During the Olympic break, I wrote about how Tampa Bay forward Dominic James has some pretty good scoring chance numbers for the Lightning, and that was without often playing with their top stars. He was having a solid rookie season, which is why it was brutal to see he's going to miss 8-10 weeks with a lower-body injury, per Diandra Loux.

That kind of timeline would put James back in game action in the second or third round of the playoffs, should Tampa Bay get that far. It sucks for James, because his season may be over, but he did show some promise, so his future prospects don't change much.

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Vegas forward Mark Stone has been placed on the injured reserve, tweeted Danny Webster. There is no timeline for his injury but being put on the IR means he'll be out until at least Monday. We have to wait for more updates.

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Travis Konecny did not play for the Flyers on Thursday night, missing another game, but Jackie Spiegel reports that he skated on Thursday morning and is a possibility for Saturday night.

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After missing the last two games with an illness, Columbus defenceman Zach Werenski missed Thursday night's game as well. We have seen many players miss 1-3 weeks this season with whatever illness they contract, so there's no telling exactly when Werenski will be ready to go.

Mathieu Olivier scored twice in that game to help lift the Blue Jackets to a 4-2 win over Florida. With no Werenski, Ivan Provorov was back on the top power-play unit. He scored a goal, managed two assists, totaled four shots, had five blocks, and even added a hit in a great fantasy night.

Jet Greaves stopped 26 of 28 shots in the win. Mason Marchment left the game late in the second period with an injury and did not return.

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Vitek Vanecek faced just 16 shots from the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday night and stopped them all as Utah took a 3-0 win. Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz both scored goals that were assisted by Dylan Guenther.

Mikhail Sergachev did not play in this game and is considered day-to-day. The team's next game is Saturday, so we'll likely have to wait until then for his availability (or MacKenzie Weegar's, for that matter).

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Josh Norris and Owen Power each had a goal and an assist as the Buffalo Sabres beat Pittsburgh 5-1. With those two points, Norris now has 24 points in 27 games as a member of the Sabres, which works out to a 73-point pace over a full season. If only he could stay healthy.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stopped 26 of 27 shots for his 14^th win. That game pushes his save percentage on the season to .910.

Evgeni Malkin was assessed five minutes and a game misconduct for slashing Rasmus Dahlin in the face. We will have to wait and see what the Department of Player Safety does here, but if the recent history of the DoPS' concern for player safety is any indication, Dahlin will be given a two-game suspension for putting his face in the path of Malkin's stick.

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Mika Zibanejad and Alexis Lafrenière both posted a goal and two assists as the New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 6-2. Will Cuylle scored twice while Vladislav Gavrikov added a power-play goal.

Igor Shesterkin stopped 29 of 31 shots in the win.

Matias Maccelli and Easton Cowan both scored for Toronto in the loss. Kind of fitting that the two guys Craig Berube liked to healthy scratch for some reason were the only goal scorers in a game the Leafs got embarrassed by an opponent icing 30% of an AHL roster.

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Ryan O'Reilly sat out Thursday night with a facial injury but the Nashville Predators still beat the Boston Bruins 6-3. Filip Forsberg had a goal, two assists, and six shots in the win, and he now has 12 goals, 9 assists, and 66 shots in his last 16 games.

Matthew Wood – centering Forsberg and Luke Evangelista – had a pair of goals.

Both Charlie McAvoy and Viktor Arvidsson registered a goal and an assist in the loss for Boston. That makes 28 points, 51 blocks, and 29 hits in his last 27 games for McAvoy.

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Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele each had a goal and an assist as the Winnipeg Jets beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1. Those two points tie Mark Scheifele with Kirill Kaprizov for sixth in league scoring.

Speaking of tied, the Lightning loss coupled with the Sabres win means Buffalo is now tied for first in the Atlantic Division.

Connor Hellebuyck stopped 26 of 27 shots for just his 15^th win in his 40^th start.

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A Dylan Cozens power-play goal pushed Ottawa to a 2-1 lead over Calgary on Thursday night, and then a pair of empty netters from Tim Stutzle and Shane Pinto sealed the 4-1 win. Stutzle totaled five shots in the game and now has 163 shots in 61 games this season. That surpasses his shot total from last year (162) in 21 fewer games. He now sits one goal shy of 30 tallies on the season.

Linus Ullmark stopped 19 of 20 shots for his 18^th win in his 34^th start. He has a .909 save percentage and 4-0-2 record in six starts since returning from the Player's Assistance Program.

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Drew Doughty returned to the lineup for Los Angeles as the Kings registered a much-needed win over the New York Islanders by a 5-3 margin. Artemi Panarin, Adrian Kempe, and Mikey Anderson all had a goal and an assist. The Panarin-Kempe duo was centered by Anze Kopitar, who skated 25:10 overall in this contest. That is his most ice time in a regulation regular season game since April of 2022.

Darcy Kuemper earned the win, stopping 31 of 34 shots.

Matthew Schaefer assisted a late goal from Emil Heineman in the loss. Schaefer now has four goals, two assists, 16 shots, 11 blocks, 2 hits, 1 PPP, and 4 PIMs in five games since returning from the Olympic break. The rest did wonders for him.

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Today is the Trade Deadline in the NHL and we will have you covered here at Dobber Hockey. Our 'Fantasy Take' section will have the fantasy impact breakdowns of all the big trades that happen today, and it includes the ones that've already happened like MacKenzie Weegar, Jason Dickinson, and Samuel Girard. Be sure to refresh that page after significant names get moved to get updates on what it means for your fantasy teams.

I wanted to touch on the Weegar trade because he's a very good player having a very bad season and that makes for interesting discussion points.

Weegar was traded late on Wednesday night and Alex broke the trade down at the time. His write-up can be read here.

When it comes to the former Flames blue liner, there are several things that are true at the same time (as is usually the case for any player/team).

To start with, from 2021-2025, he was a genuine #1 defenceman. As some evidence, Evolving Hockey had him as 16^th out of 185 defencemen by goal differential-driving per 60 minutes at even strength. He was also 29^th by EV time on ice per game. So, he was skating #1 minutes while also driving goal differential as a mid-tier #1 defenceman.

Over at HockeyViz, their Synthetic Goals model (a measure of player impact given a 1200-minute season) had Weegar as a top-pair defenceman for several years and truly elite in 2024-25:

Heavy minutes allowed him to average 10 goals, 34 assists, 191 shots, 168 hits, and 198 hits per 82 games over those four seasons. His per-minute production wasn't great – outside the top-30 defencemen both at even strength and overall – but three of the four years saw him skate around 23-24 minutes a game. Being able to drive the play and play a lot of minutes made him a reliable producer with monster peripherals.

The next thing that's true is the 2025-26 has been a poor season from him. Granted, the Calgary Flames are a bad team, but Weegar's goal differential-driving has dropped from a mid-tier #1 defenceman to dead last in the NHL (minimum of 500 minutes).

The funny thing is when I looked at his tracking data from All Three Zones, it wasn't wholly different from last season (which was arguably the best of his career). In fact, some of the data I use that is helpful for fantasy value – scoring chance assists/contributions, zone entries, botched defensive zone retrievals, failed zone exits – are better than last year:

Skaters with declining results will often have declining results in their tracking data (Jonathan Huberdeau and Elias Pettersson are recent examples of this). That isn't the case with Weegar.

Now we look at the percentages. From 2022-2025, the Flames shot 8% with Weegar on the ice at 5-on-5 and the team had a .911 save percentage. This season, Calgary is shooting 5.8% with Weegar on the ice and the goalies have posted an .879 save percentage. That gives Weegar a .936 PDO at 5-on-5, which is dead last in the NHL by a good margin (next-lowest is Tyler Myers at .949). There is a similar gap between Weegar and the 10^th-worst PDO mark (Sean Walker at .964) as there is between the 10^th-worst mark and the 60^th-worst mark (Ben Chiarot at .992). Not only is Weegar last by PDO, but he's basically in a tier of his own.

Here we have a player who performed as a top-pair defenceman, if not a #1 defenceman, for several years. Then his on-ice percentages crashed and his value tanked. The underlying tracking data is similar to, or better than, what he did in 2024-25, which indicates no decline in his skills. Now, he moves to a Utah team that sits in a playoff position and is scoring 0.71 more goals per game than Calgary is.

When we put this all together, it seems like a good bet that Weegar will be just fine. There is always a concern about age-related decline when any player crests the 30-year-old mark, and he turned 32 years old in January. Until we see a real skills decline in his underlying numbers, I would bet on a player with his kind of track record rebounding in a much better environment. He won’t get top PP time, but considering he had just five PPPs in 60 games with Calgary, it isn’t a big hit to his current fantasy value.

This is bad news for the prospect Utah defencemen, though. All of Weegar, Mikhail Sergachev, Sean Durzi, Nate Schmidt, and John Marino are signed through next season, and the first four names are signed for two more years (per PuckPedia). The Mammoth have a handful of solid defence prospects who are now facing a very big hill to climb to not only stay in the NHL, but be fantasy relevant, in the next year or two.