One underrated player to watch for each Atlantic Division NHL team in 2023–24
Over the past week, we’ve taken a look at some of the most intriguing under-the-radar players from around the National Hockey League.
We’re not talking about the likes of Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews, who have cemented themselves as premier players at this level. We’re looking more at secondary guys who still have plenty to gain in the public eye despite already being established, useful NHLers.
After making quick stops to look at the Pacific, Central, and Metropolitan Divisions, we’ve finally arrived at the Atlantic. Here are eight players (one from each Atlantic Division team) who could exceed expectations if given leeway to do so on their teams in 2023–24.
Boston Bruins: Jake DeBrusk
It was hard for anyone to overshadow stars like Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak in Boston last season. As a consequence, Jake DeBrusk faded into the background a little bit despite reaching the 50-point plateau for the first time in his NHL career — and he did it in just 64 games.
Eight different players scored 50 points with last year’s Bruins. That’s how you win 65 out of 82 games in the regular season. DeBrusk followed up his strong regular season with four goals and six points in seven playoff games against the Florida Panthers, but the injury-plagued Bruins struggled with the Panthers’ swagger and bowed out way sooner than anyone expected. Nevertheless, DeBrusk did his part.
For a long time, it seemed as though DeBrusk’s days in Boston were numbered. He managed just 14 points in 41 games during the pandemic-shortened 2020–21 season and his name constantly swirled around in trade rumours after he reportedly asked for a move. But after rescinding his trade request in the summer of 2022, DeBrusk responded by scoring 27 goals (tied for second-most on the Bruins) and exactly 50 points. He sure seemed comfortable playing in Boston.
The 2023–24 Bruins will be a completely different team, at least on paper, than their predecessors. Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, and Taylor Hall are gone. Eight years after the Bruins drafted him in the first round, DeBrusk might now be one of this team’s de facto top players. If he plays on a line with newly minted team captain Marchand, DeBrusk could challenge for one of the top spots on the team’s scoring leaderboard.
Buffalo Sabres: Casey Mittelstadt
The first three players on this list are all former high draft picks who have taken a little while longer than most to find their footing in the NHL. Casey Mittelstadt definitely fits into that boat. The 2017 No. 8 overall selection meandered through his first four full seasons as a pro before jumping from 19 points in 2021–22 to 59 with the Sabres last year.
Despite scoring just 15 goals in 2022–23, Mittelstadt finished among the team leaders with 44 assists in 82 games with the Sabres. He meshed perfectly with the team’s run-and-gun style under Don Granato, showing flashes of the jump-out-of-your-seat offense that he specialized in during his time at the University of Minnesota. All in all, Mittelstadt went from being a fledgling middle-six winger to one of the Sabres’ more exciting forwards.
Mittelstadt still gets overlooked a fair bit in Buffalo, owing to the emergences of Tage Thompson, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, Alex Tuch, and Dylan Cozens. One of the few remnants of the Jason Botterill regime, Mittelstadt owns a track record containing more examples of mediocrity than excellence — but then again, this is a player who made his NHL debut at age 19. More recent events suggest Mittelstadt might be about to take another big step forward. After all, Jeff Skinner isn’t getting any younger — perhaps Mittelstadt could someday take his place alongside Thompson on the Sabres’ top line.
Detroit Red Wings: Michael Rasmussen
Michael Rasmussen is a mountain of a man who appears to be finally finding his groove as a full-time NHLer. The 6’6″, 210-pound center scored at an impressive pace with the Red Wings last season and could slide up the lineup this year despite being pencilled in to start as the team’s No. 4 center.
Rasmussen managed a career-high 29 points with the Red Wings in 2022–23 before suffering a season-ending knee injury shortly before the trade deadline. The Red Wings were a 28–21–8 team when Rasmussen went down; after his injury (which was coupled with the team selling the likes of Tyler Bertuzzi, Filip Hronek, and Oskar Sundqvist at the deadline), Detroit went 7–16–2.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but there’s little doubt that Rasmussen made the Red Wings a significantly better team when he was in the lineup last year. Even in the midst of a poor 5-on-5 season, the Red Wings managed to play their opponents to a draw with Rasmussen on the ice. Although he may never live up to his billing as the No. 9 overall pick in 2017 (taken one pick after Mittelstadt), Rasmussen provided legitimate value at both ends of the ice with the 2022–23 Red Wings. All but one of his 29 points came at even-strength, and he scored at a 42-point pace over a full season.
The Red Wings were one of the NHL’s busiest teams over the summer, bringing in Alex DeBrincat, J.T. Compher, Daniel Sprong, Klim Kostin and Christian Fischer to round out their forward group. With more mouths to feed, Rasmussen’s production might go down. But don’t be fooled — he’s a highly valuable (and underrated) player.
Florida Panthers: Eetu Luostarinen
It’s hard for anyone on the Panthers to be truly underrated at this point after their Cinderella run to the Stanley Cup Final. Remember when Aleksander Barkov was considered the NHL’s “most underrated player” for, what, eight consecutive seasons? And nobody’s doubting the likes of Matthew Tkachuk and Carter Verhaeghe after how they produced in last year’s playoffs. Many guys on that Panthers team went from relatively anonymous to household names in the span of a few weeks in the spring.
Even so, Luostarinen probably qualifies as underrated for our purposes. Without looking it up, guess how many points he had in the 2022–23 regular season. Probably 20 or 25, right? … Nope. The 6’3″ Finn racked up 17 goals and 43 points in 82 games, enough to rank sixth on the Panthers in scoring (ahead of the likes of Gustav Forsling, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad, and Anton Lundell). Before suffering a season-ending injury in the Eastern Conference Final against Carolina (his former team), Luostarinen collected five points in 16 playoff contests.
Luostarinen only just turned 25 earlier this month. He’s a young ‘un, and it’s entirely possible that his development curve is still trending upward. Back in July, the Cats signed Luostarinen to a three-year extension worth $3 million per season, and that deal won’t take effect until 2024–25. With Bennett, Verhaeghe, and Sam Reinhart all coming up on unrestricted free agency in the next two summers, Luostarinen should be afforded some advancement opportunities in the Panthers’ lineup. Remember, Florida hasn’t made a first-round pick in the last two drafts and isn’t currently slated to do so again until 2026, so it isn’t as though there’ll be a ton of prospects coming up to challenge the likes of Luostarinen for those premier roster spots. He has the inside track.
Montreal Canadiens: Mike Matheson
Take a moment and think of all the No. 1 defensemen in the league. Cale Makar, Roman Josi, Victor Hedman, Adam Fox, and so on. There are quite a few.
Mike Matheson isn’t on the same tier as those guys, but he’s also not as absurdly far off as you might think. The 29-year-old lefty killed it in his 48 games with the Canadiens last year, racking up 34 points (eight goals, 26 assists) while averaging a career-high 24:27 per night. He did everything asked of him, and more, all for the low, low price of $4.875 million per year.
There was a time when Matheson’s eight-year contract was seen as a ludicrous overpayment by a Florida Panthers team stuck spinning its wheels, and he ended up being traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins just two years in. Matheson really started to find his game in Pittsburgh, but the ill-fated management team of Ron Hextall and Brian Burke ended up trading him to Montreal in 2022 in exchange for an aging Jeff Petry. One year later, that deal looks particularly lopsided in the Habs’ favor.
Matheson dealt with numerous injuries during his first season in Montreal but still managed to outscore Petry, who played in 13 more games. Matheson led all Canadiens defensemen in scoring by a comfortable margin. Yes, it was a year in which pretty much everything went wrong in Montreal (seriously, everyone except Nick Suzuki got hurt), but Matheson lived up to his end of the bargain. Big things could be in store if he stays healthy in 2023–24.
Ottawa Senators: Anton Forsberg
It’s been six years since the Senators made the playoffs, but optimism is running rampant in Canada’s capital after an extremely busy summer.
One of Pierre Dorion’s biggest moves was to bring in longtime Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender Joonas Korpisalo on a five-year deal worth $4 million per season. It’s a big bet on a big Finn with a bit of a spotty track record. Although he went 18–14–4 with a .914 save percentage in 39 games split between the Blue Jackets and L.A. Kings in 2022–23, Korpisalo has never started as many as 40 games in a single season and his career save percentage through 221 games is a relatively uninspiring .904.
Korpisalo has successfully overcome injury problems to get where he is today, and we aren’t saying he won’t be a solid goaltender for an up-and-coming Senators team, but don’t discount Anton Forsberg’s role in all of this. Like Korpisalo, Forsberg has shown himself to be a strong tandem goalie in the past, and he’s signed through 2025 at a conservative $2.75 million cap hit. Since arriving in Ottawa, Forsberg has gone 36–32–7 with a .911 save percentage. Although Forsberg injured both his knees in an awkward collision with defenseman Travis Hamonic in February, he told The Athletic‘s Ian Mendes earlier this summer that he’s fully healthy and likely would have returned to action had the Senators qualified for the 2023 playoffs.
We’re going to go out on a limb and say that if the Senators do finally end their playoff drought this year, it’ll be in no small part thanks to their two goaltenders. Korpisalo may be the big-ticket guy, but Forsberg will be just as important to the team’s success. If that tandem can be even 75 percent as effective as Linus Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman were in Boston last year, Sens fans could be in for a great year.
Tampa Bay Lightning: Mikey Eyssimont
The Lightning raised a few eyebrows around the league ahead of last year’s trade deadline when they sent established utility forward Vladislav Namestnikov to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for a relative unknown in Mikey Eyssimont. (The Sharks subsequently flipped Namestnikov to the Winnipeg Jets, who, coincidentally, had lost Eyssimont on waivers to San Jose earlier in the season). But to give credit where credit is due, Eyssimont was a much better fit than Namestnikov in Tampa’s bottom-six forward group — and he might still have some untapped offensive potential.
Eyssimont isn’t that much younger than Namestnikov — he turned 27 earlier this month, while Namestnikov is almost 31 — but he’s a significantly less-known quantity. Namestnikov has been around forever, bouncing from team to team and reliably contributing between 25 and 35 points per season. He’s a solid, no-frills third-liner who typically fares a little better on middling teams where he can be afforded a bit more opportunity. Case in point: Namestnikov managed 10 points in 20 games with the Jets to close out the season after recording just 15 in 57 games with the Bolts to start the year.
But before he arrived in Tampa, Eyssimont had appeared in a mere 40 career NHL games. He’d been reasonably productive with the Jets’ AHL affiliate before being recalled, but then again, that’s pretty much the baseline expectation for any notable pro in his mid-20s. Eyssimont went from five points in 19 games with the Jets to eight in 20 with the Sharks in 2022–23. Not bad, but also nothing out of the ordinary. He finished the year with two points in 15 games as a fourth-liner with the Bolts before adding another two points in three playoff contests.
Bouncing around like that is hard for any player, but Eyssimont still managed a respectable 15 points as a 26-year-old rookie. The Bolts rewarded him with a two-year, one-way contract in the offseason, all but guaranteeing him a spot on their third or fourth line in 2023–24. Eyssimont was a productive player in his time at St. Cloud State, and we think he has the jam to become another Nick Paul-type success story in Tampa Bay.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Joseph Woll
The Maple Leafs are a better defensive team than a lot of people think, but that hasn’t always translated into their goaltenders having success. Matt Murray and Erik Kallgren both posted average (or worse) save percentages in their stints with the Leafs last year, and the team’s goaltending situation looked particularly dire when Ilya Samsonov went down with an injury midway through their Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Florida Panthers.
Enter Joseph Woll, who followed up his standout seven-game spell with the Leafs in the regular season with two strong starts to close out the series against Florida. Woll was in net and made 24 saves when the Leafs got their only win of the series, a 2–1 decision in Game 4 at FLA Live Arena. All in all, Woll finished the 2023 playoff with a .915 save percentage in four appearances.
Woll is signed for this year and next at a bargain $766,667 NHL cap hit. With Murray unlikely to play this year and Martin Jones a candidate to be claimed on waivers before the start of the season, Woll is all but a lock to start the season as the Leafs’ No. 2 goaltender behind Samsonov. But here’s the rub: Samsonov only signed a one-year deal this summer and is eligible to walk straight to unrestricted free agency next year. This will be a critical evaluation year for both goaltenders, with new Leafs GM Brad Treliving ultimately having to decide whether to keep one or both of them going forward. Even with just 15 NHL games under his belt, Woll’s strong track record in the NCAA and AHL makes him a legit piece for this Leafs team to consider.
If Woll can come even close to the level he was at when he posted a 6–1–0 record and .932 save percentage last year, the Leafs could be a real tough team to score on in 2023–24.
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