For the women at least I'd say it's to do with a change of coaching staff. A couple of years ago the only one skiing at their best level was Franzi Preuß, who was the only one still training with Tobias Reiter who was her local coach in Ruhpolding. He ran the women's team a few years ago when Dahlmeier was at her peak but then withdrew from the scene and was an assistant or was training the B-group I think. He's now back on the main coaching staff but on the men's side, while Sverre Røiseland, Marte Olsbu-Røiseland's husband, is training the women.
In all honesty, I think a few of these are just people getting back to the kind of level they showed as juniors and had lost their way a bit, probably lost in the shuffle a bit in the men's team especially as the core had been so stable for so long. David Zobel was a very good junior who was held back by his shooting percentages and did pretty well (but wasn't so great on the skis anymore) when he broke into the team last season, while Sophia Schneider was injured when she last made it to the World Cup a couple of years ago so the results aren't really representative, and in her junior ages was seen as the next Gössner due to her rapid skiing but poor shooting. While she clearly isn't going to be that anymore, she was seen as a marked prospect back in the youth days.
On the men's side I'd say Kühn and Doll are definitely not going faster than I usually associate them with, they've always been top skiers (if anything they're a bit off their best), Nawrath is performing about the level I'd expect from him, but Zobel and Rees have clearly improved their levels. Zobel's improved at both aspects and Rees is skiing faster. On the women's side, Herrmann and Voigt are at the expected kind of level (Voigt's big step up happened two years ago when she went from the fringes of the team to the IBU Cup overall win, and if anything Denise's ski speed is a little behind where you might expect, though the Öbergs have been big outliers as they often are this time of the season - while I expect Elvira to stay at the top of the charts, I don't think this kind of level of superiority will last, the Swedes always start all guns blazing - and with no Eckhoff, Røiseland or Sola you'd think Herrmann would be one of the most likely to be next best on the skis), Preuß is sick so hasn't yet raced, Frühwirt is pretty uncompetitive, but Schneider and Weidel have made big steps forward. However, Weidel has twice before started the season with a top 10 at the first World Cup meet before regressing to the mean, and is still the slowest skier in the team. Schneider has leapt forward a huge amount and it remains to be seen how sustainable it is, but it's mostly the skiing that has improved on her side as she's still been missing targets.
Also, the biathletes have a home World Championships this year and a not-totally-steady front line team, so probably a bit more competition to get into form early season in order to win places in the team for that, similar to the Norwegians at Lillehammer and the Finns at Ruka in the XC. The XC team has definitely improved considerably though.
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