It was October 28^th when Edmonton's Connor McDavid left a game early after jamming his foot into the boards. He escaped serious injury, but the timeline was 2-3 weeks before a return.

We can throw that timeline out the window because just nine days later, McDavid returned to action on Wednesday night with the Oilers at home against the Vegas Golden Knights. From what looked to be a serious injury to just three games missed and back in the lineup nine days later. Fantasy managers everywhere rejoice.

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Jakob Chychrun was in a non-contact jersey at Washington's morning skate:

Chychrun, in a powder blue no-contact jersey, is participating in drills during this morning's optional skate. Don't think he'll suit up vs. Nashville tonight but he's making progress. #Caps

— Tarik El-Bashir (@Tarik_ElBashir) November 6, 2024

He didn't play, but he's getting close.

Matt Roy did play, though, returning from injury nearly four weeks after suffering a lower-body injury in the first game of the season. Washington has looked very good to start the season and is getting healthy on the blue line, so there is a lot of good news around the Capitals right now.

Washington won that game over Nashville by a 3-2 score thanks to the eighth goals of their respective seasons from Alex Ovechkin and Connor McMichael. In his return, Roy had an assist on the McMichael goal while adding three shots, two blocks, two PIMs, and four hits. That is a pretty good first game back for Roy.

Aliaksei Protas got the other goal for the Caps, his fifth of the season. Just a word of caution here: he has five goals on 20 shots this season, meaning he's shooting 25%. Across his first three seasons and 169 games, he shot 5.7%. A nice story across the first month, but it's worth keeping expectations tempered.

Dylan Strome had a pair of helpers in the game and now has 19 points in 12 games. Going back to last season, he has 80 points in his last 82 games.

Steven Stamkos and Juuso Parssinen had the goals for Nashville, and Tommy Novak has a scratch at game-time due to injury.

Juuse Saros allowed three goals on 36 shots in the loss while Logan Thompson stopped 33 of 35 shots in the win.

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In more good news on the injury front, it appears whatever was ailing Cale Makar during Colorado's win on Tuesday night is not that serious:

#Avs coach Jared Bednar said Cale Makar is "ok" and is a possibility to play tomorrow night. Alexandar Georgiev will play against the Jets.

— Corey Masisak (@cmasisak22) November 6, 2024

We will see if he plays – maybe he misses a game – but it doesn't seem as if it's anything too serious on the injury front.

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Bryan Rust was a full participant for Pittsburgh's practice on Wednesday:

#Pens HCMS:
– Kevin Hayes being evaluated for an upper body injury. Was a maintenance day.
– Bryan Rust was full contact at practice. When asked if he would play on this trip, would suspect there's a chance

— Josh Getzoff (@JG_PxP) November 6, 2024

The Penguins have a back-to-back road situation starting tonight with games in Carolina and Washington. It is no guarantee he's back this week, but it does seem as if Rust will be back very soon.

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The Montreal Canadiens sent forward Oliver Kapanen back to Sweden:

Oliver Kapanen return to Timrå IK in the SHL. @CanadiensMTL

— Renaud Lavoie (@renlavoietva) November 6, 2024

Montreal has just two wins in their last 10 games, and it's clearly not just Kapanen that was an issue. He will go get some more pro experience in the SHL, but this pretty much ends his 2024-25 NHL season.

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Good injury news for Ottawa:

Travis Green says Artem Zub and Shane Pinto are possibilities to play tomorrow.#Sens

— Alex Adams (@alexadamsBTP_) November 6, 2024

If Artem Zub and Shane Pinto can't go on Thursday at home to the New York Islanders, their next game is Saturday in Boston. They certainly will want to be back in the lineup for that one.

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I was perusing Quinton Byfield's numbers for this season and something stood out to me: He has seen a rise in ice time of nearly a minute per game, which is good. However, that is misleading for fantasy purposes because in 2023-24 he was almost never used on the penalty kill, but is now one of the Los Angeles's top penalty-killing forwards. The reality is that on top of being stuck on the second power play unit, he's lost 46 seconds per game at even strength. So, despite the rise in overall ice time, he has dropped 1:12 per game in total even strength/power play minutes. Those are the offensive minutes for point production, and losing those minutes hurts his fantasy upside.

It got me thinking about which other players are seeing similar changes, so let's use some Frozen Tools data (along with Natural Stat Trick) to look at even strength and power play changes among forwards when compared to 2023-24. We will use a 50-game cutoff for last season and 10-game cutoff for this season.

There are the obvious names. We know Philipp Kurashev had, until recently, lost his role next to Connor Bedard (we'll see how long he stays on Bedard's line now), and that Jeff Skinner's role in Edmonton would not be the same as it was in Buffalo. Let's look at some other forwards.

Michael Bunting

Anyone that drafted Bunting knows the deal already, but his offensive role has been crushed so far this season. After being traded to Pittsburgh last year, he earned 62.7% of the team's power play time. He also earned 28% of the team's even strength ice time. So far this season, those numbers have crashed to 27.3% and 25.5%., respectively. It has caused him to lose three minutes per game of ice time, and he just registered his first goal of the season on Tuesday night. Including his time in Carolina to start the 2023-24 campaign, Bunting has seen one of the largest declines in percentage of offensive minutes (%Off):

The good news is his individual points percentage (IPP) at 5-on-5, or the rate he's earning a point when Pittsburgh scores a goal with him on the ice, is 33.3%, a career-low. It is good news because it indicates a turnaround from here on out – he averaged 64.1% across the three prior seasons. It is very plausible his 5-on-5 points rate doubles over the balance of the season.  

The bad news is that without a PP role, and with a declining 5-on-5 role because the team has loaded the top line, Bunting might not even be a half-point per game player from here on out. He is shooting and hitting a good clip, even for his minutes, and if he can keep that up, he'll have meagre multi-cat value. Until the team starts using him more, meagre multi-cat value is as good as it gets.

Eeli Tolvanen

Another sizable drop has come from Eeli Tolvanen, who has gone from the fourth-most used forward on Seattle's power play last year to the ninth-most used forward this year. He has lost a minute of PPTOI per game thus far to go with his 1:04 drop in even strength ice time per game. That has led to one of the larger drops in combined percentage of offensive minutes, and in line with a couple veterans in Gustav Nyquist and Sean Couturier:

I do find these kinds of things funny because Seattle was 21^st by PP goals per minute last year and have improved all the way to *shuffles notes* 20^th by PP goals per minute this year. At nearly 2.5 hits per game, Tolvanen retains some multi-cat value, but he's shooting 25% and skating 13:32 per appearance. Seattle coach Dan Bylsma is already starting to sit veterans and it's a wonder how long until Tolvanen is one of them. He needs a huge turnaround in his usage to be useful outside of depth for banger formats.

Cole Sillinger

Until he was injured, Ross Colton had seen a huge increase in offensive deployment thanks to Colorado's other injuries. Alex Laferriere has seen a demonstrable role shift in Los Angeles with the largest improvement in share of the power play time of any forward in the league. However, just behind Laferriere in terms of offensive role increase is Columbus's Cole Sillinger:

With all the losses that Columbus has endured, injury and otherwise, it's not a surprise that Sillinger has seen an improved even strength role (38 more seconds per game than last year). What is surprising is that he has seen one of the largest power play role increases, too, going from sparse usage in 2023-24 to a consistent top PP role in 2024-25 over Adam Fantilli, or even the recently-returned Dmitri Voronkov.

With Sillinger on the ice for the power play, the Blue Jackets are scoring 7.6 goals per 60 minutes. That isn't necessarily a good mark, but it is a drastic improvement on the 5.4 goals per 60 minutes the team scored on the power play last season.  How much of it is Sillinger and how much of it is the other four players is a fair question (he has zero PP points this season), but with a decent shot rate, and good hit rate, Sillinger will continue to have fantasy value in most formats.

Conor Garland

A bit further down the list of improvements is Vancouver's Garland, who is right in line with a player who is still looking to make his mark in Chicago:

Garland being moved to the top PP unit so early is a bit of a surprise, but as with Sillinger, it's hard to argue with the results: at 5-on-4, the Canucks are generating roughly 50% more shots, and double the goals, than they were without him. The power play still is not where we expect it to be, but the improvements are there, and that's good enough for now.

With over 40 minutes of ice time in his last two games, Garland is starting to see a very large role for the Canucks. Whether it lasts, we'll see, but they are starting to use the bottom two lines less than last year, and with more minutes allocated to the top of the lineup, Garland is seeing a huge improvement in his offensive role, and likely needs to be owned in most fantasy formats outside of the shallowest leagues.