Here’s every NHL team’s player to watch break out this year

The easy and expected answer here is new first-liner Alex Galchenyuk, whom some people would expect to burst through now that he is on a team with lower expectations and, frankly, fewer eyes on him than his previous stop in Montreal. Could be.

But we’re all about in-depth analysis here, so let’s take a flyer on another second-chancer in Dylan Strome. Expected to break through last season, the 3^rd-overall pick in 2015 has had sky-high expectations because, among other reasons, he’s a talented scorer who beat out Mitch Marner, now of the Maple Leafs, for the OHL scoring title in 2015. That was the year, in fact, that he scored a single-game-record seven points (off four goals and three assists) for the Erie Otters at the 2015 Memorial Cup; getting the job done when the stakes are high.

But last year he failed to stick and was sent down to Tucson for most of the season, getting a late-season callup after 53 points in 50 games in the AHL before being sent back for the playoffs, when he had eight points in nine games (he had four goals and five assists for nine points in 21 games for the big club). Strome has the lineage (his brother Ryan is a faltering prospect for the Oilers after failing to impress with the Islanders) and could very well turn up the heat in the desert.