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On Elliotte Friedman’s latest ’32 Thoughts’ podcast, he said that Florida forward Matthew Tkachuk, who had a torn adductor and sports hernia in the 2025 playoffs, will miss the start of the regular season and may miss a good chunk of games. Exactly how long that is remains to be seen, but when I run my projections, I’m going to assume he misses one-third of the season until we know more.

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The Los Angeles Kings extended winger Alex Laferriere for three years with an average annual value of $4.1-million. Ian wrote about this signing, and that of Nick Robertson, over the weekend. I want to give my take.

Every year, there are a few players whose play turn around my opinion of them, and one of those guys is Laferriere. It wasn’t that I was particularly low on him as a rookie in 2023-24, it’s just I thought he was being given too big of a role too fast. The numbers bear that out as Evolving Hockey had him with the worst even-strength impacts among Los Angeles’ regular forwards on both expected goals and actual goals:

And it wasn’t just the impacts, either. There wasn’t a lot under the hood, per 5-on-5 tracking data from AllThreeZones, to point to in his favour: he carried the puck in at a below-average rate and the team created scoring chances on his entries at a below-average rate. Looking at other key areas like rate of assists on teammate scoring chances (SCA/60), overall scoring chance contributions (SCC/60), offence created off the rush, and offence created off the cycle, he had third- and fourth-line rates in each area:

Again, it wasn’t that I had a strong opinion of Laferriere as a player, I just thought he wasn’t ready for a full-time middle-6 role on a playoff NHL team, and there is a lot of evidence to back that up. That certainly wasn’t the case in 2024-25.

It wasn’t just that Laferriere improved, which is expected for a young player, it’s that he was arguably the most improved player in the league. Looking again at the even-strength impacts on actual goals (GF) and expected goals (xGF), Laferriere had the single largest improvement in the former among all forwards with at least 600 minutes in each of the last two seasons while showing a top-20 improvement of the latter. Oddly enough, it mirrored the improvements from a former teammate:

In one season, Laferriere went from ‘Are we sure this guy should be in the NHL right now?’ to ‘This guy is a bona fide top-6 winger.’ It was drastic.

All that was backed up by significant improvements in the tracking data, too. His rate of scoring chance assists increased by 45%, his chance contributions rose 82%, the offence off the rush went up 81%, and the offence off the cycle jumped 62%:

Naturally, all this led to a bigger role as Frozen Tools has him going from the eighth Kings forward by share of even-strength ice time in 2023-24 to fifth in 2024-25. While a bigger role at even strength and more power play time helped improve his fantasy numbers, all his 60-mintue rates (goals, assists, shots, blocks, hits) increased, too. Adding over three minutes per game helps a lot but so does improved efficiency in whatever minutes are given.

In banger leagues, Laferriere will be just fine. In leagues that don’t count hits, a lot of his fantasy value will hinge on his power-play role. He isn’t surpassing Kevin Fiala or Adrian Kempe for even-strength ice time, so he’s stuck with second-line EV minutes. He had just four power-play points in 77 games last year, so if he wants to be a reliable 50-point option, there needs to be more from the man advantage. It is a question mark, but if he shows another improvement of even half what he managed last year, he’s going to force the hand of the coaching staff.

The Dobber Fantasy Guide‘s current projection for Laferriere is 21 goals and 46 points in 79 games.

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With the signings over the last 10 days, all arbitration cases have been settled, so that part of the NHL offseason has wrapped. As mentioned earlier, Ian wrote about the Nick Robertson extension, and I want to add a bit to it.

There are a few things simultaneously true about Robertson right now:

He has been an excellent goal-scorer in his limited minutes as he’s scored 1.1 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 over the last three years. Of the 386 forwards with at least 1400 minutes in that span, that is 27th, and higher than names like Roope Hintz, Jack Hughes, Nikolaj Ehlers, and Kirill Kaprizov.

He hasn’t shown much of a playmaking dimension with 0.78 assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 over the last three years, which is a low-end third-line rate.

His defensive impacts are about league average, per both Evolving Hockey and HockeyViz.

He has helped elevate the offence of Toronto’s bottom-6 forwards but hasn’t found much success when moving up the lineup.

That last point is important. It is fair to say that Robertson hasn’t had much time in Toronto’s top-6, but he also hasn’t done much with the time he has been given. For example, per Natural Stat Trick, here is John Tavares‘ actual goal share and expected goal share over the last three years when on the ice with Robertson, and when on the ice without him:

The numbers are even worse when looking at just the last two years, or even just last year, when Robertson had a full-time(ish) role, so it’s not a matter of what timeframe we’re using. He has had very little time with Auston Matthews, but in his time with Tavares, that line has gotten much worse with Robertson on it.

The emergence of Bobby McMann also hurts a lot here, because all of the things Robertson does well, McMann does about as well, and he’s five inches taller. Even with Mitch Marner gone, Robertson is no higher than the fourth winger on the depth chart and is likely back on the third line.

At even strength, if Robertson is in the 4-6 range among Toronto’s wingers, and on the second PP unit, he’s going to be stuck in that 12- to 14-minute range. He turns 24 years old in September, has over 150 games under his belt, and has the chance to earn a second-line role. Now is the time for Robertson to assert himself, but even at 14 minutes a game, fantasy value will be modest. A very successful season would be 20 goals and 20 assists with 80 hits, and that’s just not a lot.

The Dobber Fantasy Guide‘s projection for Robertson is 16 goals and 35 points in 70 games.

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In July, I started a series about how to go about fantasy hockey projections. Last Tuesday, we looked at goaltenders and team effects. The week before, an important topic we covered was the difference between projecting ice time for players who stay put and players who change teams. I want to return to that and briefly discuss players who move to a new roster.

If players who change teams need to be approached differently, the question is which stats to consider? I went and looked at forwards who changed teams in any of the 2022, 2023, or 2024 offseasons, which of those forwards saw an increase in even-strength ice time per game on the new roster, and how they performed the year before. So, which stats with their old team helped explain the increased ice time with their new team? It is points per 60 minutes at even strength:

The six stats are impacts on goal differential (GFDiff60), expected goal differential (xGFDiff60), and shot attempt differential per 60 minutes (CFDiff60) as well as goals, assists, and points per 60 minutes at even strength. Points/60 has a p-value of 0.014, and that means it’s the only one of those six stats that we can have confidence in believing has an impact on ice time. But do you see the -0.2185 number under the coefficient column? That means the higher the points per 60 minutes, the lower the improvement in even-strength ice time per game. That bears out when looking at the graph, which shows a negative relationship between points per 60 minutes and increase in even-strength ice time per game:

That is a lot of math to say this:

When a forward changes teams in the offseason and sees more even-strength ice time per game with their new team, their points/60 minutes at even strength from the year before gives us the best relationship of the six stats we used.

However, the higher the points/60 rate, the lower the increase in ice time. Forwards with very high points/60 rates typically see less of a jump in ice time than the middle-6 producers.

While it might seem counter-intuitive that an elite producer sees less ice-time growth with a new team, it does make sense. Let’s say Connor McDavid does leave Edmonton next summer. He leads the league in points per 60 minutes at even strength over the last two years, but he’s so good that he’s also second in the league in even strength ice time per game among forwards. If McDavid changes teams, how much ice time can he really add? But options from lower in the lineup (think Dylan Holloway leaving Edmonton or Morgan Geekie leaving Seattle) have much more room for improvement.

At least when it comes to forwards changing teams, there is one thing that can help guide us when projecting ice time. That isn’t the case for defencemen, but we’ll cover that another day.