If you spent Sunday celebrating Father’s Day with your kids or your dad, you may have missed what turned into a surprisingly busy day around the NHL. With the season now over and the hockey world counting down the days until the NHL Draft, things have been "relatively" quiet, but that appears to be changing in a hurry as teams begin making significant moves.

The biggest shocker came out of Florida. If you thought the Panthers couldn’t possibly get any stronger, think again. They acquired Brady Tkachuk in a blockbuster deal on Sunday. Like most hockey fans, I’m still trying to process that one. For a full fantasy breakdown of the trade, be sure to check out Ian Gooding’s analysis.

The Panthers weren’t finished there. They also moved Mackie Samoskevich to Seattle as part of the cap juggling required to make the Tkachuk deal work. Ian also covered the fantasy fallout from that move here.

Meanwhile, Seattle continued its offseason makeover by signing Bobby McMann to a six-year contract worth $5.75 million annually. It’s a solid piece of business for the Kraken, who continue to build what might be the NHL’s deepest collection of middle-six forwards. Whether it makes Seattle significantly better remains up for debate, but McMann should have every opportunity to secure a top-six role. After arriving from Toronto before the trade deadline, he produced 14 points (10 goals, four assists) in 18 games with the Kraken and looked like a natural fit in their lineup.

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Amid all the offseason movement, I wanted to shift focus for fantasy managers and dive into goal scorers who may be knocking on the door of a 40-goal season for the first time and if they have a chance at hitting that mark.

Dylan Guenther

Dylan Guenther is looking to add one or two more goals to a profile that already resembles that of an established top-line scorer. His development has been consistent, progressing from six goals in 33 games as a rookie to 18 goals in 45 games, then 27 goals in 70 games, and finally 39 goals in 79 games. His goal-scoring growth has been accompanied by steady increases in shot volume. He recorded 242 shots last season, averaging 3.05 shots per game, both career highs. That shot rate translates to roughly 250 shots over a full 82-game season. While many of the league’s elite 40-goal scorers generate closer to 275-300 shots annually, Guenther has already reached the point where maintaining his current shot volume and shooting percentage would be enough to push him over the 40-goal mark.

Guenther individual xG have increased every season, indicating that he is generating more opportunities rather than relying solely on unsustainable shooting luck. His shot generation rate of 10.6 shots per 60 minutes was also a career high and supports the notion that his offensive game continues to evolve. With that however, his S% of 16.2% was the highest of his career and may be difficult to repeat. Players who consistently score 45-plus goals often generate 3.5 to 4.5 shots per game, giving them a larger margin for error if their shooting percentage declines. Despite all of that, the outlook remains extremely positive. He has already demonstrated last season that he is capable of producing at a near 40-goal pace. A realistic expectation for Guenther is somewhere in the 38-to-42 goal range, with a ceiling that could approach 45 goals if his shot volume continues to increase.

Martin Necas

Necas delivered the breakout fantasy managers had been waiting for, posting 38 goals and 100 points in 78 games in his first full season in Colorado. A big part of that success comes from his deployment with Nathan MacKinnon. At even strength, MacKinnon factored into 70 of Necas' 76 even-strength points, and their most common line with Artturi Lehkonen controlled play while outscoring opponents 46–20 and generating nearly 56% of shot attempts. As long as that connection holds, Necas will keep getting prime offensive looks in a very favourable environment.

The concern is how those chances turned into goals. Necas scored 38 times on 206 shots, an 18.5% shooting rate that sits well above his career mark of 13.1% and far beyond what he produced in Carolina, where he typically lived in the 10–14% range. While Colorado’s offensive system helps create higher-quality chances, maintaining an 18-plus S% for consecutive seasons is difficult for nearly every player not named Auston Matthews or Leon Draisaitl.  If that rate drops closer to 15% while his shot volume stays flat, he's more of a low-30s goal scorer. Necas finished with 27.2 expected goals compared to 38 actual, an 11-goal gap that points to significant finishing outperformance. That kind of separation is hard to repeat. At the same time, his shot generation actually declined, dropping from 10.4 shots per 60 at 5v5 in 2023-24 to just 7.3 this past season, meaning the production spike came from efficiency and finishing rather than volume growth.

Interestingly, he may be more bankable for 100 points than 40 goals. His 62 assists fit naturally in Colorado's high-end offensive structure, where he benefits from elite teammates and heavy ozone usage. To get to 40 goals, he either needs to stay at an unsustainably high shooting percentage or significantly push his shot volume. Neither is impossible in Colorado's ecosystem driven by MacKinnon and Makar and that gives him a runway most players simply don't get. Necas actually has room to grow but it also comes with a clear reality check on what would need to go right for it to happen.

Pavel Dorofeyev

Dorofeyev's push toward 40 goals is less about projection and more about role stability and finishing efficiency holding steady. After scoring 35 and 37 in the last two seasons respectively, he's already established himself as one of the league's more efficient pure finishers. The final step to 40 is a small one on paper, but it's entirely dependent on whether his usage in Vegas stays exactly where it is. Over the last two seasons he's produced 72 goals while hovering around three shots per game and posting shooting percentages of 13.8 and 16.1 percent. His shot volume hasn't really moved, but his role has steadily grown, especially on the man-advantage and in strong offensive-zone deployment, which sat at 63% this past season. At even strength, Mitch Marner factored into 22 of his points, and the Marner-Hertl-Dorofeyev line controlled over 60% of both shot attempts and scoring chances, which is elite territory.

The power play is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Dorofeyev scored 20 power-play goals, tied for among the league leaders and over half his total production. He spent time on a top unit with Jack Eichel, Mitch Marner, Mark Stone, and Tomas Hertl, a group that generated 32 power-play goals while controlling roughly 90% of shots and over 92% of attempts. That kind of environment doesn't just help; it also inflates ceiling outcomes.

The underlying numbers actually support a decent chunk of what he's doing. His 5v5 shooting percentage was 9.4%, which is a reasonable range for a scorer, and his expected goals (46.4) nearly matched his actual goals (48G) at even strength. Unlike a player like Necas who ran well above expected, Dorofeyev's production looks far more grounded in repeatable results.  The limitation again is shot volume. Even with 37 goals, he only reached 230 shots, or 2.8 per game. There's also the power-play dependency. Posting 20 goals with the man-advantage is a massive number and one that rarely repeats cleanly and even a small dip of four or five power-play goals would require meaningful even-strength growth to offset it.

Brandon Hagel

Brandon Hagel is one of the tougher first-time 40-goal cases to pin down because his production doesn't really fit the usual mould. He's not a pure finisher like Guenther still trying to grow into a bigger role, and he's not a power-play dependent scorer like Dorofeyev. Instead, Hagel has developed into a well-rounded top winger in Tampa Bay, with his value built on heavy deployment, strong even-strength production, shot volume, and usage in every situation. After his 90-point breakout, some regression was expected, but the goal production barely moved. He went from 35 to 36 goals despite playing 11 fewer games, and his per-game scoring rate actually improved. His shot rate also climbed to a career-best 3.0 per game, which puts him in striking range of a 40-goal pace over a full season. At 9.2 shots per 60 at 5v5 and an 11.7% S%, nothing in his profile screams fluke. In Hagel's case the issue is the power play. He only scored five power-play goals last season and has just seven over the past three years combined, despite being on one of the league's best units. He still sits behind Kucherov, Brayden Point, and Jake Guentzel in the hierarchy, and his PP usage actually dipped from 2:40 to 2:11 last season. Unless that changes, he's forced into a much harder path to 40 goals.

What makes him stand out in this group is how stable everything looks. He's not riding an inflated shooting percentage, he's not leaning heavily on power-play production, and he's not banking on projection. His offence is built on repeatable traits: shot generation, elite linemates, and consistent 5v5 impact. That also gives him one of the safer floors on this list.

Even with all of that, the tradeoff is that his role might already be close to maxed out. Tampa values his two-way game and penalty-killing usage, which naturally limits pure offensive deployment at times. With just 45% power-play usage, his path to 40 goals is narrower than most true elite scorers, even if everything else around him looks strong.

Thanks for reading! See you next week! For more fantasy hockey content and analysis, follow me on X @Punters_hockey. If you have any questions about your team or a trade? My DMs are always open, happy to help!