After a rookie season with the Phantoms which saw it’s share of ups and downs before coming to an unceremonious end, winger prospect Devin Kaplan is set to hit this season with a bit more experience and a whole lot of lessons in the back pocket, looking to take the next step forward towards finding his best and most consistent game.
How did his 2025-26 season go?
While expectations were somewhat tempered for Kaplan heading into his rookie season with the Phantoms — as a player with an intriguing skillset, but still someone who was coming out from a middling college career clearly still a bit raw — he couldn’t have possibly gotten off to a better start than he did. With a pair of goals in his season debut — and with another near miss, coming as close as possible to a hat trick — Kaplan was an immediately noticeable force, in the immediate flash that this production brought, but also in his energy and assertiveness away from the puck, as he was able to step up in a big way in a commanding win.
This made for quite a bit of immediate momentum acquired, but keeping it up proved to be a challenge as the games went on. His level of play didn’t drop off entirely, as he was still getting some looks and still working to bring some level of physical edge to his game, but he largely wasn’t piling up the chances to the same degree that he was in his debut. It would be nine more games before he registered another goal, and 22 more for the next one after that (his fourth of what would be five on the season), and struggled through games where, more than anything, he was fading to the background a bit.
Now, some of that limited scoring is to be expected, given the fact that he spent a good number of his games playing down on the fourth line, but he had enough chances playing up in the lineup to show a little bit more, but he struggled to really grab on to those opportunities and make the most of them. There we still some really positive flashes throughout this season for him, but consistency proved to be one of the larger hurdles that he was dealing with.
His season, ultimately, was cut short when he took an upper-body injury at the end of February, which would ultimately require surgery, the recovery from which would keep him sidelined for the remainder of the season. That said, he was a full participant in this summer’s Development Camp, so his health and readiness to start the season in a few weeks here doesn’t seem to be in question.
What are we hoping to see from him this season?
The most immediate desire to see for this season would just be for Kaplan to show that he’s bounced back from the injury, that he’s able to bear down and still play his physical style, without any concern that anything will flare back up on him.
More broadly, though, the bigger hope is to see him find a way to bring some more consistency, both in production as well as in the overall tenor of his game. Kaplan has all of the necessary tools to be an effective middle of the lineup power forward type at this level, but as has been the case with him going all the way back to his college days, it’s just a matter of putting it all together. The flashes that he showed throughout the last season were certainly tantalizing, but now the task is for him to find a way to tap into more of that on a nightly basis, and for the coaching staff to work with him to get him closer to achieving that goal.
What kind of role do we expect him to play?
Last season saw Kaplan settle into a role of more or less locking it down on the right wing on either the third or fourth line — with a few promotions up to the second, but also some games rotated out to the press box, mixed in — and the safe bet is that this will be the same role that he’ll be trotted out for as this second season opens up. With a bit more experience banked, there’s an opportunity open for him to show a bit more in the minutes that he’s getting to both earn himself a few more opportunities to play up in the lineup, but even more critically, to really solidify himself as an every night player at this level.
Now, given the surplus of forwards in the mix on the projected roster, there’s going to need to be some amount of rotating taking place to keep things fair and to keep anyone from getting cold, but there’s work that Kaplan can do to continue to define his role and bring a greater level of consistency in order to make himself one of the less immediate calls to be platooned, to make that decision more difficult on his coaching staff.
