Thoughts on Moving From Nashville, Boston, Washington, Utah, New Jersey, and San Jose – July 12 – DobberHockey

We’re now in the quiet portion of the NHL season, and while there are still a few interesting players waiting to be signed – Alex Nylander and Oliver Kylington come to mind – and almost certainly one or two major deals coming – looking at you, Martin Necas – the rosters we have now will largely be the rosters we’ll be dealing with come September. As a final recap of the transactions of the past few weeks, I want to discuss the teams that changed my perception with their offseason shuffling. We could call them “winners” and “losers,” but that’s a bit of an oversimplification. Rather, these are some thoughts on the changes that were made, what it tells me about the improvements/deteriorations that could come, and looking ahead to the 2024-25 season.

One final warning: these are just preliminary thoughts. My own rankings won’t be ready for another few months, so a lot will likely change between now and then. For more complete thoughts before then, pre-order your copy of the 2024 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide, out later this month!

Boston Bruins

The two big additions Boston made were Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov, which is funny because I personally think they are two of the most overrated players in the offseason signing race. The term “overrated” doesn’t mean “bad,” it just means they aren’t as skilled as their public perception.

Either way, these are clear upgrades for Boston. Zadorov effectively takes the place of Matt Grzelcyk, and that’s a huge boost for the team defensively. Maybe they don’t necessarily need to get better defensively, but if they’re not going to have a potent offense (they won’t), it’s a good idea to tighten things up defensively.

Same goes for Elias Lindholm. I don’t think he’s a high-end, first-line center; I also think he’s an upgrade over using Pavel Zacha as a top-line center, allows the team to use Charlie Coyle in a third-line role, and provides flexibility in how they want to use Matthew Poitras. This is a team that was truly one of the best in the East, and whether they’re good enough to truly outplay a team like Florida is a fair question, but even with the loss of Jake DeBrusk and Linus Ullmark, they’re better now than they were three months ago.

Boston’s offseason is certainly great news for anyone with Jeremy Swayman in dynasty leagues. Ullmark is gone and this should be a top 5 defensive team in the league. Imagine Swayman’s ratio stats but with 55 starts instead of ~40.

Nashville Predators

Perhaps no team has done more to shake up its roster than Nashville. They fired Ryan McDonagh, added Brady Skjei in his place, and bolstered a secondary scoring line by signing Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault. If there was an Achilles heel for this team in 2023-24—the one thing that kept them from being among the top echelons of the West—it was a lack of scoring depth. They have that now, and perhaps even a productive third line when you look at names like Luke Evangelista, Cody Glass, and Philip Tomasino. I’m not ready to say they’re in the Colorado/Dallas/Edmonton class of teams, but they’re certainly above the flabby middle of teams like Minnesota and St. Louis.

The real question for me is how good this team will be defensively. Neither Stamkos nor Marchessault are mainstays on defense, guys like Glass and Evangelista aren’t yet, and Skjei is a mixed bag at best. In 2023-24, Juuse Saros had the worst save percentage of his career. If this team regresses even a little defensively, from a fringe top 10 team to mid-table, Saros’s bounce-back season is going to be a much tougher climb.

Capitals of Washington

It seemed pretty clear that Washington was at the bottom of the playoffs and needed some luck to get there. I was curious to see if they would pull the plug and start rebuilding from scratch; they did the opposite.

Adding Pierre-Luc Dubois allows the Capitals to play him and Dylan Strome as their top-6 centers, push Connor McMichael into a third-line role (when they aren’t using him on the wing), and leave Nic Dowd in his very useful fourth-line role. Trading Andrew Mangiapane gives them a legitimate second-line scorer the team desperately needed, as Matt Roy gives them a much-needed defensive boost to their top-4 defensemen. Throw Jakob Chychrun into the mix and this goes from a team that might have found itself near the bottom of the division in 2024-25 to one that might be back in contention for the playoffs.

It has to be said how far Washington had to go to be competent offensively. Their 2.6 goals per 60 minutes in 2023-24 ended up being 28^e in the league, but they were closer to teams like Seattle and Anaheim than to teams like St. Louis and Montreal. If they improved their scoring by 20% – a huge jump in a season – they would be a middle-of-the-road team. Washington is better, but they still have a long way to go.

Utah

When I did a deep dive into then-Arizona’s season back in May, it struck me that the blue line needed some changes. Well, they traded Mikhail Sergachev and John Marino, and they signed Ian Cole away from Vancouver. JJ Moser went to Tampa Bay in the Sergachev deal, but now they have half of a new blue line to add to Sean Durzi, Juuso Valimaki and their depth. The only thing that needed an overhaul got an overhaul, and replacing Mathew Dumba and Josh Brown with Sergachev and Marino is a huge upgrade.

This is a fascinating team. In that dive I said they’re probably only a few years away from playoff contention. I stand by that, but if they get a solid goalie, improve their penalty kill, and continue to improve young players like Logan Cooley, Matias Maccelli, and Dylan Guenther, they could make some noise in 2024-25. They might not be a playoff team, but they’re a lot closer to teams like Los Angeles and Nashville than they are to San Jose and Chicago.

New Jersey Devils

There’s been a big change going on in New Jersey, as they fired head coach Lindy Ruff, traded John Marino, and added Brett Pesce and Brenden Dillon to the blue line. Injuries decimated New Jersey’s defense last year, and that’s not a concern that’s going away anytime soon, but it’s clear that the team is shifting from a fast, counter-attacking team to one that should play a bit more of a controlled game and make life easier for new goalie Jacob Markstrom. It’s certainly good news for Markstrom.

If the team had simply turned it back, it would be hard not to be bullish on top players like Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, and Luke Hughes. There are still plenty of reasons to be optimistic about those guys for fantasy purposes, I just wonder if a stronger teamwide commitment to defensive play wouldn’t lower the ceiling of their top stars. To be clear, a stronger commitment to defense doesn’t necessarily neutralize fantasy value, as the Edmonton Oilers have shown recently and the Tampa Bay Lightning a few years before that. However, we don’t have to look much further than teams like Buffalo and Florida to see how a commitment to defense can lower the fantasy value of top players. Florida won the Stanley Cup, and that’s what matters to them, but guys like Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk also had three-year lows in points per game (and Tkachuk had a three-year low in points per minute). They just turned some of that offense over to Sam Reinhart, I think.

This could be one of those situations where New Jersey improves significantly in the real world, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to elite fantasy success (only a healthy team could have done that anyway). There’s still a lot of potential for their best players, but it might not be as great as it would be if they had simply added Markström and kept his spots elsewhere, both on the ice and behind the bench.

San Jose Sharks

The Sharks lost the Connor Bedard sweepstakes, but they now have both Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith to go along with William Eklund and Quentin Musty. Those four should be a core four forwards for this team for years to come. None of them have proven that yet, but it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see them be offensive forces ranging from very good to elite for the next decade or more. They signed Alex Wennberg and Tyler Toffoli, and also brought in Jake Walman and Carl Grundstrom. Whether Celebrini, Smith, and Musty are all in the lineup for the entire 2024-25 season remains to be seen, but even just two of those three, plus the veteran additions, make this a much better roster in 2024-25 than what we just saw. They’re nowhere near a playoff team, but they won’t be a complete doormat.

I’m really excited to see who’s in camp and what their lineup looks like come September. There may be a few guys I think are on the roster that are headed to the AHL, they can still contribute on the blue line, and there are still players who need to prove that they belong. Either way, this feels like an exciting time to be a Sharks fan and they’ll likely have some value at fantasy draft tables when the time comes.