Winnipeg Jets Loan Dylan Coghlan To AHL
It is becoming clear after today’s transactions that the Winnipeg Jets’ defensive roster is undergoing some refreshing changes. The team acquired defenseman Isaak Phillips from the Chicago Blackhawks earlier today and subsequently announced that they have loaned defenseman Dylan Coghlan to their AHL affiliate, the Manitoba Moose.
The move indicates defensemen Colin Miller and Haydn Fleury are nearing a return to full health giving Winnipeg eight healthy defensemen on the active roster. Factoring in today’s acquisition of Phillips, the moves have likely pushed Coghlan into a full-time AHL role unless injuries pile up in the NHL.
Coghlan cleared waivers on December 19th and given that he didn’t suit up in 10 games nor spend 30 days on the NHL roster he was waiver-exempt from today’s transaction. Winnipeg will maintain this flexibility with Coghlan assuming he spends the foreseeable future with AHL Manitoba.
He’s no stranger to AHL hockey, either. Coghlan nearly spent the entire 2023-24 campaign (aside from one game) in the AHL with the Springfield Thunderbirds and had the best professional season of his career. He scored 16 goals and 41 points in 61 games for the Thunderbirds tying for second in scoring on the team.
The Moose could certainly use his expertise. They’re on the outside looking in for a position in the 2025 Calder Cup playoffs sitting last in the Central Division with an 11-19-1-1 record through the first 32 games. Additionally, Manitoba’s offense is the worst in the league with a 2.28 GF/G making Coghlan’s offensive capabilities all the more important.
Los Angeles Kings Recall Samuel Helenius
Jan. 15th: Helenius is expected to suit up in his 22nd-career game tomorrow night against the Vancouver Canucks. The Kings organization announced they’ve recalled Helenius from AHL Ontario one day after reassigning him in a paper transaction.
Jan. 14th: The Kings loaned center Samuel Helenius to AHL Ontario on Tuesday, per a team announcement. They now have an open roster spot, allowing them to activate star defender Drew Doughty from long-term injured reserve whenever he’s ready to return.
Helenius, 22, has been a scratch in Los Angeles’ last four games. He last played on New Year’s Day against the Devils.
Selected out of Finland’s JYP in the second round of the 2021 draft, the 6’6″, 201-lb Helenius follows in the very large shoes of his father, former Stars defenseman Sami Helenius. The hulking pivot is in his fourth season stateside and has gotten his first cup of coffee in the NHL over the past few months.
Appearing in 21 of 41 games for the Kings, Helenius has a pair of assists and a minus-three rating, although he’s still looking for his first NHL goal. He’s averaged 8:33 of ice time per game, won 45.3% of his draws, and leads the team with 23.4 hits per 60 minutes.
While sound physically and decent defensively, Helenius unsurprisingly grades out as the Kings’ worst offensive player. The team averages just one goal per 60 minutes with Helenius on the ice at even strength.
Considering the Kings haven’t been using Helenius, it’s unlikely his demotion is a paper transaction. He’s still young with some development track ahead of him, so the reassignment comes to give him more playing time in Ontario.
In eight games with the Reign earlier this season, Helenius had a pair of goals and an assist with a whopping 22 PIMs and a minus-three rating. He has 37 points in 150 games with Ontario dating back to the 2021-22 season.
Doughty, 35, has yet to play in the regular season after sustaining a fractured ankle in exhibition play in September. He resumed skating two weeks ago and shouldn’t be out of the lineup for too much longer.
While the Kings have the roster space to activate Doughty, they don’t have the cap space. They’re $38K above the limit when Doughty comes off LTIR as things stand, so they’ll need to send another player on a cheap contract down to the minors to make things work.
New York Islanders Return Marc Gatcomb To AHL
Jan. 15th: Eric Rosner of The Hockey News reports that Gatcomb has been returned to AHL Bridgeport, meaning the illness afflicting many of the Islanders’ players has passed. Gatcomb skated in 7:27 of ice time in his NHL debut yesterday evening, racking up four hits and one blocked shot.
Jan. 14th: The New York Islanders have used an emergency recall on forward Marc Gatcomb in advance of Tuesday’s game against Ottawa. The Islanders have been eligible for the move since placing Simon Holmstrom on injured reserve on January 7th, but opted to carry 12 forwards on their recent three-game road trip. They won all three games.
Gatcomb will join the Islanders upon their return home, though it’s not clear if he’ll get a crack at the NHL lineup. Gatcomb has a stout nine goals and 17 points in 34 games with the AHL’s Bridgeport Islanders – ranking him as the fifth-highest scorer on the team. He’s also recorded 18 penalty minutes and, surprisingly, no fighting majors. He was much quicker to drop the mitts with the Abbotsford Canucks, who signed him as an undrafted college free agent in 2021. He spent the bulk of the last three seasons in Abbotsford, filling a bottom-six role and ultimately totaling 28 points and 76 penalty minutes in 122 games with the club.
Gatcomb is a product of New England Prep hockey. He spent his high school years with The Frederick Gunn School, otherwise known as The Gunnery, and moved to the University of Connecticut in 2018. Gatcomb found his role of diligent, middle-six forward with the UConn Huskies. He climbed the lineup over the course of his four years and combined for 46 points in 124 games. He’ll stand as a responsible, right-shot bruiser who could step into the lineup for Pierre Engvall or Matt Martin, should head coach Patrick Roy want a different type of physical presence.
Tampa Bay Lightning Reassign Jack Finley
Jan 15th: According to a team announcement, Tampa Bay has reassigned Finley to AHL Syracuse after making his NHL debut last night. He skated in 8:25 of yesterday’s contest and managed a +1 rating but failed to score his first point.
Jan. 14th: The Lightning recalled 6’6″ forward prospect Jack Finley from AHL Syracuse on Tuesday, per a team announcement. Forward Gage Goncalves headed back to Syracuse in a corresponding transaction after clearing waivers.
Finley, 22, is an option to make his NHL debut tonight against the Bruins. He’s currently projected as a healthy scratch and didn’t participate in morning skate, per the team’s Gabby Shirley, but he’s the only extra skater on the roster should an injury arise between now and game time.
Selected 57th overall in the 2020 draft, Finley didn’t participate in training the camp and started the year on the non-roster list after sustaining an undisclosed injury over the offseason. He was cleared to play and assigned to Syracuse one month ago to the day, and he’s posted a pair of goals and four assists for six points in 10 games since.
The hulking 220-lb center is developing nicely offensively. Now in his third professional campaign, he skated in 52 contests with Syracuse last season, recording a career-high 13 goals and 32 points – tied for fifth on the team.
Finley has long been projected as a likely bottom-six NHL piece, and his solid offensive production only reinforces that he won’t be too much of a liability with the puck to make it at the next level. It’s hard to see Finley sticking around long-term, but he’s done enough to at least warrant a trial and a chance at his first NHL game.
The Bolts still have a pair of open roster spots after swapping Finley and Goncalves for each other. Finley is waiver-exempt and won’t need them to return to Syracuse when his call-up is done.
Penguins Place Joona Koppanen On Waivers, Recall Filip Kral
2:29 p.m.: Koppanen cleared waivers as expected, per PuckPedia.
7:41 a.m.: The Pittsburgh Penguins placed depth forward Joona Koppanen on waivers on Monday, per PuckPedia. To fill his roster spot, the Penguins have also recalled defenseman Filip Kral to the NHL roster per the AHL Transaction Log. This move represents Koppanen’s first waiver designation, and Kral’s first call-up, of the 2024-25 season.
Koppanen began the season with the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and stayed buried in the minors for the bulk of the year. He recorded seven goals and 22 points in 55 AHL games, one point more than he managed in three more games last season. Those appearances were intercut by 10 games in a fourth-line role with the Pittsburgh lineup. Koppanen performed quietly in his NHL minutes – though he did manage to score his first NHL goal in his first NHL game of the season, on March 18th. That would go down as his only scoring for the six-foot-five, Finnish forward. Teams will have until noon today to place a claim on Koppanen, though it seems much more likely that he’ll clear waivers and return to the minor leagues.
This move could also award Kral with just the third NHL game of his career. The Czech defenseman has scored seven goals and 29 points in 59 AHL games this season, good for second on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton blue-line. He’s in his first year in the Penguins organization, after departing the Toronto Maple Leafs organization in favor of Finland’s Liiga last season. It proved a fruitful move – and Kral posted 37 points in 46 Liiga games after starting the year with six points in 24 AHL games. He has seemed to carry that responsible, heads-up scoring back to North America. Pittsburgh will test that out with this call-up, giving Kral a chance to record his first NHL point after appearing in two games and recording one penalty with the Maple Leafs in 2022-23. Kral was originally a fifth-round pick to Toronto in 2018.
Jets Acquire Isaak Phillips From Blackhawks
12:33 p.m.: Winnipeg made the trade official Wednesday afternoon, confirming it’s a one-for-one swap.
11:49 a.m.: The Jets are finalizing a trade to acquire defenseman Isaak Phillips from the Blackhawks in exchange for 21-year-old defense prospect Dmitri Kuzmin, Darren Dreger of TSN reports Wednesday.
Phillips, 23, is a 6’3″ lefty who Chicago drafted in the fifth round in 2020. He has 56 NHL games to his name already, but just three have come this season.
Aside from a few recalls in the first few weeks of the campaign, Phillips has spent 2024-25 entirely in the AHL with Rockford. Now in his fifth professional season, getting an early start thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down the OHL’s operations in 2020-21, he has eight points in 28 games on the farm with 54 PIMs and a plus-eight rating.
Phillips has an eye-popping -37 rating in his brief NHL career, although it’s hard to judge a still-raw defender on one of the league’s worst teams during that timeframe. Even still, relative to his Chicago teammates during that time, his possession numbers have been poor.
Chicago has controlled 42.4% of shot attempts with Phillips on the ice since his debut in 2021-22, 3.7% worse than their share without him. That’s a significant margin for a player whose primary calling is their defensive skills, although he has also provided 12 points, 47 blocks and 89 hits.
He still has upside, though, and Winnipeg was likely on the hunt for a slightly more experienced recall option than what they had in the system. The younger Kuzmin heads the other way, with the Blackhawks gaining a riskier but higher-ceiling talent in the swap.
The Jets drafted the Belarusian native 82nd overall in 2021, and he promptly came over to North America to suit up in the major junior ranks. The 5’10” lefty posted 103 points and a +18 rating in 122 games with the OHL’s Flint Firebirds across two seasons before turning pro with the Winnipeg organization in 2023.
Only this season has Kuzmin established himself as a semi-regular in the AHL. He split 2023-24 between the Jets’ AHL affiliate in their backyard and their ECHL affiliate in Norfolk, and his numbers didn’t pop off the page in either league.
This season, Kuzmin has been limited to a goal and three assists for four points with a minus-nine rating through 21 appearances. It’s clear things weren’t quite working out for the puck-mover in Winnipeg’s system, so he’ll get a fresh start in the Windy City with a year and a half left on his entry-level contract.
The swap won’t affect either team’s roster count or salary cap,, as both are actively on AHL assignments. However, the Jets will need to work with Phillips, who will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights at the end of the season.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Senators Reassign Max Guenette
The Senators loaned defenseman Max Guenette to AHL Belleville on Wednesday, per a team announcement. The club’s active roster is now at 22.
With Ottawa back in action tomorrow against the Capitals, Guenette could be summoned again after delaying the expiry of his temporary waiver exemption by one day. Injured reserve-bound Jacob Bernard-Docker and Travis Hamonic aren’t close to a return, so demoting Guenette leaves them without an extra healthy defenseman.
His presence is primarily contingent on the health of fellow blue-liner Thomas Chabot, who left Tuesday’s shutout win over the Islanders after taking an Adam Pelech shot to the face in the first period. He didn’t return to the contest, and head coach Travis Green said postgame that they would have an update on his status today.
Ottawa recalled Guenette, 23, from Belleville last week after Hamonic landed on IR the day before. He’s purely been up as injury insurance, though, and has been a healthy scratch in five straight since the elevation.
Selected 187th overall in the 2019 draft, Guenette has eight NHL games to his name, all coming with the Sens in the last two campaigns. His recall this month was his first this season after clearing waivers during training camp.
While in Belleville, the defensively responsible Guenette has excelled with nine points and a team-leading +16 rating in 27 games. The 6’2″, 209-lb righty serves as an alternate captain for the AHL club in what’s now his fourth professional season.
Penguins Activate Evgeni Malkin, Reassign Jesse Puljujarvi
The Pittsburgh Penguins have activated star forward Evgeni Malkin off of injured reserve. Malkin missed the Penguins’ last four games with an upper-body injury. He was named a game-time decision for the team’s Tuesday bout against Seattle, and his activation seems to be a good indication that he’ll play. Malkin was placed on injured reserve on Sunday, retroactive to his last appearance in the lineup on January 5th. To make room for the move, the squad has also assigned winger Jesse Puljujärvi to the minor leagues. Puljujarvi successfully cleared waivers on December 30th, and will now carry waiver exemption status through the month of January.
The Penguins will relish in Malkin’s return to the lineup. They’ve gone 1-3-0 in the four games he’s missed, getting confidently outscored 17-to-10. Malkin was on a hot streak leading up to his injury, with seven points in his last nine games. Despite that, the future Hall-of-Famer has been tame on the year as a whole, so far sat with eight goals and 32 points in 41 games this season. That puts him on pace for 64 points in 82 games, which would mark a career-low in seasons where Malkin played more than 50 games. He even surpassed that mark last season, when he scored 27 goals and 67 points while continuing his iron-man streak through its second consecutive season. Malkin’s role has been unwavering despite the slight dip in scoring. He’s averaged 18:35 in ice time this year, the exact same average that he posted in each of the last two seasons. Malkin sits just 14 games shy of his 1,200th NHL game. When he hits it, Malkin will join partner-in-crime Sidney Crosby as the only two to reach that mark with Pittsburgh. If he stays healthy, he’ll hit the milestone in Philadelphia on February 8th.
Meanwhile, Puljujarvi will head back to the minors after playing in his first five games since early December in Malkin’s absence. The former top draft pick only managed one point – an assist – in the matchups, while averaging nearly 12 minutes of ice time each game. He now has just nine points in 25 games this season – surpassing the four points he managed in 22 games last year but still far from the mark Pittsburgh would hope for. This assignment will likely set Puljujarvi up to play in his first AHL games of the season. He appeared in 13 games and scored nine points with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins last year. They were Puljujarvi’s first minor league appearances since the 2018-19 season, when he was assigned to the minors for four games and scored at point-per-game pace. While this move is fairly inconsequential, given Puljujarvi’s waiving in December, it could be the start of an extended minor-league assignment – bringing a tough end to Puljujarvi’s chase for a role with the Penguins.
Rangers Activate Chris Kreider, Reassign Bo Groulx
The New York Rangers have activated winger Chris Kreider off of injured reserve and reassigned Benoit-Olivier Groulx to the AHL Hartford Wolf Pack, per Mollie Walker of the New York Post. Kreider has missed the Rangers’ last four games with an upper-body injury. He had three points in three games prior to his injury – the longest scoring streak of Kreider’s season.
It’s been a year to forget for Kreider. He has just 13 goals and 15 points in 34 games on the year, putting him on pace for a career-low 36 points across a full season. He ranks ninth on the team in scoring, despite receiving the fifth-most minutes, on average, of any Rangers forward. Even worse, Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette chose to healthy scratch Kreider in their match against Tampa Bay on December 23rd, their last game before the holiday break. New York still lost that match 5-0, and didn’t rebound much when Kreider stepped back into the lineup. But the team has found some footing while he’s been on the shelf. They’re 3-1-0 in their last four games, already reaching four wins in January – a mark the team fell short of in December.
Filip Chytil also returned to full practices on Monday and Tuesday, per Walker, and could soon return from his own upper-body injury. If he does, Chytil and Kreider will likely both step into roles on New York’s third-line and second power-play unit. That will likely bump Jonny Brodzinski and Jimmy Vesey back out of the lineup. Brodzinski contributed a goal and an assist while serving as Kreider’s relief, while Vesey hasn’t scored since December 22nd. Also notable, Kreider and Chytil could line up next to Arthur Kaliyev at even strength. The Rangers claimed the 2019 33rd-overall pick off of waivers from Los Angeles last week. He’s since played in two games with his new club, recording three shots on net and three hits but so far no scoring. While a lineup shakeup is far from ideal for a Rangers team that seemed to finally be in a groove, the pair of returnees could be the piece that helps Kaliyev find his footing in New York.
Meanwhile, Groulx will return to the minors still waiting for his first game in the Rangers lineup. Groulx signed a one-year, two-way, league-minimum contract with New York this summer and received his first call-up of the season on January 10th. While he didn’t receive any NHL ice time, Groulx has been surprisingly productive in the minors – ranked second on the Wolf Pack in scoring with 11 goals and 29 points in 32 games. That type of production could soon make him an invaluable piece of New York’s bottom-six, and give Groulx a chance for a better NHL showing after posting just two points in 45 games with Anaheim last season.
Utah HC Expected To Activate John Marino
The Utah Hockey Club could have top-four shutdown defender John Marino in the lineup for the first time this season tonight against the Canadiens. Head coach André Tourigny told Belle Fraser of The Salt Lake Tribune that he’ll be a game-time decision and could come off injured reserve after warmups.
Winger Dylan Guenther was placed on injured reserve to create the necessary roster spot to activate Marino, according to the NHL’s media portal. The 21-year-old was diagnosed with a lower-body injury last week and is out indefinitely.
Utah acquired Marino, 27, from the Devils on the second day of the 2024 draft in exchange for the No. 49 pick. The Massachusetts native had been a top-four fixture on New Jersey’s blue line for the past two seasons and had averaged over 20 minutes per game through his first five NHL seasons, but the Devils needed cap space to pursue unrestricted free agents Brenden Dillon and Brett Pesce.
Marino, now in the fourth season of a six-year, $26.4MM contract he signed with the Penguins in 2021, was projected to serve as a top-four anchor in Utah’s first season to complement the more offensively inclined Sean Durzi and Mikhail Sergachev. Instead, he sustained a lower back injury shortly before training camp and eventually went under the knife in October.
Durzi underwent surgery to repair his right shoulder at the same time after just four games, leaving Utah without two of its best defensemen for the vast majority of the season. They’ve managed to stay in the playoff hunt, going 18-17-7 through 42 games to sit six points out of a playoff spot, but they’re fading fast with a 2-6-2 record in their last 10 games.
Marino’s imminent return and Durzi’s being on the horizon should help aid the club in the lengthy absence of Guenther, their leading goal-scorer this season with 16 through 40 games. The former joins a defense that’s done as well as could be hoped for while shorthanded, ranking 17th in the league with 2.39 expected goals against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, per MoneyPuck. Netminder Karel Vejmelka, who’s exploded for a .916 SV% and 14.1 goals saved above expected, has kept Utah’s actual goals against per game to 2.93, 13th-best in the league.
He won’t do much to aid a bottom-10 offense, but Marino’s return will eventually allow for easier matchups for overmatched role players like Ian Cole, Michael Kesselring, and Olli Määttä. Utah will ease him back in, though, and the righty will start in a third-pairing role alongside Juuso Välimäki if he can play, per Brogan Houston of Deseret News.
Marino enters his Utah era with 18 goals, 89 assists, 107 points, and a +38 rating in 328 career NHL games with the Devils and Penguins.