You would have never known from his first outing of the year that the first half of Dougie Hamilton’s season would be a complete nightmare.
Facing his former team in Carolina, Hamilton scored the New Jersey Devils’ first goal of the 2025-26 campaign when, about halfway through the second frame, he took a pass from Jesper Bratt in the slot and backhanded a puck past Canes goalie Frederik Andersen to tie the contest 1-1.
While the Devils went on to lose 6-3, that goal had to be a good harbinger for a talented defenceman who’d had some tough injury luck, right?
Hard wrong.
From Canadian Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve, Hamilton seemed a shell of himself on the ice, to say nothing of dealing with constant trade speculation off the sheet. In the past three months, though, Hamilton has completely flipped the script, and his second-half surge is all the more impressive when you consider how trying the first chunk of season must have been.
Hamilton might not be the only NHLer who found his game in Part 2 of the campaign, but it’s hard to imagine a starker contrast between a first and second half.
Before the Devils played their first game of 2026, Hamilton had a paltry eight points in 36 outings. That’s an 18-point clip for a blue-liner who had 74 points in 2022-23. Hamilton scored his fifth goal of the year on Jan. 3 and in 32 contests beginning with that 4-1 win in Utah through Sunday’s 5-3 victory over Chicago — in which Hamilton also found the net — the 32-year-old has seven goals and 18 assists for 25 points. That’s a 64-point pace for a guy who, let’s be honest, probably felt like his team would move him at the first real opportunity for much of the season leading up to the trade deadline.
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Examples of things snapping into place in the second half can be found all over the league. And, to be clear, the goal today is to highlight some players who found their game after really scuffling out of the gate, as opposed to identifying guys like Hart Trophy favourite Nikita Kucherov (or Oilers D-man Evan Bouchard) who exploded in the second half, but were already going strong in the first.
With that in mind — and acknowledging it won’t be a perfect first- and second-half divide for every guy — here’s a list of players whose seasons have been saved by a stellar showing in 2026.
Steven Stamkos, Nashville Predators
If anyone was mentioned in first-half trade talk as much as Hamilton, it was Stamkos (along with some of his Nashville friends). After scoring 27 goals in his first season with the Preds — basically his lowest total in a full season since his rookie year of 2008-09 — Stamkos opened 2025-26 with just one tuck in 14 outings. At the 29-game mark, Stamkos still had just eight goals, putting him on a 22-goal pace.
Then came a 7-2 win over St. Louis on Dec. 11.
That night, Stamkos recorded the second four-goal game of his career to start a fire that’s still raging. He found the net in each of Nashville’s final three games before Christmas and netted five tallies in the first five games of 2026.
Since his four-goal showing, Stamkos has 28 tallies in 45 games, more than everyone in the NHL during that span save Cole Caufield (30) and Zach Hyman (29).
With two years left on his deal and Nashville — despite three straight losses — still well-positioned to make the playoffs, it will be interesting to see if the trade talk picks back up in the off-season.
Nikolaj Ehlers, Carolina Hurricanes
Who wants a hot start more than a guy who inked one of the biggest off-season UFA deals?
Well, that’s not what Nikolaj Ehlers got in Carolina after a decade of productive years with the Winnipeg Jets.
The “Danish Dash” (love it, Hockey Reference!) failed to record a point in his first four games with the Canes and was sitting on zero goals until Game No. 12. As of Dec. 30, Ehlers was still stuck on just eight goals.
The winger found the net in the first three games of 2026, though, and has not looked back. Since Jan. 1, Ehlers is scoring at a 36-goal pace with 15 strikes in 34 games, more than everybody on the squad in that span except Andrei Svechnikov and his 16. And while Svechnikov plays with two big boys in Seth Jarvis and Sebastian Aho on the top trio, Ehlers is currently slotted on the third line with Jordans Staal and Martinook. His ability to kick in goals from that spot — to say nothing of his team-leading seven power-play goals in 2026 — has made Carolina a more dangerous team offensively heading into the second season.
McAvoy’s 2025 was rough — skewing downright scary — as he had shoulder surgery about 13 months ago to stop the spread of a staph infection. He returned ready to go in the fall, but a puck to the face in a mid-November game against Montreal had him back on the extremely painful side of the Bruins injury report.
Thankfully, 2026 has brought nothing but blue skies. (OK, he did take an elbow to the face from Florida’s Sandis Vilmanis right before the Olympic break, but other than that things have been good!).
Not only did McAvoy win a gold medal with Team USA at the Olympics, but the Bruins also boast the second-best points percentage in the league (.727) since Jan. 1. (Only Buffalo, at .743, is better).
Boston’s success is in no small part driven by McAvoy, who has 37 points in 33 outings in 2026. Only three defenceman in the NHL — Evan Bouchard (49), Quinn Hughes (42) and Rasmus Dahlin (39) — have more during that span.
After starting the year with 19 points in 28 contests, McAvoy has been scoring at a 92-point pace in the back half.
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Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Buffalo Sabres
Injuries often play a role in uneven starts and Sabres stopper Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen battled ailments during training camp, early in the season and right before the Olympic break. And while he was forced to miss representing Finland in Italy, there’s still no comparison between how UPL has performed since late December versus earlier in the year.
On Dec. 8, Luukkonen allowed five goals in Calgary and left after 40 minutes during a 7-4 loss to the Flames. At that point, Luukkonen had an .884 save percentage in 10 appearances.
He didn’t start again for 13 days, but stopped 26 of 27 shots in his return during a 3-1 victory in New Jersey. He allowed one goal in each of his next two outings — both wins by a Sabres squad that was already transforming into one of the league’s best — and since Dec. 21, his .922 save percentage is the best mark in the NHL among goalies with at least 15 starts.
Mathew Barzal, New York Islanders
There’s not much oxygen left on Long Island to talk about anything else after you get through with Ilya Sorokin’s fantastic year in net and Matthew Schaefer’s rookie-of-the-year campaign on the blue line.
That said, Barzal — a Calder Trophy winner himself eight years ago — has helped drive New York’s playoff push with a fantastic second-half showing.
The Isles winger, who was limited to just 30 contests last year, was stuck in the mud for a couple months, scoring at a 60-point pace through 26 contests.
However, since a big 1-2-3 night during a 6-3 victory over Colorado on Dec. 4, Barzal has notched 49 points in 48 outings to produce at the point-per-game level the Isles need from him.
He had a goal and an assist in Monday’s deflating 8-3 loss to Pittsburgh and the Isles — still clinging to a playoff spot — will need everything they can get from their most creative forward over the final seven games to get the second-half story they all desperately want.
