Golden Knights To Activate Mark Stone
The Vegas Golden Knights will have their captain back tonight. According to Danny Webster of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Golden Knights will activate Mark Stone from the injured reserve ahead of tonight’s contest against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and he’ll make his return to the lineup.
Stone is only one week removed from being placed on the injured reserve, although it was made retroactive to March 1st. He has been managing an upper-body injury, his second of the season, that has affected his games played.
The 33-year-old winger has been exceptional for Vegas this year when healthy. Despite missing 22 games due to injury, Stone remains third on the team in scoring with 21 goals and 60 points with a +17 rating. Given how the team has been playing lately, they could certainly use a boost to the lineup.
Since returning from the Olympics, the Golden Knights have managed a 2-6-0 record, dropping to third place in the Pacific Division. During that stretch, the team has only managed 2.38 GF/G, meaning an influx of offense from Stone will be welcomed.
Assuming Stone can remain healthy for Vegas’ 17 remaining games in the 2025-26 season, he should help the team capture its fifth Pacific Division title. At the time of writing, the Golden Knights are three points back of the Anaheim Ducks and tied with the Edmonton Oilers, although the Oilers have the edge in a tiebreaker.
Still, even if Vegas is unable to finish atop the Pacific Division, they shouldn’t be in any danger of falling out of the postseason conversation. Despite their recent performance, the team holds a five-point lead over the Los Angeles Kings, along with five additional wins in regulation.
Lightning Acquire Ian Mitchell From Red Wings
The Detroit Red Wings have acquired forwards Wojciech Stachowiak and Michael Milne from the Tampa Bay Lightning for defenseman Ian Mitchell. Each player will report to their respective AHL clubs.
It’s a wholly understandable trade by the Red Wings. Now, without Dylan Larkin and Andrew Copp for the next few weeks, Detroit has recalled Sheldon Dries, Dominik Shine, Eduards Tralmaks, and Austin Watson over the last few days, leaving the Grand Rapids Griffins without some of their best forwards.
Although Stachowiak isn’t a well-known talent in North America, he certainly is in Germany. The 26-year-old winger has played for Germany in several IIHF World Championships over the past few years, scoring seven goals and accumulating 21 points in 25 games. He also played for Germany at the recent Olympics, recording one assist in two contests.
In 38 games for the Syracuse Crunch this season, Stachowiak has recorded nine goals and 17 points with a -6 rating. Although it’s his first time playing professionally in North America, Stachowiak spent two years at Michigan State University in the late 2010s, scoring four goals and five points in 40 games.
At 23 years old, Milne is a more recognized talent in the AHL compared to Stachowiak. He’s in his fourth professional season after being selected with the 89th overall pick of the 2022 NHL Draft by the Minnesota Wild. Throughout his AHL career, he has registered 32 goals and 66 points in 191 games with a -35 rating, mostly spent with the Iowa Wild.
Of all the players changing hands in this trade, Mitchell has the most NHL experience. He was in his first year with the Red Wings organization after signing as an unrestricted free agent last summer. In 45 games for the Griffins, the 27-year-old veteran has scored four goals and 20 points with a +27 rating.
Before his time in Michigan, Mitchell spent much of his career with the Chicago Blackhawks organization. Earning much of his NHL experience with the Blackhawks, Mitchell recorded four goals and 16 points in 82 games with a -21 rating. After the 2022-23 season, Chicago traded Mitchell, along with Alec Regula, to the Boston Bruins for Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno.
Rangers Sign Brody Lamb To Entry-Level Contract
According to a team announcement, the New York Rangers have signed forward Brody Lamb to a two-year entry-level contract. He’ll spend the rest of the 2025-26 campaign on an amateur tryout agreement with the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack.
It’s been a few years since the Rangers selected Lamb with the 104th overall pick of the 2021 NHL Draft. Since then, he spent one year with the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers during the 2021-22 campaign before spending the last four at the University of Minnesota.
Although he wasn’t very effective during his freshman campaign, Lamb became one of the most consistent scorers for the Golden Gophers. Throughout his last three seasons at the program, Lamb scored 43 goals and 83 points in 113 games with a -6 rating. His collegiate career ended last night against Penn State University in the opening round of the Big Ten Tournament.
It’ll be interesting to see how much playing time Lamb will get with the Wolf Pack to finish off the 2025-26 season. Despite being in last place in the Atlantic Division, Hartford is only four points back of a playoff spot with 16 games remaining on the schedule.
According to Mollie Walker of the New York Post, who originally announced the signing, the Rangers indicated that Lamb will be allowed to compete for a spot in the lineup. Given that the team is 28th in the league in goals scored, the Wolf Pack may benefit from adding a shoot-first forward into the lineup on a nightly basis.
Sharks Sign Kyle Chauvette To Amateur Tryout
The Sharks have signed University of New Hampshire starter Kyle Chauvette to an amateur tryout, per Curtis Pashelka of the Bay Area News Group. He will serve as the emergency backup to Alex Nedeljkovic for tonight’s game against the Bruins. Yaroslav Askarov is unable to dress due to an undisclosed injury that became apparent at morning skate today. As Askarov wasn’t ruled out until this morning, San Jose didn’t have time to get an AHL recall coast-to-coast in time for tonight’s contest.
If an injury to Nedeljkovic forces Chauvette into action, it won’t be a miracle story like we’ve seen in the past with EBUGs like David Ayres and Scott Foster. Chauvette just wrapped up his senior season of college hockey yesterday, when UNH’s season ended in the first round of the Hockey East tournament against Northeastern. The 24-year-old transferred to his hometown school last summer after spending the first three seasons of his NCAA career at Union College, where he was named an ECAC Third Team All-Star in 2024-25.
Still, since Chauvette doesn’t have any professional experience, he’s eligible to dress for San Jose as an EBUG. The 6’1″, 190-lb netminder put up respectable numbers behind a New Hampshire squad that finished second-last in the conference, logging a .902 SV% and 2.63 GAA in 34 appearances with a 13-19-1 record and five shutouts. He appeared in all but one game for the Wildcats and should have multiple pro offers in the coming weeks with his NCAA career in the rearview.
The question for the Sharks, still in the thick of a wild-card race in the West, becomes how long they’ll be without Askarov. The 23-year-old has arrived as a full-time NHLer and, while he’s started 40 out of 62 games, the workload was likely going to shift more toward the veteran Nedeljkovic down the stretch anyway.
The 2020 first-round pick has had his moments this season and has received enough goal support to register a 19-17-3 record, but his .886 SV% and 3.56 GAA are some of the worst marks in the league among starters. His -11.2 goals saved above expected this season are eighth-worst in the league, per MoneyPuck.
Compared to Nedeljkovic’s .900 SV%, 2.83 GAA, and 0.5 GSAx in 22 starts and five relief appearances, Askarov was in danger of losing out on some starts with San Jose in a tight race with the Kings, Kraken, and Predators for the second wild-card slot in the West – the Mammoth are virtually locked into the first wild-card slot at this rate with an 81% likelihood of ending up there. Askarov’s recent play – he only has a .869 SV% since the beginning of February – may have begged the question of whether Nedeljkovic should be the Sharks’ Game 1 starter if they emerge from the field.
It’s also worth noting that those numbers from Nedeljkovic have come with him rarely making back-to-back starts – something he hasn’t done since Askarov was out with an illness in December. How will he perform in an increased workload if Askarov misses more than a couple of games?
It’s now where the Sharks’ acquisition of Laurent Brossoit from the Blackhawks in January could pay dividends. The 32-year-old hasn’t seen NHL action since the 2023-24 season due to various lower-body surgeries but has been excellent for both Rockford and San Jose in the AHL this season and is arguably the best veteran third-string option in the league. In 14 games since the trade, he has a .915 SV% and 2.48 GAA for the Barracuda with an 11-2-1 record.
Flames Recall Matvei Gridin, Hunter Brzustewicz
March 12: Brzustewicz was initially recalled under emergency conditions, but his recall has now been converted to a standard one, Pat Steinberg of Sportsnet 960 reports. Calgary now has three regular recalls remaining until the end of the season.
March 8: Two top prospects will bolster the Calgary Flames roster after shaking up their lineup at the Trade Deadline. Winger Matvei Gridin and defenseman Hunter Brzustewicz have both been recalled per a team announcement. The duo will support the Flames as they embark on a five-game road trip beginning on Monday.
Gridin was returned to the minor leagues after a five-game stint in the NHL that stretched from late February to the NHL Trade Deadline. His assignment ensures that Gridin will be eligible for the Calder Cup Playoffs, though the Calgary Wranglers currently sit second-to-last in the AHL’s Pacific Division. Gridin has been a major part of their offense any time he is in the minor leagues. He has 29 points in 37 games this season, good for the sixth-highest points-per-game average on the Wranglers.
The dynamic scorer has has ups-and-downs in his trek to bring that scoring to the top flight. Gridin has a stout seven points in the first 18 games of his NHL career. More than half of those points – five – came during a nine-game stretch from mid-January to early-February, before he was returned to the AHL. It took four games for Gridin to get back onto an NHL scoresheet after he was called back up in late February. That has been the hot-and-cold streak that Calgary’s top wing prospect has ridden through his first pro season.
It was Brzustewicz who stepped up in the Wranglers’ latest action, netting an assist on Saturday night to snap a nine-game scoring drought. That streak began one game after Brzustewicz was reassigned to the minor leagues, after he recorded an assist in his first game back. He, too, has had an up-and-down year, with two points in 18 NHL games and 14 points in 34 AHL games. The puck-moving defenseman has honed his ability to make plays in either end of the ice, while spotlighting his ability to move pucks through the neutral zone – the bread-and-butter of Brzustewicz’s game.
Brzustewicz could have the easier path to a lineup role after Zach Whitecloud left Saturday’s win over the Carolina Hurricanes in the first period. That injury should bump Zayne Parekh and Brayden Pachal up a spot in the lineup, opening room for Brzustewicz to play in his first NHL game since January from the bottom pair. Gridin will have to compete with newcomers Ryan Strome and Victor Olofsson for minutes in Calgary’s bottom-six. The rookie could be the odd-man-out as the Flames look to shore up their center depth. If he sits, Gridin will offer a nice bit of offensive upside from the press box and could potentially replace bruisers Adam Klapka or Ryan Lomberg on the fourth line.
Penguins Recall Alexander Alexeyev
The Penguins announced today that defender Alexander Alexeyev has been recalled from AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Fellow rearguard Ryan Graves has been sent to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on a conditioning stint in a corresponding move, although he’ll continue to count on Pittsburgh’s active roster with his full cap impact while in the minors.
Alexeyev, 26, signed a league-minimum deal with the Pens last offseason. He cleared waivers to start the year and has been in and out of the lineup for WBS since then, only playing in 29 out of 57 games. He has three goals and four assists for seven points with a +4 rating.
Pittsburgh is trying to keep its depth defenders fresh amid a rash of injuries that’s seen Samuel Girard and Jack St. Ivany sidelined, although the latter’s been out for a while and is joined by Graves in WBS on a conditioning loan. They’ve dialed in their depth chart this late in the year, meaning Graves, who’s slotted in as a #7/8 option, has not gotten into a game in nearly two months after missing some time with a lower-body injury. They want to get him into some games in the minors, but don’t want to travel without an extra defender in case a last-minute injury comes up, so Alexeyev will arrive today to fill that role.
The 6’4″, 229-lb Alexeyev was brought in to provide some shutdown depth. He once had some real upside, evidenced by the Capitals selecting him 31st overall in the 2018 draft, but it was obvious he wasn’t on the path toward being a full-time NHLer when Washington non-tendered him last summer. Considering the minimal impact he’s had in an AHL role this year, too, he certainly won’t be looking at another one-way deal this summer if he does receive more NHL offers. The Russian could very well entertain offers to return home, where he last played for Salavat Yulaev Ufa in the Kontinental Hockey League on loan from the Caps in the 2020-21 season.
As for Graves, he’s wrapping up the third season of the six-year, $27MM deal he landed from Pittsburgh in free agency in 2023. He’s still not close to warranting his $4.5MM cap hit, but has posted significantly improved defensive results for the Pens in a more limited leverage role this year after a disastrous 2024-25 season. In 19 showings, he’s notched a goal and a -2 rating with 15 hits. The boxcar stats don’t jump off the page, but his under-the-hood numbers are the best they’ve been in quite some time – controlling 52.2% of shot attempts at 5-on-5 in defensive-minded deployment.
Predators Acquire Dalton Bancroft, Massimo Rizzo From Bruins
The Bruins have acquired left-winger Navrin Mutter from the Predators in exchange for right-winger Dalton Bancroft and center Massimo Rizzo, both teams announced. As the deal was completed after last Friday’s trade deadline, all three players are ineligible to be recalled for the remainder of this season. However, they’ll report to their new AHL affiliates ahead of tomorrow’s trade/loan deadline in that league.
All three players are in the last year of their deals. While Bancroft and Rizzo will remain under Nashville’s control this summer as pending restricted free agents, Mutter is a pending Group VI unrestricted free agent and can reach the open market. He’s three days away from his 25th birthday and was an undrafted free agent signing by Nashville back in 2022 out of OHL Kitchener.
Since then, Mutter has spent the last four seasons playing almost exclusively for AHL Milwaukee, aside from a half-year demotion to ECHL Atlanta in 2023-24. The 6’3″, 203-lb winger essentially amounts to minor-league enforcer depth. He was never a big offensive producer in juniors, and that hasn’t changed in Milwaukee, where he has just four goals and 20 points in 149 career games but owns a whopping 299 penalty minutes.
Nashville takes a similarly-cast player back in the deal in the 25-year-old Bancroft. He’s a few pounds heavier than Mutter but has the same frame and play style. He’s in just his first professional season, though, signing with Boston out of Cornell University last season, also as a UDFA. He clicked at over a point per game for the Big Red as a junior but has just two goals and an assist in 39 games for Providence since debuting last spring, along with 30 penalty minutes.
The most dynamic threat in the swap is Rizzo, who Boston had just acquired from the Flyers on deadline day last week. The 24-year-old pivot only played once for Providence before being sent on the move again. A standout over three years at the University of Denver, Rizzo only managed 16 points in 48 games for Philly’s AHL affiliate last season and had spent the entirety of this year in the ECHL before the trade, where he had a 6-16–22 scoring line in 29 games. He’s the only player in this swap who likely has a sniff at an NHL future, and even that’s a stretch, but the Preds are nonetheless hoping he can rediscover his offensive confidence in Milwaukee over the final few weeks of the season before determining whether to give him a qualifying offer.
Sharks Recall Igor Chernyshov
The Sharks announced today that they’ve recalled left winger Igor Chernyshov from AHL San Jose. With an ample number of healthy forwards on their roster, Chernyshov is already the third of the five post-deadline standard recalls San Jose can make, joining defensemen Nolan Allan and Nick Leddy.
Chernyshov, 20, was the 33rd overall pick by San Jose in the 2024 draft. He has been on an absolutely torrid trajectory ever since. A dynamic 6’2″ power forward, he spent all of his pre-draft development in his native Russia but opted to immediately sign with San Jose and come to North America. Instead of assigning him to the AHL right away last season, the Sharks loaned him to the OHL’s Saginaw Spirit to make a more comfortable adjustment in junior hockey.
While Chernyshov lost a good portion of the season to injury, he was, bar none, the league’s best player when in the lineup. He had 19 goals, 36 assists, and 55 points in just 23 appearances for Saginaw alongside now-Sharks teammate Michael Misa, leading the league with an incredible 2.39 points per game.
It’s no surprise, then, that Chernyshov’s first professional season has gone as swimmingly as it has. He’s fit in well amid a deep minor-league group in San Jose, posting 13 goals and 33 points in 41 games with 36 penalty minutes and a +11 rating. That got him a look on the NHL roster for about a month across December and January while Will Smith was on injured reserve. He got a long look in Smith’s spot on the top line with Macklin Celebrini and William Eklund and did not disappoint, posting a 3-8–11 scoring line and nine hits in 15 games. He also managed 3.27 shot attempts per game, good for eighth on the team.
He’s now getting another look on the active roster, although it doesn’t appear he’ll be getting into game action immediately. Eklund got banged up with a lower-body issue against the Sabres on Tuesday but took line rushes at this morning’s skate and is expected to play tonight against the Bruins, per Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now.
Flames Sign Tyson Gross To Entry-Level Deal
March 12: Gross has moved quickly and finalized an entry-level contract beginning this season with the Flames, per Eric Francis of Sportsnet. He will report to Calgary’s NHL roster and will see games down the stretch, Francis adds. It will be a two-year deal for Gross, making him a restricted free agent at the end of next season.
March 11: Calgary native Tyson Gross is one of the top undrafted free agents available coming out of college this season. His hometown Flames are on the shortlist of teams the center is considering signing with, and he will make his decision in the next few days, Eric Francis of Sportsnet reports.
Gross, 23, just wrapped up his junior season with St. Cloud State. Serving as the team’s captain, he doubled his previous career high in goals en route to an 18-23–41 scoring line in 36 games. The 6’3″, 194-lb pivot saw his season end last week, getting swept 2-0 by Minnesota-Duluth in the quarterfinals of the NCHC tournament. They won’t be getting an at-large berth to the national tournament, so Gross ends his career in St. Cloud with 34 goals, 52 assists, and 86 points across 106 games over the last three years.
There’s little reason to believe Gross will replicate those offensive totals at the NHL level, but there’s a chance he can carve out a role as a depth checking center in Calgary or be a higher-end minor-league piece. He was initially draft-eligible back in 2021. He’d played just nine junior ‘A’ games that year due to COVID and was understandably passed over. Even against tougher competition in the USHL in his post-draft year, though, he only managed eight points in 23 games with the Fargo Force. It wasn’t until moving to the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders for his DY+2 that he came out of his shell as a playmaker, and he was able to carry that momentum directly into a 20-point freshman season at St. Cloud.
The Flames are in need of some size down the middle in their prospect pool, so their interest in Gross makes sense. Their situation improved somewhat when they acquired the signing rights to 6’2″, 203-lb Jonathan Castagna from the Mammoth in the MacKenzie Weegar deal, and Francis reports the junior center is also open to turning pro with the Flames when his season at Cornell wraps up.
Blues Sign Calle Rosen To Two-Year, Two-Way Extension
The Blues announced today that left-shot defender Calle Rosen has signed a two-year, two-way contract extension. The deal pays him $850K in the NHL and $500K in the AHL next year before seeing an NHL pay bump to $900K in 2027-28.
Rosen is in his second stint with the Blues organization. He hasn’t seen an NHL game since his first go-around in St. Louis ended following the 2023-24 season, though. He signed with the Avalanche on a two-way deal the following summer and did the same with the Capitals last offseason before Washington traded him back to St. Louis for fellow minor-league depth defender Corey Schueneman last November.
Now 32, Rosen has never really been a full-time NHL piece and has had multiple opportunities to return home to Sweden since arriving in North America with the Maple Leafs as an undrafted free agent in 2018. Instead, the 6’1″ lefty has chosen to pursue an often thankless career as a minor-league mainstay who consistently churns out quality bottom-pairing hockey in his NHL call-ups. He’s been quite well-compensated for an AHLer – his new minors salary is actually a small pay cut from the $525K he landed on his deal with the Caps last summer – but still, it’s rare to see an import player opt for that lifestyle instead of a more stable pro career in Europe, especially considering he has previous Swedish Hockey League experience.
Rosen, now in his ninth season stateside, has long been one of the AHL’s better puck-movers. He had seven points in nine games with Hershey to start the year and has since been a valuable contributor on St. Louis’ struggling affiliate in Springfield, leading their blue line with a 7-19–26 scoring line in 47 games. He was an AHL All-Star back in 2019, won a Calder Cup in Toronto the year before, and now is up to 224 points in 407 career minor-league games.
It’s surprising he hasn’t gotten more NHL opportunities. The only time he got an extended run on a roster was with St. Louis in the 2022-23 campaign. While he served mostly as a #7 piece, he was absolutely excellent when deployed, putting up eight goals and 18 points with a +19 rating despite only averaging 15:36 of ice time per game across 49 outings. None of that production came on special teams, either. He’s fairly consistently had positive relative Corsi shares at 5-on-5 and, while he’s far from being a physical threat, has shown he can be an efficient driver of offense in limited minutes.