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Penguins, Sabres Swap Bennett MacArthur, Colton Poolman

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The Penguins traded winger Bennett MacArthur to the Sabres on Friday in exchange for defenseman Colton Poolman, both teams confirmed. The swap of minor-leaguers comes in conjunction with a corresponding trade between Pittsburgh’s and Buffalo’s AHL affiliates in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and Rochester, which saw 25-year-old winger Jagger Joshua head from WBS to the Sabres’ system for future considerations.

MacArthur’s short stint in the Penguins organization comes to an end with the move. An undrafted free agent signing by the Lightning in 2022, the 23-year-old spent most of his time in the ECHL before the Bolts traded him to Pittsburgh for Lukas Svejkovsky last June. Svejkovsky and Tampa Bay have since mutually terminated his contract.

As he had in Tampa, MacArthur failed to crack the AHL roster in the Penguins organization. He’s spent the entirety of this season on assignment to ECHL Wheeling, where he’s struggled immensely with only three goals and seven points in 28 appearances. He had 32 points in 55 games for ECHL Orlando and Allen last season while under contract with the Lightning.

MacArthur will report to the Sabres’ AHL affiliate in Rochester for now, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see him assigned to their ECHL affiliate in Jacksonville in short order. The Prince Edward Island native will be a restricted free agent this summer and has no points in six career AHL games with the Syracuse Crunch.

Coming to Pennsylvania is Poolman, the younger brother of LTIR-bound Avalanche defenseman Tucker Poolman. The 29-year-old inked a two-way deal with Buffalo over the summer after four seasons in the Flames organization but hasn’t established himself as a regular in Rochester, logging just one assist and a -2 rating in five appearances thus far.

He heads to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in search of more playing time, while the Pens organization hopes he can rediscover the strong stay-at-home play he exhibited with the Flames’ AHL affiliates in Stockton and Calgary. He’s two years removed from a career-high 14-point, +18 rating season in 64 games.

Hurricanes Activate Jack Drury From Injured Reserve

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The Hurricanes took center Jack Drury off injured reserve on Friday, according to the team. Carolina reassigned winger Juha Jaaska to AHL Chicago in a corresponding transaction. Their active roster count remains at 23.

Drury, 24, has been out since Dec. 10 after undergoing hand surgery as a result of a blocked shot in the first period of a game against the Sharks. Head coach Rod Brind’Amour told reporters one week later that his surgery would keep him out for at least four weeks. Instead, Drury returns to the active roster two and a half weeks after surgery and three and a half weeks past the initial injury.

The Hurricanes only placed Drury on injured reserve on Monday when they needed roster space to recall defenseman Riley Stillman in the wake of Shayne Gostisbehere’s upper-body injury. Since the placement was retroactive to the date of his initial injury and he’d already been out for more than seven days, Drury was eligible to come off IR at any time.

Drury skated in 28 games for Carolina before landing on IR, posting three goals and six assists for nine points with a +4 rating. He averaged 13:09 per game, a career-high aside from a two-game stint in 2021-22, and is on pace to win a career-best 56.4% of his draws.

Carolina will have Drury back in the lineup tomorrow when they host the Wild, presumably in a fourth-line role between Jackson Blake and Eric Robinson. He’s spent the vast majority of the season with at least one of that pair on his wings.

Meanwhile, Jaaska returns to the AHL after making his NHL debut in last night’s win over the Panthers. He logged 13 shifts for 8:21 of ice time, shifting to center and winning four out of five draws while recording three hits.

The Hurricanes signed Jaaska, 26, to a one-year entry-level contract worth $850K back in April after he spent the previous nine seasons with Finland’s HIFK. He has seven goals and nine assists for 16 points in 25 AHL games this season.

Bruins Sign Mark Kastelic To Three-Year Extension

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The Bruins signed depth forward Mark Kastelic to a three-year, $4.7MM extension on Friday, according to a team release. The deal carries a $1.57MM cap hit and keeps him in Boston through the 2027-28 campaign.

With the signing, Kastelic earns the most lucrative contract of his career and will earn seven figures per season for the first time. The 25-year-old was in the final season of a two-year, $1.67MM extension he signed with the Senators in 2022 before they traded him to the Bruins in the Linus Ullmark deal last June.

The Phoenix native has been a good fit in Boston, already setting a new career-high in assists with seven through 39 games. His 11 points are also tied with his previous career high, set in Ottawa in 65 games in 2022-23, and he’s averaging a career-best 11:27 per game while winning 55.2% of his faceoffs.

Kastelic, a natural center, stands at 6’4″ and 227 lbs and has been one of the league’s most physical players. He leads the league outright with 76 PIMs and ranks second with 151 hits, on pace to record a whopping 317 over a full season.

That physicality has led to some pretty spectacular defensive numbers for Kastelic. He’s centered a fourth line between Cole Koepke and John Beecher for a good portion of the campaign, a unit that’s controlled 65% of expected goals in 168 minutes together, per MoneyPuck. Among forward lines with at least 150 minutes of ice time this season, that Koepke-Kastelic-Beecher line has yielded just 1.25 xGA/60, the best in the league by a significant margin.

It would be shocking if that play keeps up on a year-to-year basis, but it’s still rightfully earned Kastelic a multi-year commitment to stick with a situation that’s been a win for both sides so far. Kastelic avoids reaching restricted free agency next summer and will walk to unrestricted free agency upon expiry in 2028.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Maple Leafs Reclaim Dakota Mermis Off Waivers From Utah

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Jan. 3: The Maple Leafs reclaimed Mermis off waivers from Utah on Friday, PuckPedia reports. The team later announced that he’s been reassigned to the AHL, indicating they were the only team to submit a claim.

Jan. 2: The Utah Hockey Club placed defenseman Dakota Mermis on waivers on Thursday with intent to assign him to AHL Tucson, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports.

The placement could spell the end of Mermis’ brief tenure in the Beehive State. The club claimed him off waivers from the Maple Leafs on Dec. 12 when Toronto was attempting to sneak him to their AHL affiliate on a permanent assignment after a weeks-long conditioning stint.

Mermis, 30, ended up playing just one game for Utah, logging a -2 rating in 10:47 of ice time against the Ducks on Dec. 22. He was a healthy scratch on eight other occasions before landing on the waiver wire today.

When they claimed Mermis, Utah needed some veteran help to offset injuries to Robert Bortuzzo and Maveric Lamoureux on the back end, in addition to previous IR placements for Sean Durzi and John Marino. With Bortuzzo set to return tonight against the Flames after missing nearly a month with a lower-body injury, though, Mermis’ services as a healthy extra were no longer needed.

Bortuzzo was on IR, so Utah needs to open up a roster spot for his return. Mermis can’t clear the roster until tomorrow, so they’ll likely place netminder Connor Ingram, who’s been out since Nov. 18 with an upper-body injury, on IR retroactively to accommodate Bortuzzo’s activation.

Mermis inked a one-year, one-way deal with the Leafs in free agency but never suited up for them thanks to a jaw injury he sustained in training camp. If Toronto wants him back and is the only team to submit a claim, they may send him directly to the AHL without placing him on waivers again.

Now in his eighth NHL season, Mermis has accumulated 12 points and a +3 rating in 75 career games. A career-high 47 of those appearances came last season with the Wild, just the second time in his career he logged double-digit games and mostly avoided AHL assignments.

Maple Leafs Place Auston Matthews On IR

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Jan. 3: Rifai is back to the minors today, the team announced. Ekman-Larsson is fully recovered from his illness, so Rifai’s services as a healthy extra are no longer needed. There’s no corresponding move, so the Leafs free up a roster spot.

Dec. 31: The Toronto Maple Leafs needed available depth before their matchup against the New York Islanders this afternoon requiring a formal roster move. The team announced they’ve placed Auston Matthews on injured reserve (retroactive to Dec. 20th) and recalled defenseman Marshall Rifai from their AHL affiliate, the Toronto Marlies.

Hindering any new concerns regarding Matthews’ injury, the Maple Leafs also announced defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and forward Pontus Holmberg won’t play today because of the flu. Matthews is eligible to return from the injured reserve at any point but two additional players sidelined necessitated a formal roster move.

There’s no expectation Matthews has suffered a setback in his road back from an upper-body injury. He’s missed five straight games after missing nine earlier in the year but has recently returned to skating.

Still, there should be some concern about Matthews’ constant slate of injuries this season. He’s still been his normal self when healthy scoring 11 goals and 23 points in 24 games this year but his availability is important first and foremost. Thankfully for Toronto, they performed well without their captain this season as they’re one win away from tying the Florida Panthers for the lead in the Atlantic Division.

Although he didn’t suit up in his first go-around, the roster move is the second time Rifai has enjoyed an NHL call-up this month. He’ll likely know by warm-ups if he’ll be in the lineup tonight but Toronto still has six healthy defensemen without Ekman-Larsson.

The Harvard University alumnus has been a serviceable defenseman for the Marlies for the past three years and made his NHL debut with the Maple Leafs last year. He’s registered eight goals and 39 points in 150 career games for AHL Toronto.

Senators Reassign Nikolas Matinpalo

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The Senators announced Friday that they’ve reassigned defenseman Nikolas Matinpalo to AHL Belleville. With no corresponding transaction, Ottawa’s active roster is now at 22 players.

Matinpalo, 26, had been on the Senators’ roster since last weekend. He’s been around as an extra option on and off over the past few weeks with Artem Zub sidelined with a foot fracture, but after the Russian veteran returned to action last night against the Stars, his services are no longer needed.

Now in his second season in North America, Matinpalo made his season debut on this latest recall, skating 10:24 and taking a minor penalty in a win over the Wild on Dec. 29. The stay-at-home defender has spent most of the campaign in Belleville, where he has two goals and five assists for seven points with 10 PIMs and a minus-four rating.

Checking in at 6’3″ and 212 lbs, Matinpalo arrived in Ottawa in the summer of 2023 as an undrafted free agent signing from Finland’s Ässät. He skated in four contests for the Sens last year in a depth role, logging a plus-one rating and a pair of shots on goal while averaging a paltry seven minutes per game. He was quite effective in a shutdown role in the minors, posting a team-high +15 rating in 67 games for the B-Sens along with 14 points.

Matinpalo became waiver-eligible this season. Since he’s been rostered for under 30 days and played fewer than 10 NHL games since clearing during the preseason, he doesn’t need them again for today’s transaction.

Maple Leafs Sign Philippe Myers To Two-Year Extension

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The Maple Leafs signed defenseman Philippe Myers to a two-year, $1.7MM extension on Friday, per a team release. The deal carries an $850K cap hit for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 campaigns while keeping him off next summer’s unrestricted free agent market. It’s paid entirely in base salary each season with no signing bonuses, per PuckPedia.

Myers, 27, has skated in a semi-regular role for Toronto over the last month and a half. After serving as a scratch in all but one of the Leafs’ first 23 games, he’s played in 10 out of 16 contests since the beginning of December, including a five-game run at the beginning of last month and suiting up in both of their wins against the Islanders over the past few days.

It’s the most extended leash the 6’5″ righty has seen at the NHL level in over two years. He played in 11 games with the Lightning over the first two months of the 2022-23 campaign before they waived him and assigned him to the AHL for the remainder of the season, and his five games with Tampa in the 2023-24 campaign came over multiple short-term call-ups.

Myers has skated almost exclusively alongside Morgan Rielly in his 11 appearances this season, posting two assists and a +1 rating while averaging 17:08 per game. The duo has worked quite well together, controlling 59% of expected goals – tops among Leafs pairings with at least 50 minutes together, per MoneyPuck.

Early on, Myers has shown he can be the fringe top-four option he once was in the early days of his career with the Flyers, at least when used with a more offensively-inclined partner. Toronto’s front office evidently agrees, opting to keep him around as an affordable depth option for the next two seasons.

Weighing in at 219 lbs, Myers has been one of the Leafs’ most physical options on the blue line as well. His 9.23 hits per 60 minutes rank second among Toronto defenders, just behind Simon Benoit’s 9.54.

At the very least, Myers has seemed to establish a floor as a reliable extra defender and will look to stick around as a roster fixture after spending parts of the last four seasons in the minors. A multi-year, one-way commitment is a big step toward solidifying that.

It’s also a good return on investment for Toronto, who inked him to a one-year, one-way deal worth $775K over the summer despite him spending all but a handful of games last season in the AHL. He has logged three games for the AHL’s Toronto Marlies this season, posting a +2 rating, but they came on a conditioning stint in November, not a full-on demotion.

Myers becomes the seventh defenseman under contract on a one-way deal next season for Toronto, joining Rielly, Benoit, Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jake McCabe, and Marshall Rifai. He’ll be a UFA upon expiry in 2027.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Guerin: Wild Will Be Cautious With Kirill Kaprizov’s Return

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The Wild have been without superstar winger Kirill Kaprizov since the holiday break with a lower-body issue. It’s caused him to miss four games and will hold him out for at least one more, although general manager Bill Guerin says they’ll keep him sidelined for as long as the team needs to in order to allow him to fully recover.

“The thing is that we don’t want him to come back and push through,” Guerin told Michael Russo of The Athletic on Thursday. “He could, but it could make something worse.”

As Guerin relayed, the Wild have already been burned once this season by a player returning too soon into their recovery from a groin problem – which Kaprizov is speculated to have, but Guerin wouldn’t confirm. Depth winger Jakub Lauko sustained a groin injury against the Jets on Nov. 25 and returned to the lineup after missing six games, but reaggravated the muscle issue less than a week later and remains on injured reserve without a return date on the horizon.

“We need [Kaprizov] for the long haul,” Guerin continued. “We don’t just need him for a couple games in January. We need him to get healthy and feel better, so we’re trying to do the right thing and just look at it from the long point of view.”

Before his injury, Kaprizov was tracking to finish in the top 10 in Hart Trophy voting for the second time in his career. The dynamic-as-ever 27-year-old remains fifth in the league with 1.47 points per game after notching 23 goals and 27 assists for 50 points through 34 games.

Twenty of those 23 goals have come at even strength, still tied with the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl for the league lead. His +21 rating is also still second among forwards behind the Golden Knights’ Jack Eichel (+23) despite his absence.

The Wild have gone 3-1-0 in their star scorer’s absence, including an impressive 4-3 road shootout win over the Eastern Conference-leading Capitals last night. Any points they can compile in the short term with Kaprizov and top-four defensemen Jacob Middleton and Jared Spurgeon out of the lineup are crucial to their chances of holding onto the top-three placing in the Central Division that they’ve held for most of the year.

With all the injury-related drama surrounding Minnesota recently, they’re still in quite a good place in the standings. Their 52 points and .667 points percentage are both third in the Western Conference and second in the Central. Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic’s projection model still projects them to finish with 105 points, narrowly edging out the Avalanche and Stars to hold onto second place in the division, even factoring in the expected length of their injured players’ absences.

A good portion of Minnesota’s success in the interim must be awarded to the resurgent play of netminder Filip Gustavsson, whose .924 SV% ranks third in the league among qualified netminders after a trying 2023-24 season. That includes a .937 mark in his three starts since the holiday break.

He’ll need to keep that up with the Wild’s offense clicking at a middling 2.95 goals per game, which is only good enough for 20th in the league despite Kaprizov only missing 12.8% of their schedule thus far. Marco Rossi has been Minnesota’s top scorer since the break in Kaprizov’s absence, notching three goals and a pair of assists in his four outings.

No Contract Talks Between Penguins And Marcus Pettersson

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Dan Kingerski of Pittsburgh Hockey Now writes that the Pittsburgh Penguins have yet to engage in contract talks with pending unrestricted free-agent defenseman Marcus Pettersson. Kingerski adds that he doesn’t believe there are any talks scheduled, which would signal that the Penguins intend to trade the 28-year-old prior to the NHL Trade Deadline on March 7th.

The situation is a complicated one for Pittsburgh, particularly after they climbed back into the playoff picture with a solid stretch of play in December. However, getting just two of a possible six points against the Islanders and Red Wings might make general manager Kyle Dubas’ decision to trade Pettersson a little bit easier. The Penguins sit a point back of Ottawa for the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference, but the Senators hold two games in hand.

Pettersson missed 17 days after falling to injury in a mid-December game against the Senators and returned on New Year’s Eve but struggled to get to his game as he was on the ice for three goals against. Overall, Pettersson’s play has been a tad below his usual production, though his offensive numbers have been okay, posting two goals and 11 assists in 33 games. Even with his uneven play, Pettersson remains perhaps the only steadying defensive presence on the team’s blue line. His looming free agency could be playing a role in his play dropping off, but it could also be attributed to the Penguins’ poor team defense.

Pittsburgh has been stockpiling future assets for the past year and given the direction Dubas has gone in, and the lack of contract talks, it seems like a foregone conclusion that Pettersson will be in a different uniform by the first week of March.

An Unlikely Option For The Maple Leafs

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Nick Kypreos of Sportsnet wrote a column for the Toronto Star wondering if the Toronto Maple Leafs might place captain Auston Matthews on long-term injured reserve later this season if his injury concerns continue. The 27-year-old hasn’t played since December 20th and has dealt with a nagging upper-body injury since the start of the season. Currently, he has no return date set, which adds to the speculation surrounding his health.

If Toronto were to place Matthews on LTIR, it would open up $13.25MM in cap space, and Kypreos wonders if Toronto might use that room under the salary cap to chase another top center. Toronto would only be able to do so if Matthews missed the remainder of the regular season, but it would not be unprecedented as the Tampa Bay Lightning had a similar situation in 2021 with star forward Nikita Kucherov when he didn’t play a single game during a shortened regular season and returned for the playoffs.

A move like that for Toronto would give them a huge boost for the playoffs and perhaps take some pressure off Matthews when he returns. It could also allow Toronto an opportunity to address their top defensive pairing, as they haven’t been able to give Morgan Reilly a steady defensive partner this season. The Maple Leafs started the year with Chris Tanev on the top pairing, but he has since moved to the second pairing and formed a very formidable unit with Jake McCabe.

While a move like that would give Toronto a boost, it would be a tough sell for Matthews who is set to lead Team USA into the 4 Nations Face-Off next month. His participation in the tournament is contingent on his health, but it will be a huge concern for the Maple Leafs if he returns before the tournament and reaggravates the injury once again.

Things are never boring when it comes to the Maple Leafs and the uncertainty around Matthews, as well as a team that is desperate for some semblance of playoff success should make for an interesting few months in Toronto.

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