Atlantic Notes: Maple Leafs, Lightning, Pinto
While Joseph Woll landed on injured reserve today, the hope is that he will only miss the minimum of seven days, notes Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic (Twitter link). Woll had been used quite heavily by the Maple Leafs since returning from a leave of absence, making eight starts in nine games and did well, posting a 2.44 GAA and a .923 SV%. With Anthony Stolarz not close to returning, it appears Toronto has dodged the worst-case scenario when it comes to their other netminder.
Meanwhile, a pair of injured blueliners took part in today’s morning skate as Nick Barden of The Hockey News mentions that Chris Tanev and Marshall Rifai both participated in non-contact jerseys. Tanev has missed more than a month with an upper-body injury after briefly returning from an upper-body injury and head coach Craig Berube hopes that Tanev will be able to get him more involved in practice over the next week. Rifai, meanwhile, has yet to play this season after suffering a wrist injury in the preseason. Both players are currently on LTIR.
Elsewhere around the Atlantic:
- While the Lightning will get one of their stars back tonight, they’ll be without two others. Eduardo A. Encina of the Tampa Bay Times relays that goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy and winger Nikita Kucherov are listed as day-to-day with undisclosed injuries. Tampa Bay was hoping to have Vasilevskiy back after missing Thursday’s game but that won’t be the case, meaning Jonas Johansson will get the start once again. Meanwhile, it’s unclear as to what Kucherov’s injury is as well but he played over 25 minutes on Thursday against Pittsburgh so it’s something he was evidently able to play through at some point in the game.
- The Senators have placed center Shane Pinto on injured reserve, notes Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch, who adds that Pinto is expected to miss two weeks and likely more, suggesting that a return after the holiday break may be more realistic. The open roster spot was used to recall Hayden Hodgson earlier today. The 25-year-old got off to a strong start to his season and has 12 goals in 27 games along with a four-year, $30MM contract extension that begins in 2026-27.
Rangers Searching For Blueline Power Play Help
With blueliner Adam Fox landing on LTIR last month due to an upper-body injury late last month, the Rangers find themselves without their top blueliner and a key threat offensively from the back end. While they won’t be able to add someone who can log the nearly 24 minutes per game that Fox can, finding someone who could help in the offensive zone in a more limited role could be more doable.
To that end, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman relayed on the latest 32 Thoughts podcast (audio link) that New York is looking to see if they can acquire someone to help quarterback the power play. One player he suggested as a possible option is former Ranger Erik Gustafsson who is currently playing in the minors after the Red Wings passed him through waivers unclaimed back in October.
Interestingly, offense from the defense hasn’t been an issue for the Rangers in the early going this season with their blueliners combining for 16 tallies, good for fourth in the league. Fox only has three of those while newcomer Vladislav Gavrikov is leading the way with six.
However, Gavrikov, nor any of their other defenders, is a natural power play threat. As a result, the Rangers have, at times, gone with five-forward units while Braden Schneider is second among New York defenders in power play ice time per game; he has all of one goal in 29 outings this season. With Gavrikov not being utilized at all with the man advantage, their existing options are limited.
The Rangers currently have a power play success rate (19.4%) that checks in just below the league average (20%) while offensively, they’re in the bottom third of the league in total goals scored. Filtering by conference, they’re the lowest-scoring team in the East in terms of goals per game. Suffice it to say, there is certainly a void for GM Chris Drury to try to fill here.
However, their salary cap flexibility is rather limited. Per PuckPedia, the Rangers are more than $1MM into LTIR already and while Fox being on there gives them some short-term wiggle room, they have to get back into compliance when he’s activated (or just over the $95.5MM ceiling as Matt Rempe is also on there at the moment). That means whoever they look to get needs to be someone who has a cap hit that can be cleared off the books when Fox comes back.
That’s not the case with Gustafsson. In the final season of a two-year deal, he carries a $2MM cap charge, one that’s lowered to $850K while he’s in the minors. Gustafsson could fit the extra role they want to fill as he did a few years ago with them but the higher cap charge means that Detroit would either need to retain or New York would need to send someone the other way to partially offset the money. Whether they find a way to make that work or find someone else to fill that void, it appears that Drury is searching for some outside help on the back end.
Pacific Notes: Sharks, Hart, Karlsson
The Sharks have not yet decided if they will loan forward Michael Misa or defenseman Sam Dickinson to play for Canada at the upcoming World Juniors, reports Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News. Misa is set to debut with the AHL’s Barracuda tonight while on a conditioning assignment, one that can last up to two weeks. The second overall pick back in June has been used quite sparingly this season, getting into just seven NHL games where he has a goal and two assists. Accordingly, he hasn’t officially activated the first year of his entry-level deal. If Misa plays out his AHL stint and then joins Canada’s roster, that would allow San Jose to wait until January before making a final call on keeping him in the NHL or sending him back to junior.
As for Dickinson, the 19-year-old has played much more frequently, getting into 21 games with the Sharks so far. However, he has been limited to just one goal and one assist after putting up 91 points in just 55 games with OHL London last season. Dickinson is averaging a respectable 14:27 per game of ice time but would have a much more prominent role at the World Juniors. With San Jose carrying eight healthy blueliners, they wouldn’t necessarily need to bring anyone up from the Barracuda to take his place on the roster if they were to loan Dickinson out.
More from the Pacific:
- Golden Knights goaltender Carter Hart is day-to-day with a lower-body injury, relays Danny Webster of the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Twitter link). He sustained the injury in his season debut on Tuesday against Chicago, one that saw him make 27 saves in a shootout victory over Chicago. Vegas recalled Jesper Vikman from AHL Henderson earlier today and they are using an emergency roster exception that lasts up to 48 hours to allow them to temporarily exceed the 23-player roster limit.
- Still with the Golden Knights, they’ve placed center William Karlsson on LTIR, PuckPedia reports (Twitter link). The move was needed to afford Vikman’s recall. Karlsson last played on November 8th, meaning that he has already missed the required 10 games and 24 days, assuming the placement was back-dated. The 32-year-old has four goals and three assists in 14 games this season and remains listed as out week-to-week.
Atlantic Notes: Edvinsson, Senators, Luostarinen
The Red Wings gave Moritz Seider a big contract two years ago when they signed him to a seven-year, $59.85MM contract ($8.55MM AAV). In his latest mailbag (subscription link), The Athletic’s Max Bultman suggests that pending RFA blueliner Simon Edvinsson’s next contract could fall in that range. While he lacks the offensive output that players like Jackson LaCombe and Luke Hughes ($9MM apiece) have achieved, the 22-year-old is averaging nearly 22 minutes per game, not far off Seider’s usage in his platform year. With the salary cap projected to jump much faster in the next few years, it’s certainly plausible that Edvinsson’s next contract lands in Seider’s range even if he isn’t quite as impactful overall as the 2022 Calder Trophy winner.
More from the Atlantic:
- The Senators won’t have center Shane Pinto available to them for tomorrow’s game against St. Louis, relays Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch. He suffered a lower-body injury early in Thursday’s game and is still being evaluated at this time. Meanwhile, there is no timeline for fellow middleman Lars Eller’s return to the lineup from an undisclosed injury. Ottawa recently recalled center Stephen Halliday and head coach Travis Green confirmed that they are contemplating another recall. With Ridly Greig being able to move back down the middle, the Sens won’t be restricted to only considering centers; winger Arthur Kaliyev is off to a strong start and could be worthy of a promotion.
- Panthers center Eetu Luostarinen returned to practice today for the first time since suffering burns while barbecuing, mentions team reporter Rob Darragh. He has missed the last eight games while recovering. The 27-year-old has taken on a bigger role this season in Aleksander Barkov’s absence, collecting 10 points in 18 games while logging a career-high 16:46 per game of ice time. Head coach Paul Maurice wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Luostarinen playing this weekend; if he does, Florida won’t have to make a roster move as they kept him on the active roster while injured.
Snapshots: Lucic, Pinto, Woll, Kirsch
With his time in St. Louis’ organization now over, veteran winger Milan Lucic is now looking to figure out his next step. It appears that he has an offer on the table to play this season but he will have to travel to get that chance. TSN’s Darren Dreger reports that the veteran has an offer from a team in Scotland. Lucic played in five games with AHL Springfield before being released a little more than a week ago and it seems unlikely that another playing opportunity in North America will materialize. However, Dreger suggests that there could be an off-ice role available with an NHL team if he decides to jump right into his post-playing career but for now, he’ll need to decide how much he wants to keep playing and make a decision on the one offer he has.
Elsewhere around the hockey world:
- The Senators announced (Twitter link) that center Shane Pinto left tonight’s game with a lower-body injury. The injury was sustained in the opening period on a hit from Mika Zibanejad. Even though his production has tapered off a bit as of late, the 25-year-old still leads Ottawa in goals with 12 in 27 games and came into the night averaging a career-high 19:30 per game of ice time. An absence for him would be a big blow to their center depth.
- The Maple Leafs announced (Twitter link) that goaltender Joseph Woll suffered a lower-body injury tonight against Carolina and did not return after playing the first two periods. Since returning from a leave of absence, Toronto has used Woll quite frequently, starting him in eight of nine games. He has done rather well, too, posting a .919 SV% in those outings. Anthony Stolarz has been out for nearly four weeks with an upper-body injury and hasn’t resumed skating so any absence for Woll would be problematic for a Toronto team that’s trying to recover from a tough start to the season.
- Sharks prospect Christian Kirsch has decommitted from UMass and his recruitment process has reopened, reports Brad Elliott Schlossmann of the Grand Forks Herald (Twitter link). The 19-year-old was a fourth-round pick in 2024 and he spent last season in the USHL before coming to OHL Kitchener this season. With them, he has a 2.54 GAA and a .900 SV% in 18 games.
Injury Updates: Canucks, Drouin, Wild
The Canucks could soon be getting some much-needed help on the injury front. Sportsnet 650’s Brendan Batchelor notes (Twitter link) that winger Nils Hoglander and goaltender Thatcher Demko could both return next Thursday against Buffalo. Hoglander has yet to play this season while recovering from ankle surgery but has picked up 61 points over the last two years combined. With Vancouver in the bottom third of the league in goals scored, adding some extra secondary scoring would certainly help. Meanwhile, Demko has missed the better part of a month due to a lower-body injury of his own. Prior to the injury, he was off to an okay start to his season with a 2.80 GAA and a .903 SV% in 10 starts.
Other injury news from around the NHL:
- Prior to tonight’s game against Colorado, the Islanders announced (Twitter link) that winger Jonathan Drouin is listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury. The 30-year-old is in his first season in New York after coming over from the Avs in free agency and while he hasn’t been scoring much (he has just three goals), he has picked up a dozen assists through his first 26 games; his 15 points are good for sixth in team scoring.
- Wild head coach John Hynes provided a pair of injury updates to reporters, including Sarah McLellan of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Twitter link). Center Danila Yurov’s return from an undisclosed injury is now imminent although he missed his second straight game tonight. The 21-year-old rookie has seven points in 21 games in his first NHL campaign.
- However, the news isn’t as good for fellow pivot Marco Rossi. Hynes shared that he won’t join the team on its four-game road trip. While he’s skating on his own, his recovery from a lower-body injury will now take longer than initially thought. Minnesota’s road trip ends on Monday with their next home game scheduled for Thursday. At that point, Rossi will have been out of the Wild’s lineup for at least a month. The 24-year-old has 13 points in 17 games so far this season.
Canadiens Reassign Adam Engstrom And Florian Xhekaj To AHL
Following last night’s victory over Winnipeg, the Canadiens announced a pair of roster moves. The team has assigned defenseman Adam Engstrom and winger Florian Xhekaj to AHL Laval.
Engstrom, a 2022 third-round pick, got off to a hot start in the minors this season, posting five goals and nine assists in 18 games, the last of which was a five-point effort to earn him the promotion. The 22-year-old got into a pair of games with Montreal in his first NHL stint, blocking a pair of shots while averaging a little over 12 minutes of ice time.
As for Xhekaj, he also was in his initial NHL stint. He got into five games with the Canadiens, recording an assist in his NHL debut and added nine hits while logging 9:36 of playing time per contest. The 21-year-old was a fourth-round pick in 2023 and while he had a promising rookie year in 2024-25 with Laval where he had 24 goals in 69 games, he has been limited to just two goals and two assists in 16 games in the minors this season.
With these moves, Montreal is now at the minimum of 20 players on the active roster. With a back-to-back set coming up this weekend including a road game in Toronto, it stands to reason that they’ll likely be bringing a player or two up from Laval in the near future.
Submit Your Questions For The #PHRMailbag
Thanksgiving is the time when we typically get a sense of who the contenders are, which teams could find themselves as sellers, and what the trade market could start to look like. With that in mind, it’s a good time to open up the mailbag.
Last time, we had two columns worth of questions. The first talked about the CBA change that eliminated ‘paper transactions’, a prediction for an underperforming team, and if New Jersey could find a way to get the Hughes brothers all on the same team. Meanwhile, included in the second was what could be next for the Flyers, guessing the type of impact Jonathan Toews would have in Winnipeg, and if we could see a shift to more short-term contracts thanks to the projected bigger jumps in the salary cap.
You can submit a question by using #PHRMailbag on Twitter/X or by leaving a comment down below. The mailbag will run on the weekend.
Atlantic Notes: Maple Leafs, McCue, Vasilevskiy, Crozier
Last season, the tandem of Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll gave the Maple Leafs a strong game-to-game presence between the pipes. However, they’ve yet to both dress in the same game so far this season. In his latest column for the Toronto Star, Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos argues that getting both healthy at the same time is crucial, though not just for the obvious reason of having two starting-level goaltenders at their disposal. As a result of making several buyer moves in recent years, Toronto’s trade capital in terms of prospects has been diminished. A return to health for Stolarz to join Woll could make it more palatable for them to move one of Dennis Hildeby or Artur Akhtyamov. At a time when a lot of teams appear to be looking for extra goalie depth, having one of them as a movable trade chip could improve their fortunes on the trade front.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic:
- Still with the Maple Leafs, prospect Sam McCue is on the move in the OHL as Ottawa announced that they’ve acquired him from Brantford in exchange for a pair of draft picks. Toronto selected the 20-year-old in the seventh round in 2024 and he’s playing in his final major junior season. McCue has 10 goals and six assists in 25 games so far this season and will probably need to pick up the offensive pace if he wants to secure an entry-level deal with the Leafs by the beginning of June.
- Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy is unavailable for tonight’s game which resulted in today’s recall of Brandon Halverson. However, the veteran’s absence will be a short one as Eduardo A. Encina of the Tampa Bay Times relays (Twitter link) that the expectation is that Vasilevskiy will be available to start their next game on Saturday. The 31-year-old is having yet another strong season, posting a 2.31 GAA and a .916 SV% through his first 19 starts.
- Also with the Lightning, they welcomed back defenseman Maxwell Crozier as Erik Erlendsson of Lightning Insider relayed (Twitter link) that the blueliner was activated off IR. The 25-year-old missed the last eight games due to an undisclosed injury. Crozier has three assists in eight games with Tampa Bay so far this season. With the activation, the Lightning are back to a full 23-player roster.
Five Key Stories: 11/24/25 – 11/30/25
Late November is usually when teams start to have a better feel for their rosters and what types of moves they need to make. While there isn’t typically a big uptick on the trade front at this time, some of this week’s key stories are about the trade market to come.
Canucks Open To Offers: It hasn’t been a great couple of months for Vancouver. The Canucks are only three points ahead of last place in the league which has led to some wondering about if they’d do a big shakeup. It appears they’re at least willing to listen to offers on their veterans although there is mixed reporting on if they’re just doing so for players on expiring deals or ones with term remaining. In terms of pending free agents, wingers Kiefer Sherwood and Evander Kane along with center Teddy Blueger, come to mind (although making the cap element work with Kane could be trickier). Vancouver has been one of the teams willing to make moves early so whether it’s just expirings or other more core pieces, they’ll be a team to keep an eye on in the coming weeks.
Extensions In Calgary: There were earlier reports that the Flames were nearing an extension with GM Craig Conroy. As it turns out, he had already signed one, a two-year deal. He wasn’t the only one to have a contract announced as President of Hockey Operations Don Maloney and Assistant GMs Dave Nonis and Brad Pascall all received two-year extensions as well. Oddly enough, the deals were done over the summer but the organization didn’t feel a need to announce them. Going into the season, Calgary was coming off a better-than-expected year as they just missed the playoffs. But things haven’t gone anywhere near as well in 2025-26 as they’re second-last in the NHL standings, just one point ahead of Nashville. But their current management group will be the one to continue to try to bring them forward in their rebuild.
Five For Matheson: Earlier this season, the Canadiens took care of their most prominent pending restricted free agent when they signed blueliner Lane Hutson to an eight-year extension. This week, they took care of their most prominent pending unrestricted free agent, inking defenseman Mike Matheson to a five-year, $30MM extension. The 31-year-old has become a top-pairing defender since being acquired from Pittsburgh in 2022 and is only two years removed from a breakout 62-point campaign. A $6MM price tag is a little below market value but the extra year or two on the contract helped keep the AAV down. Montreal now has its top four blueliners (Hutson, Matheson, Noah Dobson, and Kaiden Guhle) all signed through at least the 2030-31 season at a combined price tag of $29.85MM.
Done For The Year: Kyle Palmieri’s 2025-26 regular season has come to an abrupt end. He sustained a torn ACL and will be undergoing surgery that will keep him out of the lineup for six to eight months. The 34-year-old is tied for second in team scoring with 18 points in 25 games and has been one of their more consistently reliable secondary scorers in recent years. It has been a rough stretch lately on the injury front for the Isles as Palmieri joins Alexander Romanov as key veterans whose regular seasons ended much earlier than expected. New York ends the month in a tie for the final playoff spot but their offense has certainly taken a hit with Palmieri’s injury.
Veterans Garnering Interest: As the trade chatter begins to pick up, a pair of veterans appear to be getting some attention, Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry and Blues defenseman Justin Faulk. Jarry has a 2.74 GAA and a .905 SV% in 10 games this season, numbers that would be his best since 2021-22 if they hold up. However, he has two more years left after this on his contract with a $5.375MM cap charge and the goalie market isn’t particularly robust in terms of teams looking so it would take some work to get a trade in place. Meanwhile, Faulk is off to a decent start to his season with 13 points in 26 games on a St. Louis team that has struggled mightily offensively. He has one more year left after this with a $6.5MM AAV but is a right-shot defender, the side that many teams are often trying to add. It stands to reason that if the Blues decide to take a step back and move him, they should be able to generate a decent market for his services.
Photo courtesy of Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images.