With Tage Thompson moved to the third line, Dylan Cozens was moved up to Buffalo's second line for last night's game. The latter has a shot of sticking there, though I was impressed with Thompson in the first couple games. He just needs a bit more time to settle in, I think.

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The Bruins were shut out by the Islanders 1-0, thanks to a late goal from J-G Pageau. It wasn’t a very good game by any stretch, but Varlamov owners will take their shutout and run.

Just a general observation: people may freak out about early samples for reasons unrelated to their narrative. An example: maybe someone is panicking about the Bruins; after all, they just played a B2B against a lottery team, which they split, and scored three goals. Last night, shutout by the Islanders in a 1-0 loss. The thing is, the team has shot zero percent at 5-on-5. Have the Bruins looked great? Not really. But they will also be getting back three right wingers, including arguably the best in the league, in the next few weeks. The time to buy is the next week, not when Pastrnak returns.

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Good news for Nick Robertson as he's only expected to miss about a month with his knee injury. The team had feared it would be much longer.

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Blake Coleman will miss an undetermined amount of games as he was placed on the league's COVID protocol. As we've seen with Ehlers and Miller, this could be one day or a few days. If he actually contracted it, though, it will be a much longer absence. We just don't have the full details.

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A little update on Mats Zuccarello: he's not expected to start practicing with the team until Saturday. That would indicate that he's not likely to jump into a game for a little while after that. I suspect it'll be a couple weeks before he's usable in the fantasy realm.

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Patrik Laine missed Monday's game with an injury, a day after missing practice as well. There may be nothing here, maybe there's a trade in the works, who knows. All we know is that he's not playing right now.

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Connor Hellbuyck turned in a performance reminding everyone why he won the Vezina last year with a sterling 35-save performance, but it wasn't enough as the Leafs took a 3-1 win at home. Mitch Marner scored a pair of goals in the victory.

Winnipeg looked pretty bad. I wonder how much longer they can keep Ville Heinola out of the lineup. There is a non-zero chance he's their best defenceman.

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Viktor Arvidsson left Nashville's home loss against Carolina late in the second period and but returned for the third. With his injury history, this is a concern even if he finished the game.

The Hurricanes changed up their lines for that Nashville game, and it saw Andrei Svechnikov dumped down to the third line with Jordan Martinook and Jesper Fast. Not ideal. Svech still managed to score on the power play but we really want to see him play with more talented players, not the bottom-6 guy. Give him a pair of points on the night, all the same.

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Buffalo hammered Philly 5-1, with Sam Reinhart and Curtis Lazar each scoring a pair of goals. The Flyers looked fairly flat without Sean Couturier. In a short season, allowing a few weeks to slip away isn't really an option, particularly in a tight division.

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Following his delayed arrival in camp, Kasperi Kapanen was skating with the Penguins today. How much time he needs is uncertain, but he should get a spot in the top-6 as soon as he skated often with Crosby. It is probably worth checking waiver wires in 12-team leagues to see if he's kicking around.

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In the offseason, we talked a lot about how much strength of schedule will matter this season. This week encapsulates this perfectly:

• Tampa Bay – two games, both against Columbus
• Anaheim – four games, all against Vegas
• Montreal – four games, three against Vancouver and one against Edmonton
• Winnipeg – five games, three against Ottawa, and one each against Toronto and Edmonton

Which players are you starting from which teams this week? I suspect there'll be times where superior players stay on the bench for weeks because of bad matchups. Example: Los Angeles has a month-long stretch in February/March where aside from two games against Anaheim, they play only St. Louis, Colorado, Vegas, or Minnesota, including 6/14 against the Blues. How many weeks is Anze Kopitar starting in there? We have a wild, wild season ahead of us. Buckle up, kids.

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After a game away, Tony DeAngelo was back with the regular squad for practice. It will be interesting to see if he gets his top PP role back, especially after a 5-0 win where Adam Fox managed a power-play assist on the top unit. And if DeAngelo doesn't get his PP role back, he's basically fantasy-useless as a third-pairing guy that doesn't bring peripherals.

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I just wanted to give some thoughts about the first near-week of the season that we've gone through so far. Just a few impressions I've been left with so far.

First, for whatever reason, this doesn't seem as isolating as the bubbles in the summer. I am sure that different arenas and announcers help with this, but it does feel closer to actual games with fans in the stands than it did in the Return To Play. We are not all the way back yet – it'll take 17 000 fands in the stands to do that – but it does seem a bit better than five months ago.

I would also say the hockey isn't as sloppy as I thought it would be. Given the time off, especially for teams like Ottawa and San Jose, coming right out of the holidays, and no exhibition games, I thought we might see something closer to preseason games early on. That hasn't really been the case. It does seem as if the pressure of a shortened season is there right out of the gate. That could take its toll on players as we proceed through this truncated campaign, but it should make for entertaining games basically every night.

Finally, power plays per game are up compared to last year but we usually see more penalties early in the year before teams and officials settle in. The real change for me is shots per game. Those have fallen from 31.3 per team per game in each of the last two seasons to 30.4 so far this year, all while goal scoring is up slightly. That means the league average save percentage has crashed from .910 the last two years to .903 so far this year. We will have to give it a couple more weeks to see where this goes, but if anywhere near this level holds, a .915 goalie is going to have a fantastic season. We may need to re-calibrate our expectations for net-minders.

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I was fishing around some ice time allocations and there are concerns. All from Natural Stat Trick:

• Anaheim is really spreading the ice time around. Heading into Monday night's game, their first two contests saw just one forward (Rickard Rakell) surpass 17 minutes in TOI per night. That is terrible news for fantasy for any forward on the roster. Spreading the ice time around might keep players from fatiguing but it also caps their upside greatly.
• Through three games, Dominik Kubalik is averaging 13:31 of TOI per night. Lucas Wallmark is earning three more minutes per game of TOI, and Andrew Shaw and Pius Suter each a minute and a half more. I get that they have more depth at centre than on the wings, but this is absurd.
• Montreal is also spreading the TOI around, with no forward surpassing 18 minutes a game, and only Danault/Suzuki surpassing 17 minutes. Guys that can put up shot volume like Tyler Toffoli and Brendan Gallagher are unlikely to thrive offensively under such a setup.
• Columbus is doing something similar, with no forward over 18 minutes a night, though Pierre-Luc Dubois and Oliver Bjorkstrand aren't far. Give them a few more games to see where they end up.
• Through three games, Jakub Vrana sits at 13:13 per game. At 5-on-5, he's basically bordering on third-line minutes. He has eight shots on goal in three games despite that, including two goals. He is one of the best offensive wingers in the league. The sooner Washington figures that out, the better.
• I imagine this changes soon, but Nathan MacKinnon at 17:36 through two games is a bit concerning. One game was a clear blowout so that obviously will skew this. They are a deep team, though, and virtually assured of a playoff spot. That they could play MacKinnon or Rantanen less than in prior seasons so they're fresher for May would make sense.

Again, it's all super early and we're talking about 2-3 games. Wait a week and then see where these guys sit.