Rutger McGroarty was called up by the Pittsburgh Penguins and suited up for them on Monday night as they visited Philadelphia. McGroarty had missed a couple of months with an upper-body injury before returning to action in the AHL where he amassed seven points in five games. He started his first NHL game of the season on the third line with Ben Kindel and Ville Koivunen.

The Penguins won that game over the Flyers by a 5-1 margin. Sidney Crosby scored twice, including once on the power play, while Bryan Rust and Tommy Novak also scored PP tallies. Kevin Hayes salted the game away late in the third period on a breakaway.

Crosby finished the game with two goals on five shots, two PIMs, and a hit. That gives him 18 goals in 25 games on the season, putting him on pace for 59 goals. He is doing that by shooting 29%, which obviously won't sustain, but it'll be very interesting to see just how many he can actually pot this year.

Rust had a goal, two assists, two shots, and two blocks in just over 19 minutes of ice time. Both Erik Karlsson and Evgeni Malkin had two power-play assists apiece. For Karlsson, that was his first multi-point game in over a month and he hasn't scored a goal in four weeks.

Tristan Jarry was very good again in net for Pittsburgh, stopping 28 of the 29 shots he faced for his eighth win in his 10^th start. He had 16 wins in 35 starts last year.

Tyson Foerster (PP) registered the lone Flyers goal, and is now up to 10 goals in 21 games this season, while goalie Dan Vladar took the loss by allowing five goals on 27 shots.

Foerster was injured on a blocked shot in the second period, left the game, and did not return.

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New Jersey and Columbus played a wild game on Monday night as there were four fights in the second period, one resulting in Brenden Dillon taking a hard face-first fall to the ice, and eventually leaving the game in the third period. It also resulted in Jonas Siegenthaler being handed a game misconduct for not having his jersey tie-down strapped, so the Devils played nearly half the game with just four defencemen.

In between all the mayhem, there was an actual hockey game won by the Blue Jackets 5-3. Sean Monahan scored twice, Denton Mateychuk tallied his sixth of the season, and both Charlie Coyle and Miles Wood pocketed third-period goals. Mateychuk had two blocks and a hit in over 20 minutes of ice time and now has 6 goals, 10 points, 26 shots, 42 blocks, and 15 hits in 25 games. He has quietly been very good for the Jackets this year, and for fantasy managers as well. More on him later.

Of course, Zach Werenski stuffed the stat sheet with two assists, a shot, three blocks, two PIMs, and a hit. His hot streak continues with 5 goals and 10 assists in his last 10 games.

Elvis Merzlikins held things in net by stopping 30 of the 33 shots against for his fifth win.

Nico Hischier and Timo Meier both scored PP goals for the Devils in a losing cause while Ondrej Palat managed just his second goal of the year. That goal by Palat was assisted by Arseny Gritsyuk who added two shots and two blocks to his night. He has 3 goals, 3 assists, 28 shots, 10 hits, and 6 blocks in his last 10 games.

Jake Allen was in net for the loss, giving up five goals on 24 shots.

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The Buffalo Sabres got Josh Norris back into the lineup and they subsequently took a 5-1 win at home to Winnipeg. Norris had a great first game back with two goals, a PP assist, and three shots in 15:25 of ice time. He was back in his usual spots on the top line and top power-play unit.

Jason Zucker (PP), Alex Tuch, and Bowen Byram all scored for the Sabres. Josh Doan managed a pair of assists in this game and it gives him 18 points in 26 games on the season. He had 19 points in 51 games all of last season.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen held things down in net by stopping 23 of 24 shots for his fourth win. He has a .909 save percentage in seven games since November 1^st.

Kyle Connor scored the lone goal for the Jets while goaltender Eric Comrie was pulled after allowing three goals on 14 shots.

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Pavel Mintyukov posted his first multi-point game of the season with a goal and an assist, totaled three shots and two blocks overall, and the Anaheim Ducks took a 4-1 win in St. Louis. Leo Carlsson also managed a goal and an assist, which pushed him up to 36 points and a tie for fourth place in league scoring with Connor McDavid.

Chris Kreider and Mason McTavish had the other markers for the Ducks. McTavish finished with four shots, two blocks, and two PIMs, and he's up to eight points in his last seven games, totaling 16 shots, 7 hits, and 6 blocks in that span.

Ville Husso was in net for the Ducks and stopped 21 of 22 pucks launched his way for the victory.

Jordan Kyrou scored the lone goal for the Blues while Jordan Binnington was pulled after allowing two goals on five shots, both goals he definitely should have had.

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San Jose's top line had a huge game as Tyler Toffoli registered two goals and two assists, Will Smith posted two goals and one assists, while Macklin Celebrini managed a trio of assists as the Sharks took a 6-3 win at home to Utah. Those three assists give Celebrini 40 points on the season, becoming just the second player in the league to crack 40 points, following Nathan MacKinnon.

A lot of the talk around the Sharks this year has involved Celebrini, but we shouldn't overlook the season Smith is having. He now has 12 goals, 15 assists, and 69 shots in 27 games. Going back to the 2024 Christmas break, Smith has 61 points in 72 games, and his rate of points per 60 minutes (2.89) is a top-50 mark in the league, higher than names like Nikolaj Ehlers, Mikko Rantanen, Filip Forsberg, and Matt Boldy.

Adam Gaudette scored the other goal for San Jose as goalie Yaroslav Askarov stopped 31 of 34 shots for his 10^th win of the season. He becomes the 11^th goalie to reach the double-digit win mark on the year.

Lawson Crouse scored twice for the Mammoth while JJ Peterka had the other tally. Peterka finished with four shots, a block, and two PIMs, and is up to 10 goals in 27 games, putting him on a 30-goal pace.

Utah pulled goalie Karel Vejmelka before the end of the first period after giving up three goals on nine shots. His save percentage on the year dropped to .882.

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St. Louis announced that winger Jimmy Snuggerud underwent wrist surgery and he will be out for up to six weeks, which puts a return sometime in the middle of January. Additionally, as if the injuries to Jack Hughes and Eetu Luostarainen weren't enough, Blues forward Alexey Toropchenko suffered burns in an accident at home and will be out of the lineup for the foreseeable future. These off-ice injuries have been something else.

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Catching players when they're showing signs of an upswing, but before anyone else can grab them off the waiver wire, is important to the success of any fantasy season. With the regular season roughly one-third finished, let's look at some defencemen with on-ice improvements that have – or could lead to – regular fantasy relevance, particularly in multi-cat formats. We are going to use player data from Natural Stat Trick and roster% numbers from the Frozen Tools Percent Rostered Report. We are splitting the season in two with the first 'half' being the first four weeks and the second 'half' being the most recent nearly-four weeks.

All data is current as of the morning on Monday, December 1^st.

Simon Nemec (New Jersey Devils)

Rostered: Yahoo – 32%, Fantrax – 71%, ESPN 39%

With New Jersey constantly changing their defenceman on the top PP unit, relying on any of Dougie Hamilton, Luke Hughes, or Nemec feels like a fool's errand right now. All the same, Nemec has seen one of the largest ice time increases in our two halves, and that is paired with a sizeable improvement in the team's shot rate with him on the ice:

Importantly, over New Jersey's last five games with their blue line mostly healthy, Nemec is still third in ice time per game at 21:19. There hasn't been much change in his rate of shot attempts per 60 minutes between the two halves, but that he's getting so much more ice time has led him to averaging 2.2 shots per game over his last 10 games. Nemec has 15 even strength points on the season, which is as many as Lane Hutson and more than Jake Sanderson or Miro Heiskanen. With the additional ice time, there's multi-cat value here, even if Nemec rarely hits anyone.

Artyom Levshunov (Chicago Blackhawks)

Rostered: Yahoo – 22%, Fantrax – 69%, ESPN – 10%

As with almost anyone of note, Levshunov is going to be gone in most Fantrax leagues, as well as deeper formats on other sites, particularly since taking over top PP duties in the last few weeks. But it's still worth highlighting that the top PP role, combined with about 45 more seconds per game in even-strength ice time, has led to a huge TOI increase of 2:45 per game and the team is taking nearly 9.5 more shot attempts (CF/60) with him on the ice per 60 minutes:

On top of all this, his individual shot attempt rate has jumped from 6.6 per 60 minutes in the first half to 10.8 in the second half. He has also seen a 22% increase in shot blocks. It is important to highlight that peripheral improvement as his last 10 games have seen him average 1.5 shots and 2.2 hits+blocks per game, compared to 0.86 shots and 1.6 hits+blocks per game in the first half. It will be hard for him to gain much more ice time until the team finally stops using seven defencemen nearly every game, but there are good improvements under the hood, and that puts him in line to just be more and more productive as the season wears on.

Radko Gudas (Anaheim Ducks)

Rostered: Yahoo – 26%, Fantrax – 37%, ESPN – 21%

Oddly enough, the defenceman who has seen the largest improvement in his team's shot attempt rate with him on the ice isn't someone like Levshunov or Nemec – guys who have seen some top PP time. Rather, it's Anaheim's Radko Gudas, who is a long ways away from being a top PP guy:

The funny thing about Gudas is that even with nearly four fewer minutes per game than last season, he's averaging about the same amount of hits+blocks per game (5.5 this year, 5.4 last year), more shots per game, and has about the same rate of points per game. Anaheim is clearly a different offensive team this season than at any point in the last decade, so if Gudas can keep earning some more ice time, he could be useful for more things than just hits and blocks.

Honourable Mentions

We should quickly shout out a couple other defencemen.

Hampus Lindholm has been running Boston's top PP unit without Charlie McAvoy in the fold. Lindholm has also averaged over 24 minutes a game since the injury to McAvoy and while he hasn't had much production with just two points in those last seven appearances, they were both PP assists. He also has 12 shots and 16 blocks in those seven outings. He is currently under 10% owned on both Yahoo and ESPN, though Boston only has six games in the next two weeks, and only one of those on a light day, so beware of a suboptimal upcoming schedule.

There is a bit of a good news/bad news situation with Columbus' Denton Mateychuk. The bad news is that after being Zach Werenski's partner for much of the first four weeks, he's been moved to the second pair over the last month. The good news is that has led to more ice time – about 2:40 per game more. It would be preferable if he were playing those minutes with Werenski, and he won't get close to the top PP unit without a Werenski injury, but his additional ice time is a boon for his fantasy value. Just be cautious here because like Lindholm, Mateychuk has just six games in the next two weeks and only one on a light day.