Two men in this division changed teams and ended up in opposite places. Egor Chinakhov went from Columbus to Pittsburgh in December, in the middle of the season, and quadrupled his scoring. Valeri Nichushkin went from Colorado to Columbus in June, after it was over, having just posted the worst finishing year of his career. The other six all got hurt. Kyle Palmieri tore an ACL in November and never played again, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Tyson Foerster each lost 53 games, Jaccob Slavin 43, Adam Fox 27, Jack Hughes 21. That is 254 games gone, and most of it is the kind of absence a projection can give back.
Hughes was playing the best hockey of his life in the 61 games he got. Palmieri and Nichushkin kept shooting and stopped scoring, which is the most recoverable problem in the sport. Dubois spent the year hurt in ways a box score does not show, and finished it with 10 points in seven games. Chinakhov did not get luckier. He got a bigger job. Only Foerster's case asks for something no forward sustains.
New Jersey Devils: Jack Hughes
Hughes has never played 80 games in a season, and last year was the fourth time in five he failed to reach 65. What makes it maddening is that nothing was wrong with the player. His ice time was a career high at 21:19, his shooting held at 11.8 percent for a second straight year, and he scored at 1.26 points a game, a 106-point pace. The injuries were not even hockey injuries. He cut his thumb on a glass at a team dinner and had surgery on November 15, costing him 18 games, then a lower-body problem took three more in late January. We projected 114 at first, which asked 1.36 a night, a rate he has never sustained across a full season. We have since capped him at his own career best of 1.27, which lands at 107 across a full year. It is still 84 games he has never come close to playing, so the 98 at the floor of his band is the number we would actually plan around, and it still makes him the best player in this division.
New York Rangers: Adam Fox
Fox lost his season to two hits and never got going. A heavy check in a 4-1 loss to Tampa on November 29 put him on long-term injured reserve for 14 games. He came back, played three, and a lower-body injury against Utah on January 5 sent him back. Twenty-seven games gone, and 53 points in the 55 he played, nearly a point a night from a defenseman. His ice time never wavered at 23:38. His shot volume has fallen four years running: 2.03 a game, then 1.94, 1.90, 1.82 and now 1.65. He has become a distributor, which is why 63 of the 76 points we project are assists. The 71 to 81 band asks 0.90 a night from a man who just produced 0.96.
Columbus Blue Jackets: Valeri Nichushkin
Nichushkin lost his touch, not his health. He played 72 games, his most in five years, and scored 17 goals on 160 shots, a 10.6 percent clip against the 17.7 and 17.8 he posted the two seasons before. Our model has him four and a half goals short of what his chances were worth, and every minute of that season was played for Colorado. His ice time had been falling there for two years, 21:21 to 19:44 to 17:44, and it fell again to 15:37 across 12 playoff games in the spring. Only after all of that, on June 25, did Colorado trade him to Columbus for a second, a third and a fifth. So the 62 we project, 27 goals on 203 shots, needs two things at once: the shooting to come back toward his career rate, and Columbus to hand him the minutes Colorado had stopped giving him. The shooting should return on its own, but the minutes are up to a club that just spent three picks to get him.
Washington Capitals: Pierre-Luc Dubois
Dubois is the best value on this list, and the season that makes him look risky is the reason why. His knee buckled on a defensive-zone faceoff against the Islanders on October 31, and the surgery that followed was for abdominal and adductor muscles, three to four months. He came back to 16:49 a night and 1.45 shots a game, the lowest shot volume of his career, and both read as decline. Neither was. He finished the year playing with a fractured hand, and still put up 10 points in his last seven games, a 1.43 pace, after managing nine in the 22 before that. We project 57, which asks 0.68 a night, less than half what he closed the season doing. The hand and the abdominal surgery are the risk. The player who showed up in April is the reason to take it.
New York Islanders: Kyle Palmieri
Palmieri tore the ACL in his left knee in the second period against Philadelphia on November 28 and did not play again. Before he left he stole the puck from a Flyers defenseman and picked up an assist, the last thing he did all season. The 18 points in 25 games undersell him badly. He took 2.84 shots a game, his most since 2018-19, at 18:53 a night, a career high across 16 seasons, and scored on 8.5 percent of them against 13.8 percent over the previous three years. Five percentage points, at that volume, is 13 goals over a full year. All of that comes from 25 games, the smallest sample in this article. The 55 we project puts 28 of them in the net at 14.9 percent, which is his normal. The caution is not the finish, it is the knee and the birth certificate. He turns 36 this season and is coming off a six to eight month recovery.
Philadelphia Flyers: Tyson Foerster
Everything about Foerster's season argues for him except the number that made it. He is 24, he was Philadelphia's most dangerous forward when he played, and he finished with 13 goals on 61 shots, a 21.3 percent conversion rate that will not last. His previous two seasons read 12.0 and 17.6. The injuries were relentless: an elbow with Canada at the 2025 World Championship cost him training camp, a blocked shot against Toronto on November 1 took four games, and a shoulder injury against Pittsburgh on December 1 ended his regular season, with arm surgery on December 15 and a five-month timeline. He was back for the playoffs, 10 games at 18:25 a night, more ice time than he averaged all year. He also scored once on 15 shots, a 6.7 percent clip. We project 49, and 30 of those as goals, needing 19.4 percent on 155 shots.
Pittsburgh Penguins: Egor Chinakhov
Columbus gave up on him at Christmas. Pittsburgh sent Danton Heinen, a second and a third for him on December 29, and what followed is the clearest before-and-after in this article. In 29 games as a Blue Jacket he had six points, 10:18 a night and 1.24 shots a game. In 43 as a Penguin he had 36 points, at 15:37 and 2.42 shots. Four times the production, from the same player, in the same season. Pittsburgh believed it enough to give him three years at $6.25 million in the summer. We project 47, and that is the number we would argue up, because his Pittsburgh half alone is a 70-point pace across 84 games. There is plenty to be nervous about, though. He shot 17.3 percent there against 10.3 and 14.5 in his last two Columbus seasons, our model has him nearly five goals above his chances, he has cleared 62 games once in five years, and he managed no points in six playoff games.
Carolina Hurricanes: Jaccob Slavin
Slavin's line reads one goal and seven assists in 39 games, which tells you nothing about him. He is not paid to score, and 23 points is the smallest projection on this list. A lower-body injury against Philadelphia in late October put him on injured reserve, and a hit from Florida's A.J. Greer took him out again after he came back. Forty-three games gone from a defenseman Carolina had leaned on for 79, 76, 81 and 80 in the four years before. The job did not change. He played 21:19 a night in the 39 he did get, essentially his usual, and by spring he was fine: 19 playoff games at 23:31. Our 23, 0.27 a night, sits below all four of his previous seasons and asks nothing of him offensively. The Hurricanes were not missing eight points. They were missing 43 games of their best defender.
Every projection on this page, plus how often each player actually plays, sortable on the Fantasy board.
Open the Fantasy board
