The bad news for the Flyers just keeps coming. Following Sean Couturier's pec/rib injury, the team announced that Morgan Frost dislocated his left shoulder and will be out for the foreseeable future. It is a brutal break for a guy who may have seen a bigger role with Couturier out. For now, expect a lot of Kevin Hayes.

The team also announced a rib fracture for Phillippe Myers and that will also leave him out of action for a while. He had a great breakout year in 2019-20 and looked to figure into their top-4 for 2021 and beyond. This is a big blow to a blue line that has looked shaky at the outset of the season.

With that Myers news, we learned that Shayne Gostisbehere may return to the lineup once Philly returns home from their current road trip. I am still a big believe in Ghost's skills but he's really running out of time to turn it around in Philly. This season may be his last chance to do so.

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Staying in Pennsylvania, the Penguins will be without Matheson, Pettersson, and Riikola for the foreseeable future. The shortest return could be Pettersson, who is week-to-week. Expect monster minutes for Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin, while Pierre-Olivier Joseph probably gets the call.

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In response to Ilya Samsonov hitting the COVID list with some of his teammates, the Capitals recalled Craig Anderson from the taxi squad. Looking ahead, the Capitals don't have another back-to-back until February 20-21, so that leaves them plenty of time to ride the hot hand of Vitek Vanacek, if they need to. They do have five games in nine days coming up so they might want to rest him, but there's no real need for a split-start situation anytime soon. As long as Vanacek doesn't fall on his face, he should see a lot of starts in the near-term.

Connor McMichael was activated from the taxi squad. The prospect had a good showing at the World Juniors and with all the Caps on the COVID list, he may get a chance in the NHL this season.

Washington finally announced that their COVID protocol players will likely miss at least four games. In that sense, prepare to be without Ovi and the gang for at least the next week. In other words, they ride the pines in weekly leagues next week.

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MacKenzie Blackwood, Jon Merrill, and Sam Gagner have all hit the COVID list as well. Again, this doesn't mean it's a positive test. There are any number of reasons, without a positive test, for which a team will hold players out.

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More on the Carolina situation…

The Canes now have rapid testing machines installed in PNC Arena for the short term and aren't sure what the long term plan is with that, the league hasn't said they want to implement it leaguewide yet.

— Sara Civ (@SaraCivian) January 21, 2021

As Civian mentions, this is not something that has been approved by the league on a league-wide basis yet. There are known issues with rapid testing but at this point, the league may need to re-think their stance. Whatever they decide to do, this certainly isn't the last we've heard from COVID this hockey season.

This is also going to be a big detriment to the Hurricanes. They can't practice together and some guys are quarantined in their hotel rooms, all while other NHL teams are staying in shape. How this will affect Carolina's season, there's no way to tell. At least, Carolina is in a soft division and they should be able to stay in the playoff race even without bringing their A-game every night. It will be very interesting to watch this unfold here and in Washington/Dallas as well.

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Speaking of Dallas, they had a mostly full lineup at practice:

Stars lines today:
Benn — Hintz — Gurianov
Kiviranta — Pavelski — Radulov
Cogliano — Faksa — Dellandrea
Caamano — Dickinson — Robertson

Lindell — Harley
Oleksiak — Heiskanen
Sekera — Pysyk
Hanley — Fedun

Khudobin
Oettinger

Don’t see John Klingberg on the ice. Harley slides in.

— Saad Yousuf (@SaadYousuf126) January 21, 2021

Their season is set to get underway tonight against Nashville. Again, this could be a good barometer for how teams like Carolina or even Washington could bounce back.

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Both Ville Heinola and Bowen Byram made their season debuts, the latter his career debut, for their respective squads on Thursday. For my money, Heinola has a much clearer path to productive fantasy minutes for this season so that’s where I would spend my waiver dollars.

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In other prospect news, the Predators added Philip Tomasino to the taxi squad. Another Canadian who had a real good showing at the World Juniors, Tomasino could provide the scoring punch missing from Nashville's lineup, as they failed to produce a single 50-point forward last year. Filip Forsberg is off to a good start but they need depth scoring and Tomasino could help in this regard. It is a matter of him actually getting into the lineup, and considering how protective they've been of Eeli Tolvanen, I have my doubts.

Staying with Nashville, it appears as though Mikael Granlund could be ready for the lineup as soon as tomorrow. Granlund was late to camp and has had some catching up to do so it's fair to wonder how ready he is for game time, but the Preds need the winger help.

I will be interested to see if they use him on the PP. In the second half of last season, Granlund led all Preds forwards in PPTOI/game, but that was with the entire team struggling to score and an injured Viktor Arvidsson. How it plays out this year remains to be seen, but if he's playing 18 minutes a night like he was last year, with all that PP time, he'll be impossible to ignore in fantasy leagues.

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With all their COVID protocol issues, Washington has a new lineup to show:

Capitals lines and D at practice today:

Vrana-Backstrom-Wilson
Panik-Eller-Oshie
Hagelin-Dowd-Hathaway
Sprong-Pinho-Sheary

Dillon-Carlson
Siegenthaler-Schultz
Chara-Jensen

Vanecek
Anderson

Extra: van Riemsdyk, Fehervary, McMichael

— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) January 21, 2021

When I said Jakub Vrana deserved more ice time, including power-play minutes, this is not what I had in mind. It could be a big break for the young star, though.

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The Blue Jackets put Cam Atkinson back on a line with Pierre-Luc Dubois, likely in an effort to get Atkinson going. The twice-30-goal scorer has zero goals in four games this year heading into Thursday night's action and going back to last season, has now failed to score in 11 straight regular season games. In those 11 games, though, he has 35 shots on target, so it's not as if he hasn't been trying to find the net. He now gets back his familiar centreman. Hopefully that does the trick, but as fantasy owners know, Blue Jackets line combinations are not long for this world.

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One thing I have been wondering about is the stabilization of stats. From prior work, we know that it typically takes about 20 regular season games for teams to find their corsi equilibrium for the year. Things can change with injuries but around 20 games is when we can get a true measure of a team.

This year, waiting 20 games will cost us well over a third of the season, and that's too long to wait to make changes. But the 20-game sample in normal seasons usually happens because teams are playing all over the place; it wouldn't be uncommon for teams to face 17 or 18 different franchises in any 20-game stretch. This year, teams are playing each other repeatedly and in rapid succession. It makes me wonder if we don't have a shorter window for stabilization because teams are playing against relatively the same rosters over and over, week in and week out. Maybe it'll only take 10 games or so, depending on matchups? (Arizona plays Vegas four times this week, for example. That will skew things greatly.)

It will be fascinating to watch this unfold. I am probably going to be more aggressive with incorporating new data than I would be in prior seasons. I don't know if this will work or not, I am not nearly smart enough to set up the simulations necessary to test this in advance. It is something to think about, though.

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After missing practice on Wednesday, Mika Zibanejad was back on Thursday. Everybody stand down, nothing to see here.

The Rangers ran a PP practice and it saw Tony DeAngelo skating with the second unit and Adam Fox on PP1. Stay tuned…

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The big boys for Winnipeg came to play as Mark Scheifele and Nikolai Ehlers each had a goal and an assist, Kyle Connor had two helpers, and Blake Wheeler had a goal as the Jets took a 4-1 win over Ottawa. Connor Hellebuyck had his shutout bid broken with a little under three minutes remaining.

I thought Heinola looked fine, skating about 14 minutes. He did the things most of their defencemen can't do and that goes a long way to your team looking better on the ice.

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Mathew Barzal had a goal and two assists while Jordan Eberle had a pair of tallies as the Islanders skated past the Devils 4-1. Scott Wedgewood saved 31 in 35 in what was a solid game for New Jersey.

Noah Dobson had a pair of assists and seven (yes, seven) blocked shots. Not a bad night's work in 20 minutes of ice time.

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Columbus lost 3-2 in overtime to Tampa Bay but the news was Pierre-Luc Dubois being effectively benched the entire game. He skated under four minutes and did not see the ice after the 16-minute mark of the first period. This should be interesting.

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We had a wild game between the Bruins and Flyers that started slowly – no goals in the first period – but ended in a 4-4 shootout. Nick Ritchie scored a pair of goals, including one on the power play, and was even getting some top-line ice time later in the game.

JvR had a pair of goals in this one while Carter Hart faced 40 shots. I think it’s safe to say they miss Sean Couturier.