broberg, K'Andre Miller), but most were misses, and Koivunen was one of them. What is worse is that Koivunen had a real shot at making an impact as the Penguins finished second in the league in 5-on-5 goal scoring and he started the season in the NHL. However, he posted just 5 points in 27 games through early January and was demoted to the AHL for two months.

The silver lining I'll take away is that the Penguins easily controlled the play when Koivunen was on the ice with his most-common line mate, Ben Kindel (from HockeyViz):

On the left is Pittsburgh's expected goals-for rate at 5-on-5 with Koivunen and Kindel on the ice. Red areas are good and indicate above average xG rates from that spot. On the right is Pittsburgh's expected goals-against rate at 5-on-5 with that duo on the ice. Blue areas are good and indicate below-average rates by the opposition. That is dominant, they just couldn't finish on their chances, hence Koivunen's lack of production. It does give me hope for Koivunen's future, though.

What also gives me hope is that Koivunen had 41 points in 34 games in the AHL this season, and over his last two AHL campaigns, he's been a point-per-game player. The Finn doesn't turn 23 years old until June, and the Penguins are clearly going to have some turnover to younger players. There is still hope for next season and beyond, but this was a big miss for 2025-26.