Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of the Dobber readers!

With the NHL on its holiday break, it’s time for my annual Christmas wish list. Today, we’re sending Santa our wishes for the second half of the NHL season. Whether it’s teams to keep performing the way they are, specific players continuing to provide solid fantasy value, or just players being able to stay on the ice, here are the fantasy hockey wishes I’m making this Christmas.

Just Stay Healthy

Starting with preseason injuries to top names like Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov, up until now, injuries have been a massive storyline so far this season. It isn’t just your imagination as NHL Injury Viz highlighted last week how the 2025-26 season (black line) is far ahead of 2024-25 (yellow line) in terms of Man Games Lost through each team’s first 32 games, and far ahead of the 24-year average from 2000-2025 (red line):

Just in real-life terms, it always sucks seeing players go down with injuries, but that the injury rate is so high this season makes fantasy hockey a battle of attrition. Hopefully, things will improve in the second half, and we see a drop in the injury rates, but with the Olympics on the horizon, that may not be the case for a lot of players in the league.

Carolina’s Top Stars Find the Next Gear

It isn’t as if the Hurricanes are a poor offensive team – easily inside the top-10 by goals-for per 60 minutes this season – but none of their top forwards are at the point-per-game mark and only Seth Jarvis looks to be a reasonable lock for a 30-goal season (Sebastian Aho is around that pace, so he might get there, too). Sebastian Aho was over a point per game in both 2021-22 and 2023-24, he had 36 goals in 2022-23, and Martin Necas was over a point per game before he was traded last season. That Carolina is scoring well but only Jarvis is providing good fantasy value among their forwards is a concern.

A big reason for this is the power play. From 2023-2025, Aho averaged over one PP point every three games but he’s averaging fewer than one every four games so far in 2025-26. As a team, the Hurricanes are in the bottom-half of the league in power play goals after finishing eighth in the league from 2023-2025. As good as they are at even strength, if the Carolina power play doesn’t get going, their top forwards are not going to have high-end fantasy seasons. As someone who is heavily invested in the fantasy success of Jarvis, Svechnikov, and Nikolaj Ehlers, a better power play would be a welcome sight.

San Jose Are Deadline Buyers and Not Deadline Sellers

One team I was frequently stacking players from in fantasy drafts was the San Jose Sharks. I drafted a lot of Macklin Celebrini early and then grabbed at least one of Tyler Toffoli, Will Smith, or William Eklund outside the top-125 picks.  So far, so good, and heading into the holiday break, the Sharks are still in the thick of the playoff race.

Very few people really expected the Sharks to push for a playoff spot this year and the next six weeks – leading up to the Olympic break – will likely determine what they do as March, and the Trade Deadline, roll around. The team has a number of veterans in the final year of their current contracts – Alex Wennberg, John Klingberg, Mario Ferraro, and Timothy Liljegren, to name a few, per PuckPedia –  and if the team decides to be sellers at the Deadline, it could have a big impact on their ability to be successful offensively down the stretch. Again, as someone who has a lot of San Jose stacks on his fantasy rosters, this is not the desired outcome.

It would be great to see San Jose play at least .500 hockey over the next month or so and make management’s decision to trade away players much harder, and maybe even entice them to acquire depth options to help bolster some holes on the roster. Maybe the Sharks run out of steam and that becomes unlikely, but this is a wish list, not a will-happen list.

Anaheim Keeps Pace

Another team I was high on for fantasy purposes, considering their low draft cost, was the Anaheim Ducks. I even wrote in the preseason about how the 2025-26 Anaheim roster could be what the 2024-25 Columbus Blue Jackets were – a team that made a huge leap offensively and provided a lot of fantasy value to those who invested in the roster. It led me to grab a lot of shares of Cutter Gauthier, Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish (ehhh), Chris Kreider, and Jackson LaCombe. With the Ducks being a top-5 team this season by goals per 60 minutes, so far, so good.

The question is whether they can keep up the pace. Just over the last few weeks, the team’s scoring rate has slid from one of the best in the league to the middle of the pack. Here is the good news: from the holiday break to the end of the regular season, the Frozen Tools schedule planner has the Ducks with the fourth-easiest schedule by opponent points percentage. Now, their recent schedule hasn’t been overly difficult, either, so it’s no guarantee of success, but it does provide some hope that they keep up their offensive pace.

We will see how the next month-or-so goes, but it would be nice to see Anaheim bolster their blue line a bit and add players rather than subtract them. Maybe they’re not a top-3 offensive team in the second half, but if they can just be a top-10 team, then they’re going to finish the season with their top players being among the best values in fantasy this season, and potential league-winners.

New York Islanders Stay Afloat

Even with missing a few games, Bo Horvat is on pace for a 40-goal season. Teammate Mathew Barzal started slowly but is over a point-per-game across his last 10 games as his production is ticking up. Of course, there is star rookie Matthew Schaefer providing tremendous fantasy value for anyone that believed in his upside in the preseason. Last but certainly not least is Ilya Sorokin who had a slow start of his own but has been one of the top fantasy goalies over the last couple of months. All this has led to the Islanders being firmly in the playoff race as the NHL entered the holiday break.

The Islanders were another team that I was buying on in the preseason, though Schaefer was not one of them (ouch). To that end, if they can keep up the offensive success they’ve shown through 37 games, then they will return very good fantasy value for those who were drafting them in the preseason. Is this a self-serving wish? Of course – it’s my own wish list. But the Islanders have also gone from a team I dreaded watching to a team I look forward to watching, and the seasons from Horvat, Barzal, Schaefer, and Sorokin (among others) is a big reason why. The Islanders staying relevant in the playoff race and keeping up their fantasy success would be very welcome in the second half of the NHL regular season.

Buffalo Makes a Run

Last one for today, and this isn’t really related to fantasy hockey, though it kind of is. The Buffalo Sabres are a team that, as of a couple years ago, I thought was poised to become a playoff regular. They had figured out their top line, they had a bevy of prospects on the way, they had drafted Owen Power first overall, and Rasmus Dahlin had turned into one of the top defencemen in the league. Everything was lined up for them to be perennial playoff contenders, and that certainly has not been the case.

That may be changing. We have a long way to go but heading into their final game before the holiday break, the Sabres had won six games in a row and climbed within three points of a playoff position. There are a lot of teams in the middle of the Eastern Conference all bunched around each other, so being three points out in the East is not the same as being three points out in the West. Regardless, this recent stretch of games has pushed them back into the playoff conversation, and that’s a drastic change from how things looked as recently as early December.

Five of Buffalo’s first six games out of the holiday break are against Boston, St. Louis, Columbus, Vancouver, and the New York Rangers (Dallas is the sixth). Those are all winnable games and going something like 4-2 or 4-1-1 would likely have them right around a playoff spot. It is a lot to ask, but if the Sabres want to stay in the playoff race, they need to win games against teams they should beat. The next couple of weeks could very well determine if the team is going to push for a playoff spot or fade down the stretch. In the spirit of the holiday season, let’s see an end to the suffering of Buffalo Sabres fans, and see the team push for a playoff spot.

From all of us here at Dobber Hockey and Dobber Prospects, a very happy holidays to all of you out there reading. We could not do what we do without the support of the people perusing the articles and buying the fantasy guides, so we are very thankful for the dedicated readership. We hope that you have league-winners on your roster and that your trades work out in your favour. All the best to you and yours.