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St. Louis Blues Recall Logan Mailloux

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The St. Louis Blues announced today that defenseman Logan Mailloux has been recalled from the team’s AHL affiliate, the Springfield Thunderbirds.

While Mailloux struggled quite a bit during his first stint on the Blues’ NHL roster, his reassignment to the AHL was never expected to be a lengthy one. TVA Sports’ Renaud Lavoie reported today that the Blues had always planned for Mailloux to play five games in the AHL before returning to the NHL.

That’s exactly what’s happened thanks to this recall. Mailloux got into five games with Springfield, scoring two goals. The Blues reassigned defenseman Hunter Skinner, the player they recalled to fill Mailloux’s vacated NHL roster spot, yesterday in a move that pre-empted today’s recall.

Mailloux’s ability at the AHL level has never been in question, and his solid play in his recent five-game stint served as further proof of that. Mailloux is a two-time AHL All-Star who landed on the league’s All-Rookie team after his 47-point rookie campaign with the Laval Rocket, and on the league’s “Top Prospects” list last season, one where he scored 33 points in just 63 games.

As a player who offers a rare combination of size, strength, and offensive ability from the blueline, Mailloux has long been a coveted talent. The Blues surrendered Zachary Bolduc, coming off of a strong 19-goal rookie season, in order to acquire him. But his first nine games playing for the Blues were nothing short of a disaster, as routine defensive lapses and an inability to translate his offensive talents left him scoreless with a minus-12 rating.

Those high-profile struggles are what prompted the Blues to send Mailloux down to the AHL in order to help him “reset” his game. After five games, the hope is likely that Mailloux has gained some confidence playing in a level he’s a star at, and will be able to translate that confidence into improved play at the NHL level.

The Blues could badly use the kind of talent Mailloux has shown he could eventually become. They have won just six times in 21 games this season, and need something to help spark a turnaround. If Mailloux can begin to play up to his potential, that could be a big boost to the overall form of the team’s defense.

Central Notes: Korchinski, Bjugstad, Kalynuk

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The Chicago Blackhawks have gotten quality contributions from several young defensemen this season, but the name they haven’t heard from at the NHL level thus far in 2025-26 has been that of Kevin Korchinski. The 2022 No. 7 overall pick played in just 16 NHL games last season and has spent all of this year so far with the AHL’s Rockford Ice Hogs. While Korchinski has played well in Rockford, and has 10 assists in 15 games so far this season, his path back to the NHL in the short term, without an unforeseen injury to an NHL blueliner, looks increasingly cloudy. The Athletic’s Scott Powers wrote on Thursday that while Korchinski is “still a major part of the Blackhawks’ plans,” the emergence of Matt Grzelcyk as a quality NHL option has made it so the path for Korchinski to steal an NHL role has narrowed.

The Blackhawks’ unexpectedly strong start to 2025-26 has also complicated Korchinski’s path to an NHL call-up, according to Powers. While Chicago surrendered nine goals in a loss to the Buffalo Sabres last night, their form in that game is not indicative of how they’ve played for most of the year. Chicago has a 10-7-3 record, with a 5-3-2 record in their last ten games. They’ve positioned themselves firmly in the race for a playoff spot in this early portion of the season. While the team’s focus is still very much towards a future window of real Stanley Cup contention, an NHL team with a chance to make the playoffs is going to do everything in its power to try to reach the postseason, even teams that self-assume the tag (or are assigned the tag by the media) of a “rebuilding team.” Therefore, as s a result of Chicago’s increased focus on short-term results thanks to their success so far this year, Korchinski’s odds of quickly returning to the NHL appear to have decreased.

Other notes from the NHL’s Central Division:

  • One team that hasn’t gotten off to a strong start in 2025-26 are the St. Louis Blues, who have begun the year with just six wins out of 21 games played. While the root cause of their struggles is larger than any one player, some players have gotten off to notably slower starts than others. One player who has struggled recently is veteran Nick Bjugstad, who has been a healthy scratch of late. The Blues signed Bjugstad to a two-year, $1.75MM AAV deal this past summer in part to help stabilize their bottom-six, but that hasn’t happened, with Blues head coach Jim Montgomery telling The Athletic’s Jeremy Rutherford that the veteran is “just not having the same impact he was having” earlier in the year. While Montgomery did note that Bjugstad has “done a lot of good things” defensively, he noted that his all-around impact has slowed down. As recently as 2023-24, Bjugstad scored 22 goals and 45 points. The Blues don’t need that much production from Bjugstad, but they’ll definitely need his play to improve (along with getting similar improvements from numerous other players) if they’re to have any hope of turning around their season and returning to true playoff contention.
  • Former Blackhawks blueliner Wyatt Kalynuk was traded in the KHL yesterday, according to an official release from the league. The 28-year-old was a solid three-year NCAA player with the University of Wisconsin who left school early to begin his pro career in Chicago, getting into 21 NHL games in his rookie professional season in 2020-21. At that point, Kalynuk looked like a potential future NHL player, but his game didn’t take any expected steps forward. He got into only five NHL games in 2021-22, and ultimately left the Blackhawks organization to sign with the Vancouver Canucks. In stints with Vancouver and later the New York Rangers and St. Louis Blues, Kalynuk was unable to find a way back to an NHL roster, and after going two full seasons without an NHL game, he decided to leave the North American pro game and sign in the Finnish Liiga. His strong play in his first year in Finland (33 points in 59 games) earned Kalynuk a deal in the KHL with Ak-Bars Kazan, but he was traded to Ufa Salavat Yulayev after just two games. Now, he’s been traded a second time in 2025-26, this time landing with Gerard Gallant’s Shanghai Dragons. Gallant was the coach of the Rangers in 2022-23 when Kalynuk was in the organization, playing in 15 regular-season games, and nine playoff games for the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack.

Morning Notes: Luukkonen, Morozov, Kindel

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The Buffalo Sabres are currently carrying three goalies on their roster, and while that has worked for the club in the short term as it’s dealt with numerous injuries, keeping three netminders in the NHL over the course of a full season is generally seen as an unconventional, cumbersome roster decision. Yesterday, The Athletic’s Matthew Fairburn identified the Sabres’ NHL goaltending trio as a potential issue as it could very well “prevent the Sabres from being able to carry an offensive player who can help them.” As a result, Fairburn wrote that netminder Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen “seems like the logical odd-man out” if the Sabres do elect to continue on with just two goalies on their NHL team.

That doesn’t mean they’d simply try to send Luukkonen down, of course, and Fairburn notes that they’d need to find a trade partner for Luukkonen, which could be difficult due to the player’s inconsistent form and $4.75MM cap hit. But according to Fairburn, Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff appears to have “lost some faith” in Luukkonen, especially as he has struggled to make timely saves and stay healthy. With veteran Alex Lyon and 25-year-old waiver claim Colten Ellis both under contract through next season, as well as top goalie prospect Devon Levi, it seems the Sabres will have to make a call on which goalies they want to keep and which they would need to move on from at some point in the medium-term future. According to Fairburn, the goalie that they try to move on from could very well be Luukkonen.

Other notes from around the NHL:

  • One prospect who has significantly raised his 2026 draft stock that is University of Miami (Ohio) forward Ilia Morozov, who earlier this week was raised to an “A” grade on NHL Central Scouting’s preliminary watchlist, according to NHL.com’s Mike Morreale. An “A” grade signifies a candidate to be a first-round pick at the draft next year, and when the watchlist was first released, Morozov was assigned a “B” grade by Central Scouting. What appears to have raised Morozov’s stock has been his electric start to the season in the NCAA. Morozov has 11 points through 11 games, a point-per-game rate that is just a shade lower than projected top pick Gavin McKenna. What has helped Morozov garner so much hype has been the fact that he’s not only generating offense in the NCAA (an NCAA that has been flooded with high-level CHL talent thanks to recent rule changes) as a 17-year-old with an August birthdate, but that he’s also doing so as a player listed at 6’3″ 205 pounds on Elite Prospects. If there’s something NHL scouts often can’t resist, it’s a draft prospect who pairs dynamic offensive ability with pro-projectable size and strength. In the early part of the season, that’s exactly what Morozov has been, and his stock is soaring as a result.
  • Looking at last season’s draft, one of the standout players so far has been Pittsburgh Penguins forward Benjamin Kindel, who the team selected No. 11. At the time, most public-facing outlets had Kindel ranked later than the No. 11 slot Pittsburgh selected him at. The Athletic’s Corey Pronman gave the Penguins’ pick of Kindel a “C” grade on draft night, which was tied for his lowest grade for any selection in the 2025 first round. Kindel was ranked No. 22 on Bob McKenzie’s list, No. 21 among North American Skaters by NHL Central Scouting, and No. 33 by Pronman. But the Penguins were far higher on Kindel. Per The Athletic’s Josh Yohe, the Penguins “entered the draft with Kindel ranked as the fourth-best prospect available.” While it remains to be seen if Kindel’s career falls more in line with Pittsburgh’s No. 4 ranking or the public sphere’s evaluation of Kindel as a mid-to-late first-rounder, early returns have favored the Penguins staff. Kindel has looked like an NHL player at just 18 years old this season, scoring seven points in 18 games. He’s just one of three players projected to play all of 2025-26 in the NHL, the other two being Matthew Schaefer and Michael Misa, the top two picks of the draft.

Minor Transactions: 11/20/2025

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It’s a busy day around the hockey world, but especially on the NHL schedule, with 12 games on the docket. The highlights include a rematch of the 2025 first-round playoff series between the Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals, as well as two of the more positive surprise teams of the season (the Chicago Blackhawks and Seattle Kraken) facing off.

While the NHL world is busy with games to play, player movement has been slower. That’s not the case outside the NHL, where a multitude of transactions have been made across the European pro leagues and the North American minors. Here, we’ll run down notable player moves from those leagues:

  • Former NHL defenseman Christian Wolanin has signed an AHL PTO with the Providence Bruins, the AHL affiliate of the Boston Bruins. It’s been something of a surprise to see Wolanin, 30, linger on the free agent market so long. He won the Calder Cup this past spring with the Abbotsford Canucks, playing a key role for the club. He scored 40 points in 58 regular-season games and added 10 points in 17 games during Abbotsford’s playoff run. While finding a place to play in the AHL becomes considerably more difficult for veterans once they are no longer considered “development players” per the AHL’s development rule, it was still surprising to see the 2022-23 Eddie Shore Award Winner (given to the AHL’s Best Defenseman) wait until late November to sign with a team, and especially on a PTO rather than a full-time deal. Beyond being a quality AHLer, Wolanin also brings 86 games of NHL experience to the table.
  • Nikita Artamonov, one of the better prospects whose rights are owned by the Carolina Hurricanes, was loaned from his KHL team, Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod, to Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk. Artamonov was one of the top young wingers in the KHL last season, scoring 22 goals and 39 points in 63 games. His production, and overall usage, has declined sharply this season, as he has just one point through 15 games with Torpedo. That appears to have prompted this loan move, where he figures to get a better opportunity. Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk currently sit fifth in the KHL’s Eastern Conference, but are one of the lower-scoring teams of their caliber. The addition of Artamonov should help them in that area, and a more consistent diet of KHL-level minutes is likely to aid Artamonov’s development.
  • Former Ottawa Senators netminder Kevin Mandolese was released from his AHL PTO with the Charlotte Checkers today, per a team announcement. Mandolese, who began the year on an NHL PTO with the Montreal Canadiens for training camp, played in just one game for the Checkers while on this PTO. In the team’s Nov. 8 contest against the Syracuse Crunch, Mandolese saved 28 of 30 shots to backstop Charlotte to a 3-2 victory. Now he’ll have to find his next place to continue his pro career. Mandolese has played in 86 career AHL games, and has an .898 career save percentage.
  • Former Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins and Texas Stars forward Oula Palve has transferred from EHC Kloten of the Swiss National League to Djurgardens IF of Sweden’s SHL. Per a team announcement, Palve will join Djurgardens on Nov. 30 on a contract running through the end of the 2025-26 season. Palve got off to a slow start with Kloten, scoring just five points across 15 games. He’s been moderately successful in the past in Sweden’s top league (he scored 35 points in 2021-22) but has been at his best in his native Finland. Palve was Liiga’s top scorer in 2023-24 with 64 points in 60 games, a performance that landed him a contract in Switzerland’s top league. But after bouncing between three Swiss clubs during his time in the NL, Palve has now landed back in Sweden where he’ll look to help Djurgardens push to climb the SHL standings.
  • 2022-23 Liiga rookie of the year Niko Huuhtanen, a Tampa Bay Lightning prospect, was reassigned from the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch to the ECHL’s Orlando Solar Bears today. The 22-year-old, who was the 224th pick in the 2021 draft, looked to be one of Tampa’s more promising prospects just a few years after his selection. He scored 46 points in 52 Liiga games in 2023-24, a significant number for a league that has fewer point-per-game individual scorers compared to North American leagues. There was hope that his success in a top European pro league would allow the 6’3″ winger to translate easily to the North American pro game, but that hasn’t occurred to this point. Huuhtanen only managed 20 points in 51 games as an AHL rookie, and while he has three points in five games so far this season, he spent a month injured and two of his three points came in a blowout loss to Belleville on Nov. 1. The Lightning are likely looking to help Huuhtanen rebuild his game, and now he’ll have the chance to do so in the ECHL.
  • A trade was completed in the KHL today, with Sibir Novosibirsk trading cash considerations and young blueliner Yaroslav Belyakov for veteran KHLer Yegor Zaitsev. Zaitsev, 27, is the big prize for Sibir in this deal. He’s a 2017 New Jersey Devils draft pick who has skated in over 400 KHL games in his career. Belyakov has just 18 games of KHL experience to his name but is a 19-year-old who scored 20 points in 31 games at the MHL (junior league) level last season.
  • Veteran Czech netminder Jakub Kovar has signed a one-year contract extension to remain with HC Sparta Praha through 2026-27. The 37-year-old, who is a 2006 Philadelphia Flyers draft pick, has played for Prague since the 2022-23 campaign. He’s a former star goalie in the KHL for Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, reaching the KHL’s All-Star game three times and leading the league in shutouts in 2020-21. Kovar has been his usual reliable self so far in 2025-26, posting a .926 save percentage across 12 games in the Czech Extraliga. Besides the Extraliga and KHL, Kovar also has some experience in the Swiss National League, thanks to a 14-game stint with ZSC Lions in 2021-22.
  • 287-game Liiga veteran Otto Makinen has signed a one-year contract extension with his current club, JYP. The 27-year-old pivot has been a revelation so far in 2025-26, scoring 16 goals in 18 games. For a player normally lauded for his two-way ability rather than his offensive production, and as someone with a career-high of 27 points in Liiga, this level of production is almost entirely unexpected. While it remains to be seen if Makinen will be able to sustain that points production over the course of a full season, this contract extension shows JYP have seen enough and would like to keep him around for at least another year.
  • Just a short period into his second ECHL campaign, forward Adam Robbins has elected to transfer overseas. The 25-year-old forward, who is a former USHL champion with the 2020-21 Chicago Steel, has signed a one-year contract with the Coventry Blaze of the EIHL, the top tier of pro hockey in the United Kingdom. Robbins began his pro career in 2024-25 with the Tahoe Knight Monsters, signing there after a solid final NCAA season with Princeton University. Robbins had scored 29 points in 30 games as a senior at Princeton, but only managed 13 points in 51 games as an ECHL rookie. Now after struggling to find a place in the Cincinnati Cyclones’ lineup in 2025-26, Robbins has decided England will be where he continues his professional career.

Injury Updates: Stolarz, Durzi, Cernak

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Toronto Maple Leafs starting netminder Anthony Stolarz has been out with an upper-body injury for a little over a week, and at the moment it’s unclear at what point he’ll be fit to return to the ice. Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube told the media today, including the Toronto Sun’s Terry Koshan, that Stolarz’s injury was “worse than we thought” and that at this point he does not have a timeline for Stolarz’s return to the ice.

While Berube did go on to add that “maybe tomorrow” Stolarz will be back on the ice, it doesn’t sound as though anything related to his recovery is set in stone. The Maple Leafs could certainly use a healthy Stolarz back on the ice and playing at his best. The team currently sits 27th in the NHL with a 9-9-2 record and averages the second-highest goals-against per game. Stolarz has an .884 save percentage in 13 games this season, but performed much better last year with a .926 save percentage in 34 games.

More injury updates from around the league:

  • The Utah Mammoth are set to get one of their better defensemen back from injury. Cole Bagley of KSL Sports relayed word from head coach Andre Tourigny that injured blueliner Sean Durzi is now considered out on a day-to-day timeline and is nearing a return to the ice. Durzi returned to practice in a regular jersey today, having missed all of the Mammoth’s games since their Oct. 11 contest against the Nashville Predators. Injuries also limited Durzi significantly in 2024-25, as he got into just 30 games. The year before that, he was highly effective, scoring a career-high 41 points in 76 games.
  • When Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak stepped onto the ice for practice this morning, most observers assumed he’d be fit to play in the team’s game tonight against the Edmonton Oilers. That didn’t come to fruition though, as his injury kept him from taking on the Oilers tonight, meaning he’ll miss a second game with an undisclosed ailment. Cernak has been Tampa Bay’s No. 4 defenseman in terms of ice time this season, averaging 19:05 time-on-ice per game including 2:48 on average on the penalty kill, second-highest on the team.

Colorado Avalanche Activate, Reassign Nikita Prishchepov

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The Colorado Avalanche announced today that they have activated forward Nikita Prishchepov off injured reserve and reassigned him to their AHL affiliate, the Colorado Eagles.

Prishchepov has been on injured reserve for all of 2025-26 due to an undisclosed injury. With this transaction, the Avalanche have returned the 21-year-old to the team he spent most of the 2024-25 season with.

2024-25 was Prishchepov’s first season as a member of the Avalanche organization, as he was selected in the seventh round, 217th overall at the 2024 draft as a double-overage player. He had scored 22 goals and 67 points in 63 games with Victoriaville of the QMJHL in 2023-24, and had scored at decent but not stellar rates in the two seasons prior to that.

Due to his status as a seventh-round rookie playing his first year of professional hockey, expectations for Prishchepov’s rookie season were low. He exceeded them by playing in 10 NHL games and scoring 23 points in 51 games in the AHL.

Now healthy and back in the minors, Prishchepov will be tasked with building on his solid rookie season and making a more concentrated push for an NHL call-up over the course of 2025-26.

Penguins’ Philip Tomasino Clears Waivers

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Nov. 20: Despite now being eligible for assignment to AHL Wilkes-Barre, Tomasino was present for practice with the NHL Penguins today and appears to still be on the club’s NHL roster.

He will remain eligible to be reassigned to the minors without needing to be placed on waivers until he plays in 10 cumulative NHL games since when he cleared waivers, or until he spends 30 cumulative days on an NHL roster.

Nov. 19: Tomasino went unclaimed on waivers and can now be assigned to AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, per Friedman.

Nov. 18: According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Pittsburgh Penguins have placed forward Philip Tomasino on waivers today.

This move could end Tomasino’s tenure in Pittsburgh, just one year removed from when the team traded a 2027 fourth-round pick to the Nashville Predators to acquire him. The Penguins likely viewed Tomasino as a player who could potentially benefit from a change of scenery. The 2019 first-round pick was once viewed as one of the Predators’ top prospects. The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler ranked Tomasino No. 2 in the Predators’ system in 2021, writing at the time that he saw “clear top-six upside” and a player who was a “multi-faceted play-driver” that could still find a way to impact games even without consistent puck touches.

After Tomasino’s rookie season in 2021-22, it looked like Tomasino was still on track to live up to the hype he’d garnered as a prospect. He scored 11 goals and 32 points, providing useful secondary scoring to a Predators team that reached the playoffs. Tomasino would go on to score 38 points across his next 72 NHL games in 2022-23 and 2023-24, but those numbers didn’t tell the whole story.

Tomasino’s propensity for defensive lapses and inability to consistently win puck battles or play through the middle of the ice cost him the trust of Predators head coach Andrew Brunette, who took the team to the playoffs and won 47 games in his first season at the helm in Nashville. Tomasino averaged 15:36 time-on-ice under John Hynes the year prior, but his ice time fell to just 12:34 per game under Brunette.

After Tomasino scored just one point in 11 games to start 2024-25, the Predators traded him to Pittsburgh. Initially, the Penguins’ bet seemed to be paying off, as Tomasino scored three goals and four points in his first five games with the Penguins. The rest of the way, it was a relatively similar story to Tomasino’s time in Nashville. He had decent box score numbers (23 points in 50 games, a 38-point 82-game pace) but a lackluster all-around impact.

While it’s come on an accelerated timeline, Tomasino’s time in Pittsburgh appears to have followed a similar track to his time in Nashville. There were those aforementioned early flashes, followed by passable scoring numbers and a sense that he consistently left fans and coaches wanting more.

So far in his second season in Pittsburgh, Tomasino’s time has gone similarly to his later tenure as a Predator. A coaching change happened, and he’s not nearly as trusted by the new head coach, Dan Muse, as he was under former coach Mike Sullivan. Tomasino’s ice time has again declined to just over 12 minutes per night, and he’s found himself a healthy scratch on some nights, just as he was in Nashville.

Over the last few weeks, there was a growing sense in the media that Tomasino’s days on the Penguins’ NHL roster could be numbered. The Athletic’s Josh Yohe reported on Oct. 27 that the Penguins were “not thrilled with Tomasino’s current play,” and that when he was still in Pittsburgh, Sullivan “believed that Tomasino concerned himself too much with his statistics and the scoresheet and not enough with the finer aspects of the game.” Yohe also wrote that Tomasino had been “painfully invisible” in games so far in 2025-26.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Matt Vensel wrote earlier this month about how Muse had implored Tomasino to find a way to consistently “impact the game” and forge his own identity as a player at the NHL level. Vensel wrote at the time that Tomasino “would presumably be on a short list of players they would consider sending down” in the event that the Penguins needed to clear a roster spot if his play did not improve dramatically, and if he remained unable to impact the game in the kind of way Muse wanted him to.

Based on his placement on waivers today, it appears the Penguins may feel Tomasino is not likely to discover that identity or find a way to consistently impact the game in Pittsburgh. It’s important to note, of course, that Tomasino remains just 24 years old, and despite his struggle to establish himself as an NHLer, remains a player with legitimate offensive talents. While things haven’t worked out in Pittsburgh, there are only so many players going around who possess the ability to dazzle with puck skills and offensive ability. While Tomasino has only been able to show off those talents on an inconsistent basis at the NHL level, it’s possible another club could look to claim Tomasino and see if their coaching staff can unlock the potential Tomasino wasn’t able to realize with his prior two teams.

Photos courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Atlantic Injury Updates: Bruins, Maple Leafs, Sabres

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The Boston Bruins have had to deal with their fair share of injuries so far this season, but that hasn’t stopped the club from continuing its longstanding tradition of consistent regular-season success. Through 21 games this season, Boston sits first in the Atlantic Division with a 12-9-0 record, including a 8-2-0 record in their last 10 games. On Saturday in Montreal, though, the Bruins were dealt their most significant injury blow to date this season: Charlie McAvoy took a Noah Dobson one-timer to the face and had to leave the game immediately. Today, Bruins head coach Marco Sturm provided a small update on McAvoy’s status, per Conor Ryan of Boston.com, stating that McAvoy will not travel with the team on its upcoming road trip. In addition, he also said that veteran center Elias Lindholm would travel with the team.

It should not come as any surprise that McAvoy isn’t ready to play just yet, and Sturm did add that an official update on McAvoy’s health will likely be issued either today or tomorrow. In any case, adequately replacing what McAvoy brings to the Bruins will be very difficult. McAvoy averages nearly 24 minutes of ice time per game (good for the team lead) and has 14 points in 19 games. While it won’t help their defense, the fact that Lindholm is nearing a return to the ice should help soften the blow of losing McAvoy. He’s a reliable two-way center whose return should help alleviate some of the pressure the Bruins’ center injuries have placed on veteran Pavel Zacha and rookie Fraser Minten.

Other injury updates from the Atlantic Division:

  • Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving confirmed today, per The Fourth Period’s David Pagnotta, that team captain and franchise center Auston Matthews won’t play today or on Thursday due to the injury he suffered Nov. 11 against the Boston Bruins. Matthews did begin skating again today, but still needs some time before he’s ready to return to game action. The 28-year-old has scored 14 points in 17 games this season, and had 33 goals, 78 points in 67 games in 2024-25. In addition to speaking on Matthews, Treliving also said that veteran defenseman Chris Tanev’s health status will be re-evaluated in a week or two, and head coach Craig Berube confirmed that center Nicolas Roy will miss a few games with an injury of his own. Tanev suffered his injury Nov. 1 while Roy, who has four points in 19 games this season, played in the team’s last game on Saturday.
  • Buffalo Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff announced today that defenseman Michael Kesselring suffered an injury in the team’s game Saturday against the Detroit Red Wings, and “an extended period of time” as a result. The nature of the injury is not yet clear, but Ruff said that Kesselring’s absence would be “on the longer side – weeks.” The big 25-year-old right-shot blueliner, who was acquired this past summer from the Utah Mammoth in the J.J. Peterka trade, has played in nine games this season. In better injury news, Ruff also announced that forward Zach Benson will return to skating in a non-contact capacity

Calgary Flames Claim John Beecher

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The Calgary Flames have claimed center John Beecher off of waivers from the Boston Bruins, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported today.

The Flames held the top waiver priority slot due to their place in the standings, meaning it’s possible more teams placed a claim on Beecher, a 2019 first-round pick, than just Calgary.

Per Derek Willis, the Flames’ radio play-by-play commentator, Calgary is likely to play tonight in Chicago with freshly called up forward Sam Morton as their fourth-line center. While the undrafted 26-year-old has been a strong AHL contributor since signing out of Minnesota State of the NCAA, he has just one prior game of NHL experience.

By claiming Beecher, the Flames have added to their roster a player who is not only younger than Morton, but also brings a considerably greater level of experience in a fourth-line center role. The 6’3″ pivot broke into the NHL on a full-time basis in 2023-24, and played in a total of 52 games that year and 12 playoff games. Upon his arrival from the team’s AHL affiliate, the Providence Bruins, Beecher was also a plug-and-play option for the Bruins’ penalty kill, averaging 1:40 shorthanded time-on-ice per game as a rookie.

Beecher maintained his fourth-line, penalty-killing role in 2024-25, a season where he set career-highs in games played (72) and points (11). But Beecher has not been able to take a step forward and become the kind of reliable shutdown defensive center who can elevate his value proposition to a team despite fourth-line usage.

With that said, despite the fact that the Bruins elected to waive him, Beecher still has some positive, valuable qualities as a player. He plays extremely fast for someone his size, and has a career faceoff win rate of 53%. For a Flames team that doesn’t figure to enter into the playoff picture in 2025-26, this waiver claim gives the team an opportunity to see if it can develop Beecher into a more valuable all-around player than the Bruins were able to over the course of his 136 games with the club.

Worth noting is that Beecher is a pending restricted free agent, carrying a $900K AAV. If the Flames elect to qualify him, he will hold arbitration rights.

Dallas Stars Activate Jamie Benn

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The Dallas Stars announced today that captain Jamie Benn has been activated off of long-term injured reserve (LTIR). The move positions Benn to make his 2025-26 season debut as soon as tonight, when the Stars take on the New York Islanders.

Benn, who has very rarely missed time due to injury throughout his nearly 1,200-game NHL career, missed the early portion of the season due to a collapsed lung he suffered in the preseason. Benn missed only two games in 2024-25, and played in all 82 Stars games in each campaign from 2021-22 through 2023-24.

While the 36-year-old isn’t what he once was on the ice (he won the Art Ross Trophy in 2014-15 as the league’s top scorer) he’s still a valuable contributor to a Stars team that has been among the league’s best in the 2020’s. Benn scored 16 goals and 49 points last season while averaging 15:18 time-on-ice per game, with some regular power-play time and sporadic usage on the penalty kill.

Benn’s return to the Stars’ lineup comes at a good time for the team, as they are currently dealing with quite a few injuries. While much of the damage lies with the team’s defense (both Thomas Harley and Nils Lundkvist are out) there are still absences on offense.

Veteran forward Matt Duchene is currently on LTIR, meaning the Stars have had to make do without their leading scorer from last season. With today’s activation, the Stars receive crucial offensive reinforcement and get back from injury one of their key on and off-ice leaders.

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