A Tale of Two Seasons

I updated the Best Puck Manifesto recently, you can find that 2025 update here:

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, to no one’s surprise, is one of my favorite movies. As a kid who loved reading the newspaper every day, Garfield was the a perfect blend of two of my favorite things: the comics section and cats. I even had a fat orange cat as a kid!

In this movie, Garfield escapes his hotel in London at the same time some doofus tries to evict a Garfield look-alike from his castle, which has been bequeathed to him in his late owner’s will.

You’ll never believe this, but Jon (Garfield’s owner) finds the British cat and Garfield makes his way to the castle. And thus, normal-old Garfield becomes royalty overnight, some other stuff happens, and hijinks ensue. It all ends perfectly, the two cats each returning to their actual homes, blah blah blah, and everyone has fun.

These were the same cats, but the way people looked at them changed their outlook significantly. Say, might you be able to see where this is going?

Anyone who is trying to project the future, be it by generating a rigorous set of projections or simply thinking through whether player A is better than player B, has to base it on what has happened. But the way we use those inputs is also a choice. For young players, what balance do we give NHL output vs. what they did at a lower level? For a veteran playing his first season with a new team, does a production dip portend bad things to come, or did the player just need time to adjust?

Those are questions that we should consider, but the point of today is another possibility: things happen within a season that narratively “change the game”, be it a trade, a coaching change/decision, or even a couple weeks off. What if we just used those endpoints, rather than the entirety of the season? Should we buy what we saw in a shorter timespan, or do we need to trust the additional datapoints available to us?

I’ve dug into a handful of before-and-after situations around the NHL, comparing a player’s (or set of players’) 2024-25 production in the aggregate with how the season would look if we only considered stats from this “after” stretch. I have a workbook with every NHL team’s lineup that I regularly showcase, so this exercise will be based on that. If you want an in-depth discussion about every team in the league from ~a month ago (post-free agency), check out the three previews DJ and I did for the first 45 minutes of these three streams. You can see the full workbook for each team within those streams.

Let’s start with an easy one, one that came up just the other day in the MSP Discord (DM me @FakeMoods on X if you’d like an invite, it’s free! I just don’t post it publicly because bots) that jumpstarted me acting upon this idea.

Andrei Kuzmenko: The Kings acquired Kuzmenko at the trade deadline. It didn’t take long for them to immediately feature him on the PP1, and he closed the regular season with 17 points in 15 games, and chipped in another 6 points during the Kings 6-game series with the Oilers. This wrinkle coincided with Jim Hiller moving to a 5F PP1, leaving Doughty off to make room for Quinton Byfield.

Using the full year as our barometer, Kuzmenko and Byfield look like aggressively poor fantasy producers, offering rather little in the areas of shot generation (especially Kuzmenko, who is below average (1.00 is the average for a player of that position, 0.85 means that we can say Kuzmenko is 15% “worse” than a similar player in the league) while Byfield hovers around league average) and UDPt generation on a per-minute basis. Unsurprisingly, Kuzmenko only averages 4.3 UDPts/Game for the season, while Byfield has a slightly more respectable, but not good, 6.1 per game.

Around this same time, Alex Laferriere became a staple on the Byfield-Fiala line, so I updated his stats too. Let’s see how this table looks with the final fifteen regular season games, plus the six playoff games (all stats combined as if they played a 21-game season):

While in theory I could update Kopitar, Kempe, and Fiala and tell you how great they are as a result of this stretch, I don’t think they are necessarily dependent on the layout I presented above to be fantasy-viable. As such, I updated Kuzmenko, Laferriere, and Byfield to show what they looked like with the newfound role changes (and for Kuzmenko, a new team entirely). All three turn into quite viable options.

• What I find interesting about Byfield in particular is that it’s not due to shot generation (it dropped slightly). Rather, he was productive offensively, and got a boost in TOI as well.

• Kuzmenko likely flew a bit too close to the sun, as his 0.99 iCF index doesn’t bode well for his multi-category efficacy in the future, but the primary point rate explodes off the page, showing what a key cog he was in the Kings’ offensive engine, particularly on the PP1.

• Alex Laferriere took advantage of the 5v5 role increase (although he got some PP1 time early in the season, he was unproductive there and is now completely blocked out with Kuzmenko - the only other righty in the top nine - as a provably better option) and mixed it with his “doer of stuff” stat-stuffing profile to produce at a startlingly strong clip. As a player who shoots and hits at an elite rate and can contribute on the scoresheet, if Laferriere stays with Byfield and Fiala for the full season he could be a fantasy skeleton key.

At this point in time, I think Kuzmenko is a bit thin to include, and I’m not entirely sold on Quinton Byfield. Since Fiala and Kempe (and Laferriere) are all W, however, I am definitely interesting in stacking Byfield on my existing Kings rosters. Laferriere is a late round option… I also told you this last year, but no one believed me, he was drafted 56 total times out of 1077 drafts and was a net-neutral EV impact (which is a sketchier way to analyze smaller-sample players!). If he levels up even slightly, which I think this analysis shows he could, he might be a Tom Wilson-esque pick next year, and he has the college stats from Harvard to support his elite rates.

Hopefully the format is clear, but maybe you might have a qualm with cherry-picking 15 games, seeing as Kuzmenko played seven (!!) point-less games as a member of the Kings before the final 15 of the regular season. See? Even as your faithful analyst, I can still put my thumb on the scales if I want.

Dylan Cozens: The Sens and Sabres made a quasi-one-for-one deal at the trade deadline, and while Josh Norris missed most of the remainder of the season, Cozens played 21 games with Ottawa, totaling 16 points.

Based on this, Brady Tkachuk is a fantasy first-rounder, while everyone else is role-dependent, though it’s worth noting that Stutzle, Cozens, and Batherson all have elite minor stats (which are 5-6 years old now!).

Tim Stutzle is another discussion entirely, but let’s take a look at how Cozens fared statistically in this final stretch (I didn’t include the playoffs here, I think because I forgot last night that they even made an appearance? What a forgettable series that was in the glow of the Western Conference…). I also updated Drake Batherson, his full-time linemate and PP1 partner:

That’s more like it! Drake Batherson especially seems to have benefited greatly from the hard-nosed play of Dylan Cozens, who is a stylistic fit moreso than Josh Norris. Not only did the production elevate, but it appears to have boosted his shot rate slightly. We’re likely looking at some regression (those point rates are a tad high) for Cozens and Batherson in 25-26, but you can lose some off of 7.6 and 9.1 UDPts/G, respectively, and still be worth a pick in the mid-late rounds.

I thought about making this player the main event.

Matvei Michkov: It was noted throughout Michkov’s rookie season that this was his first time playing an NHL-style schedule (he played a season split between the KHL and MHL (~65 games) then 48 games (injury) in his two KHL seasons), and that there were stretches Tortorella would come out and tell us he seemed exhausted by the 82-game schedule. That’s what made the Four Nations Faceoff so well-timed for the Russian rookie.

I mean, holy crap. I was just thinking to myself how we may have put the cart in front of the horse with Michkov, steaming him up to pick 54 with the same relative dearth of talent surrounding him in Philadelphia. But the way he finished the season, elevating his already-elite shot rate to unheard of levels (45% above average is a tick higher than Cole Caufield!) and producing across the board, makes me think that actually, I need to be pursuing him even more than I already am. 9 UDPts/G is great, and that “1.24 UDPt Index” from last year trails only these Wingers ahead of him at W25: Kucherov, Pasta, BTkachuk, Forsberg, MTkachuk, Ovechkin, Guenther. Even W10 puts him in the pick 20 neighborhood, rather than 54!

The other Ws have firmer roles, better teams, and don’t get their best 25-game stretch to compare to Michkov’s in this exercise, but it goes to show that as he develops, Michkov should be the next fantasy superstar. If Tocchet can put the right pieces together, and perhaps even revitalize the uber-talented Trevor Zegras, the sky is truly the limit for Michkov. It takes a leap to make Michkov a value at ADP, but it’s not a giant one, and he might have already taken it!

Cutter Gauthier: Speaking of budding fantasy superstars, have you heard of Cutter Gauthier? While he isn’t the same franchise-altering talent that Michkov is, Cutter has a skillset that could break the fantasy game. While it was inherently sad, the fact that Cutter Gauthier went 100 shot attempts before scoring his first goal (this link includes perhaps my best intro to a silly newsletter, as a bonus), fighting through limited ice time and sparse PP usage, is one of the funniest things that has ever happened in my time around the NHL. This dude is simply different from virtually anyone who has come before him, from the perspective of a fantasy bro where shots (and hits on UD!) matter a whole heck of a lot. The goals eventually came, but he only needed 11 in 28 games for his output to look like this:

Cutter, in the latter stages of the season, finally worked his way out of Cronin’s doghouse and into a steadier role, primarily alongside Leo Carlsson (quick aside: Post-Four Nations makes Leo look fine, as opposed to completely unusable, but given his pass-first playstyle I am not seriously considering him for this season outside of extremely rare stacking-related situations). And he absolutely smashed his minutes. 7.8 UDPts/Game isn’t great, but it’s quite possible that under a new coaching staff (anyone was an upgrade over Cronin, and Quenneville is likely a top-ten coach in the NHL) he has more room to grow his TOI beyond the 13:50 he averaged in the better stretch of his season. The rates, already elite, become completely ridiculous in this final stretch, as well.

There’s no reason to believe that Cutter won’t be a focal point of Coach Q’s offense, but if you want to wait for training camp to confirm that, I guess I can’t blame you. I’ll happy take him in the ADP 120s.

J.T. Miller: The Rangers and Canucks each had strange seasons last year, falling well short of potential. J.T. Miller was a part of both teams, thanks to a mid-season trade.

This might be the least interesting table here, but note that Lafreniere drafters are probably taking the wrong PP2 guy. Let’s get to the good stuff:

Miller surely got better as a member of the Rangers, while Panarin’s production hardly moved despite Miller’s PP1 infusion. The really noteworthy pick-up though is that of Mika Zibanejad. Battling through a rough season, Zibanejad got thrown a lifeline by effectively moving from a 2C facing matchup minutes to a L2 PP1 winger. His production turned right around, as a result, where he averaged 8.0 UDPts per game in 32 games, thanks to 33 points in those games.

The shot generation never left (he’ll consistently be ~30% above average, even using 21-24 stats rather than 24-25 stats), but his game had fallen off to the point where he couldn’t drive play and support himself offensively, hurting his fantasy output. Getting JT Miller to do much more of that work allowed him to serve as more of a finisher, and I am currently buying all the Mika I can, as the field would never allow a PP1 with Panarin, Fox, and JT Miller to let their finisher fall to pick 136 unless they thought Zib was totally washed. Will Cuylle became entrenched on this line over the final 30 or so games as well, but his production barely moved. He’s a fine late-round option because I’m reasonably confident he’ll be top six with a PP2 role and great rates, but I’m not excited to stack him or anything of the sort.

Marco Kasper: On January 7th, recently-installed head coach Todd McLellan used Marco Kasper alongside Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond for the first time. Up to that point, Kasper had toiled away in the Detroit bottom-six, serving as an overqualified 3C or 4C as he got his feet wet in the NHL. It took less than two weeks for McLellan to see what Derek Lalonde could not.

While McLellan gets some credit here, I want to personally thank Marco Kasper for saving this version of the Detroit Red Wings. Without him, I truly believe the team would have flat-lined, perhaps even leading to the end of Yzerman’s tenure.

From Jan 7 on, Kasper essentially split time between L1 and L2, serving as Larkin’s winger and as Kane/DeBrincat’s center interchangeably. While he posted a 1.6 5v5 pts/60 on the year, he was at 2.2 alongside Raymond, 2.0 alongside Larkin, and 2.0 with DeBrincat. This exercise has certainly changed how I’m thinking about Kasper as a draftable option. Before I did this, I took him once and thought “well maybe he’ll improve”, now I am thinking “maybe he can just keep this up”, which makes him a much more attractive target. It’s impossible for me to foresee him being bumped out of the top six, but the only final hurdle left for him his usurping Patrick Kane on the PP1. It’s not likely, especially since the other main benefactor was Patrick Kane himself (the others all improved slightly), jumping from 6.7 UDPts/Game on the season to 8.0, though that seems more percentages driven than by his underlying rates.

I am not especially high on Detroit myself, but if you are, I would argue that the team you think you’re drafting only exists in its current from because of the emergence of Marco Kasper. I think that means something, and likely is enough to push him into draft consideration even without a clear path to a PP1 job.

Will Smith: The Four Nations break did virtually nothing for Macklin Celebrini, who served as the heartbeat of the Sharks for all of last season.

Macklin’s output improved slightly, but that was largely a factor of more minutes, and I don’t think you can find more minutes for him this year. His regular linemates in Eklund and Toffoli also saw very little change in their profile, but Toffoli did improve marginally down the stretch.

Will Smith, on the other hand, exploded onto the scene during this stretch. I think there are several things happening here:

• Smith began the season on a “NCAA adjustment program”, regularly seeing cut minutes and sitting out of games entirely. As planned, this evaporated as the calendar turned to the new year.

• Mikael Granlund soaked up so many minutes and the PP1 role, his exit opened the door for Smith specifically.

• The Four Nations also was a break for Smith, who much like Michkov (NCAA’s schedule is even more of an adjustment than the KHL, vs. the CHL that runs a NHL-like schedule, especially for the superstars who go play at the World Juniors and such) may have just needed a break.

The UDPt rate is definitely a concern, as it’s really hard to be below average by 10% when your shot rate is certifiably excellent and you’re producing offense to such a degree, but the minutes were there. As the 4th Overall pick in 2023, I think Smith has even more to bring to the table. That may not mean a partnership with Macklin Celebrini, which is where true fantasy upside lives, but my guess is that within the next few years we’ll see Michael Misa or Macklin Celebrini help Will Smith make his opponent’s lives miserable.

I am not drafting any William Eklund, as there’s less of a ceiling to him than Smith based on their pedigree and I don’t see much differentiation in their role outlook in 25-26. Smith could grow into a better per-minute player than he was last year, while I don’t think Eklund has much beyond “league average compiler who plays a bunch of minutes”, which for a projected-bottom five team has me quite worried. Does that mean I am drafting Will Smith this year? Not necessarily, but he’s on my radar. The exact sort of player who I’ll overreact to a 1G 1A 5SOG 2BS performance in the preseason.

Connor Bedard: If you’re looking for good news, keep looking. While the Four Nations break served as a catalyst for a number of young players’ breakouts, Bedard had no such result:

It is quite possible that Connor Bedard finds his game, he’d be far from the first highly touted rookie (as undoubtedly the best prospect since McDavid, and arguably including McDavid if you take a fantasy lens to things) to take a few years to figure it out, especially in as rough a situation as Chicago is. But pre-and-post Four Nations did not do the trick, as he actually got worse down the stretch. Coaching was no help, as he found himself yo-yoed around the lineup. Enter Jeff Blashill, who at least check was still trying to stuff Nikita Kucherov and Brandon Hagel into his suitcase to help Bedard on the wings (Andre Burakovsky? Yikes!).

One notable thing, to me, is that Bedard’s growth may or may not occur. But even if it doesn’t, Ryan Donato just has to do what he did last year to be somewhat relevant, and after signing a $4M x 4 extension, he sure seems primed to do that again. If Bedard takes that next step, however, Donato should be PP1, and is likely going to be L1 alongside him. This might make him the sort of fantasy breakout that 2020 Moods was so excited about, as a rates monster at lower levels and in lesser minutes. A Zach Hyman-esque emergence is not out of the question, and this is a player who isn’t drafted every time! Donato should be a clear target, even if buying the hype around Bedard for a third year is not your cup of tea.

Matt Coronato: One other young player I wanted to spotlight was Coronato, who is not always drafted but has been selected enough for more to take note. I love the prospect profile, his AHL and college numbers are great, and the team just gave him a $7M x 7 extension before he’s done much of anything at the NHL level. There’s not much in the pre-post data to talk about, other than the slight boost in UDPts/G showing a growing role for him.

Coronato is a guy who I’d love to be early to, but if he’s going to play the year in a 3rd line role with Backlund/Coleman, I don’t think he has the upside, even with PP1, we need, given their defensive orientation. A top line role alongside Nazem Kadri would be what I need to truly buy Coronato’s breakout season, while some certainty on the PP1 would also help. I’m not out, but I’m waiting for Training Camp to open to be in.

Jake Walman: Walman was traded from San Jose, where he had free rein to do virtually anything he wanted and play all of the minutes, to Edmonton, where there was a clear PP1 anchor in his way, and a lesser role to boot. Some of this is clouded by Mattias Ekholm’s injury, which elevated Walman’s role beyond what we expect to see in 25-26, but we can still learn from his time in Edmonton (playoffs included):

As D32, Walman is drafted in some/most drafts despite the lack of a clear path to PP1 and arguably even to PP2 (especially if Isaac Howard/Matt Savoie make the team and need PP2 spots, turning it into a 4F 1D look), it’s at least notable that Walman’s per-minute effectiveness ramped UP in his time in Edmonton, in large part thanks to an incredible amount of blocked shots (nearly 3 per game!) and just enough 5v5 offensive production. He’s a comfortable floor option, but I want to be careful to not conflate upside in rates with upside in role, as the latter drives results more at the high end while the former I see as more of a base threshold to clear. I don’t think he can get much better rates-wise, while his role is definitely capped. 7.5 UDPt/G is not bad, but it’s also not the 7.9 he averaged in San Jose, and I think it could fall a good bit from there. I am out, personally, barring further injury in Edmonton.

Mikko Rantanen: We end with perhaps the biggest change from the 2024 draft season to the 2025 season, with Mikko Rantanen as a member of the Dallas Stars:

If Tyler Seguin could magically grow a new hip, he’d be a clear buy, but I don’t think that’s happening so we’ll move on. Mikko Rantanen is comfortable playing a boatload of minutes, which helps elevate his UDPt production beyond his middling rates, but I would also be remiss not to mention his prior 3-year rate was 22% better than average, so last year may just be a blip (or it was driven by Makar/MacKinnon, but I’ve discussed why I disagree with that more times than I’m willing to admit).

Let’s look at Dallas post-Rantanen trade, including the playoffs:

Seguin only has one regular season game so I neglected to update him (see above as to why I’m not drafting him despite these awesome stats), but the remainder of the team is quite revelatory. Maybe the team desperately missed Miro Heiskanen (who only returned for the final stretch of the playoffs), but every Dallas forward took a significant hit to their production with Rantanen in the fold… even Rantanen had a noticeably lower shot rate and P1/60 rate.

For context, the Stars had completely flat-lined heading into the playoffs, playing some pisspoor hockey (here’s a reminder of what that looked like, in case you forgot) down the stretch and relying on a completely out-of-his-mind Rantanen to defeat the Avs in Game 7 of the first round.

To further the context-setting, the Stars replaced Pete DeBoer this offseason, hiring Glen Gulutzan, most recently seen running the Edmonton Oilers PP and having a major voice among the forwards there. DeBoer notoriously capped the minutes of his top players in both VGK and DAL, and if Gulutzan follows a similar mindset, he surely didn’t advocate for it to either Jay Woodcroft or Kris Knoblauch as a top assistant in Edmonton.

There are many unknowns, but Dallas might be chief among them in 2025-26. I can see a world where Rantanen pays off his late-first ADP easily, challenging the Kucherovs and Pastrnaks of the world with his incredble ability mixed with Dallas’s star power up and down the lineup. There are only a handful of players who have scored 55 goals in an NHL season, and Rantanen is both in his prime and on an elite team.

There’s also a world where Rantanen is Just A Guy in the Dallas lineup, which is not to say he’s a bad fantasy asset, but that someone like JRob is outperforming him, or Wyatt Johnston takes the final leap and becomes the focal point of the offense, leaving Rantanen’s perfectly serviceable output getting clobbered by the fantasy mutants at the top of drafts this year.

Which one is right? Is Garfield just a cat in a crown, or is he true royalty? No matter how you look at it, the answer isn’t perfectly clear. That’s the beauty of this exercise, and one of the main reasons I love fantasy sports.

But boy, do I ever hate Mondays.

As always, thanks for reading!

Follow me on X @FakeMoods, and to subscribe to this newsletter. I’ll be writing more strategy pieces throughout the offseason, and I write ~once a week during the NHL DFS season as well. You should also subscribe to DJ Mitchell’s YouTube channel, where we draft at least once a week (there are also some in the library if you want some background noise!) and stream live. I’ll be doing some stuff on my own personal YT channel very soon (but I’m not promising a ton on there!), so make sure you just follow/subscribe everywhere. And join the Discord (DM me if you want in the MSP Discord), if you somehow haven’t already.