Fantasy Hockey Focus: Second half expectations for 5 young players

Catching young players on the upswing is part of any successful fantasy hockey season. As of New Year’s Day, 600 games, or 1200 individual team games were played this season. After action finished on November 19th, 2024, there were 598 individual team games, so we’ll use that as the cutoff point for the first quarter and after that point as the second quarter. Let’s investigate things like usage, shot rates, and role to see which players have improved since the early portion of the season and can help fantasy managers down the stretch. Data is from Natural Stat Trick. 

Martin Pospisil, Calgary Flames

The key to Martin Pospisil’s fantasy value is his discipline. As a rookie in 2023-24, he was already earning a reputation for crossing the line, and frequent trips to the penalty box (or Departm