The Colorado Avalanche have advanced to the Western Conference Final and they did it in very dramatic fashion. After falling behind 3-0 in Game 5, Parker Kelly scored halfway through the second period, and then Jack Drury and Nathan MacKinnon scored in the final four minutes to tie the game 3-3. Then, the Avalanche finished the story in overtime as Brett Kulak one-timed a feed from Martin Necas to lift the Avs to a 4-3 win, and a 4-1 series victory.

Kulak finished the game with a goal and an assist while Brent Burns had two assists, three shots, and a pair of hits. Overall, Colorado defencemen totaled 6 goals, 12 assists, and 37 shots in the five games, and five different Colorado blue liners had at least two points.  

Nick Foligno scored twice in the first period and Marcus Johansson scored 34 seconds into the game to give the Wild their 3-0 lead.

MacKenzie Blackwood was pulled after the first period and Scott Wedgewood faced just seven shots in his 40 minutes of game time, earning the win.

Colorado is now waiting for the winner of the Anaheim-Vegas series.

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It was announced on Wednesday that New York Islanders defenceman Matthew Schaefer won the Calder Trophy as the rookie of the year. It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise to anyone as he was unanimously voted because he had one of the greatest seasons for an 18-year-old defenceman the NHL has ever seen.

There was a cool moment when he found out about it as his family and Matt Martin's family came out to present him with the award on Good Morning America:

#Isles Matthew Schaefer on @GMA just now was emotional as he was awarded the Calder Memorial Trophy surrounded by his family, friends at the Martin family.

Just awesome stuff. pic.twitter.com/S8FGISijI4

— Rob Taub (@RTaub_) May 13, 2026

That's the good stuff.

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Brayden McNabb was suspended for one game for his interference hit on Ryan Poehling in Game 5. There is no timetable on Poehling, but he won't be back soon.

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The offseason reviews continued in these Ramblings this past Tuesday as we covered some of the 5-on-4 contributions from Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli, Nick Schmaltz, Mathew Barzal, and Elias Pettersson. In earlier Ramblings, we discussed:

1. Shot volume improvements from Cole Perfetti, Shane Pinto, Leo Carlsson, and more.
2. Shot volume declines from Matias Maccelli, Peyton Krebs, Brady Tkachuk, and more.
3. Shot volume improvements from Mattias Samuelsson, Darren Raddysh, Luke Hughes, and more.
4. Shot volume declines from Quinn Hughes, Noah Dobson, Nils Lundkvist, and more.

Today, we're going to stay with contributions at 5-on-4 but direct our attention to defencemen. We are going to use tracking data from All Three Zones for much of this write-up, but will have some player production data from Evolving Hockey.

When we covered the forwards, what we noticed was that players who started their team's offence at 5-on-4 (zone entries) and ended their team's offence at 5-on-4 (scoring chances) tended to produce higher points rates. Given that level of involvement in the play, that makes some sense.

For defencemen, we're considering passes. Defencemen just don't shoot nearly as much on the PP as the forwards do, so we're going to view this from a facilitator perspective rather than a dual-threat perspective, and highlight a player's percentage of his team's 5-on-4 passes. We are going to limit the sample to defencemen with at least 100 minutes played at 5-on-4.

Keep in mind that this is a guide, not a hard-and-firm rule – the talent a defenceman has in front of him matters a lot. For example, Darren Raddysh wasn't a key facilitator on the Tampa Bay power play, but the Tampa Bay power play also has Nikita Kucherov and Jake Guentzel.

Adam Fox (New York Rangers)

It is a wonder how many fantasy hockey managers or New York Rangers fans realize that Fox produced 7.9 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-4, the second-highest rate of his career, the highest in four seasons, and 35% higher than his two-year average. He had 24 power-play points in 55 games, an 82-game pace of 36 PP points.

The other surprising factor is just how heavily involved in the team's power play he was. Of the 33 defencemen in our sample, he was responsible for the highest percentage of his team's passes at 5-on-4, even surpassing names like Evan Bouchard and Zach Werenski:

Keep in mind that this is all of a team's tracked passes at 5-on-4, and Fox missed one-third of the season. If we exclude the few games that were tracked without Fox in the lineup, that percentage increases even more. Also, nearly all the tracked games came from the first two-thirds of the season, so nearly every game in the sample is with Artemi Panarin in the lineup. This isn't a case of where Fox got more touches after the Panarin trade – this all happened with the Breadman in the lineup.

It will be interesting to see Fox's ADP when September rolls around. He was nearly a point-per-game defenceman but missed 27 games, and the Rangers are a team caught between the past and the future. Regardless, if this is his new gear on the power play, it is tremendous news for his fantasy value.

Rasmus Dahlin (Buffalo Sabres)

Buffalo scored 8.4 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-4 with Dahlin on the ice, by far its highest mark over the last three seasons and 22% higher than the two-year average from 2023-2025. Josh Norris and Josh Doan seem to have helped the Sabres turn their PP around to be around league average, and that is one of the reasons why the team found the regular season success they did.

Here is the curious part: Dahlin posted 4.9 points per 60 minutes, which was a three-year high. The improvement is nice, but even though the Sabres' power play scored 22% more often with him on the ice, his points/60 rate improved by less than 8%. That is also despite having the fourth-highest percentage of his team's passes:

This seems like very good news for the future. For next season, Tage Thompson will be 29 years old, Josh Norris 27, Jack Quinn 25, Josh Doan 24, and Zach Benson 21. Dahlin will be 26 years old, so every key piece of this team's offence (except Alex Tuch) will be under 30 years old with most of them in their mid-20s primes. If Dahlin stays involved like this and guys like Benson, Doan, and Quinn take another step in their offensive development, Dahlin can push for 30 power-play points in a full season.

Mikhail Sergachev (Utah Mammoth)

With 26 power-play points, Sergachev improved on his total from the year before (23) and did so on a Utah team whose power play was around league average. He is now averaging 26 PPPs every 82 games through his first two seasons with Utah. Like Dahlin, a lot of Utah's top forwards are either in or approaching their respective primes – Nick Schmaltz is the 'old man' at 30 years old – and that is good news for Sergachev's PP reliability moving forward.

What is also good news is just how heavily involved in the team's power play he was. Despite having some high-talent forwards like Clayton Keller and Dylan Guenther, Sergachev had the fifth-highest percentage of his team's PP passes in our data:

This is the first name that surprised me, especially when we see Rasmus Dahlin just above him and Cale Makar just below him. Just above Dahlin is Zach Werenski. When discussing how often a defenceman was passing the puck on the power play, Sergachev keeping company with those names is truly next-level.

If Utah's young forwards take another step and their veterans keep up their high-end offensive play, Sergachev's 2026-27 season could be even better than the one he just had, and that means pushing for a career-high 65 points (or more).

Jakob Chychrun (Washington Capitals)

Highlighting Chychrun here serves a dual purpose: it shows what he did as a defenceman who is one of the higher-volume PP shooters in the league, and it also highlights a name right above him in Lane Hutson:

We probably can't get two more different defencemen. Out of 52 blue liners with at least 100 minutes at 5-on-4, Chychrun had the sixth-highest shot attempt rate while Hutson was dead last. Yet, they both had roughly the same percentage of their team's passes, and that helps underscore how teams run their power plays differently. Washington funneled their PP through shots from the point (Chychrun) or from the left circle (Alex Ovechkin). Montreal focused on seam passes and rarely shot the puck from beyond 40 feet.

We can't really discuss Chychrun and the Washington power play until Ovechkin makes a decision about whether he's going to play next season. If he doesn't, the Capitals' power play is going to look much, much different in terms of how it has been run. There are players who both shoot and pass a lot on the man advantage – Makar and Schaefer come to mind. If Ovechkin isn't around, might it help Chychrun's PP production by getting him more shots and other avenues for passes? We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but it's an intriguing notion.

Brandt Clarke (Los Angeles Kings)

Clarke was bounced on and off the team's top PP unit through the season as Drew Doughty got some run on the first unit, and the Kings also ran a 5-forward top PP setup about 20% of the time (per Frozen Tools). The defencemen in our sample averaged around 18% of their team's passes, and Clarke was not very far below that:

Even if we just include the games where he was the top PP quarterback, he still was around league average, which isn't great. However, it highlights how much room for growth there is here. The Kings do not have another defenceman capable of running a top PP unit, and unless they get one in the offseason, this is Clarke's role to grow into. With Anze Kopitar retiring, there is a real opportunity for Clarke to become a key piece of the Kings' power play, playing second fiddle to Panarin. Whether the Kings' PP is any good is another matter, but with a (hopefully) locked top PP role and more growth from him as a player, getting to 20 PPPs is very doable.