According to Walt Ruff, Alexander Nikishin was at Carolina's practice on Wednesday, skating in a non-contact jersey. The next step in recovering from that hit he took in the first round will be taking contact, but that he's been cleared just to step on the ice for practice is a positive sign.

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We got an update from Buffalo on forwards Noah Ostlund and Josh Norris:

Ruff said Ostlund is going to miss a period of time. Norris is ready

— Paul Hamilton (@pham1717) April 29, 2026

It is unfortunate for Östlund, who had played very well since returning to the lineup and had made it a genuine decision as to whom the third-line centre would be. With Norris good to go, he can just slide back into that role, which highlights the depth the team has, but it still is a tough break for Östlund.

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The NHL named its Vezina Trophy finalists:

Jeremy Swayman is a Vezina Trophy finalist. The other two are Andrei Vasilevskiy (TBL) and Ilya Sorokin (NYI).

— Scott McLaughlin (@smclaughlin9) April 29, 2026

Remember that this trophy is voted on by the 32 general managers, and not the media. Overall, I don't really have any personal opinion on these selections. Logan Thompson may have deserved a nod here, but there were probably four worthy candidates and only three get chosen, so here we are.  

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The Montreal Canadiens took a 3-2 series lead over the Tampa Bay Lightning with a 3-2 win on Wednesday night. All five games in the series have been one-goal games and three of them have gone to overtime. White-knuckle playoffs at its finest.

Brendan Gallagher was back in the lineup for the Canadiens and scored the game's opening goal. Kirby Dach and Alexandre Texier had the others for the Habs. That line, along with Zachary Bolduc, has been a revelation for Montreal's scoring depth.

Lane Hutson assisted the Texier goal and Hutson now has points in all five games against the Lightning. Goalie Jakub Dobes was excellent in net, stopping 17 shots in the third period and 38 shots overall.

Jake Guentzel had a goal one four shots in the loss while Dominic James also scored.

Game 6 goes Friday night back in Montreal.

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The Philadelphia Flyers finally finished off the Pittsburgh Penguins thanks to a 1-0 overtime win on Wednesday night. Cam York played the OT hero, firing home a shot from the point with 2:28 left in the first extra frame.

Dan Vladar was the real hero of the game, though, stopping all 42 shots he faced for his second shutout of the series. He posted a .937 save percentage across the six games, giving up just 10 goals in that span.

Matvei Michkov was back in the lineup for the Flyers and assisted on the overtime goal, totaling three shots.

Arturs Silovs took the hard-luck loss, giving up just one goal on 32 shots. He had a .939 save percentage in his three games in Pittsburgh's net.

The Flyers will take on the Carolina Hurricanes in the second round.

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Vegas and Utah went to overtime again, or rather double overtime, and for the second game in a row, Vegas took a 5-4 win. This gives them a 3-2 series lead, and the Golden Knights can finish off the Mammoth on Friday night in Utah.

Following his extended benching in Game 4, Pavel Dorofeyev had a monster Game 5 for Vegas, posting a hat trick on five shots, including the game-tying goal with 53 seconds left in the third period.

This was two OT games in a row between the two squads, and it was the second game in a row that Brett Howden figured in heavily. In Game 4, he scored the game-tying goal in the third period and assisted on the OT winner. In Game 5, he scored the OT winner while on the penalty kill, and he has been a major secondary source of production for Vegas.

Lawson Crouse, Dylan Guenther, Michael Carcone, and John Marino tallied the Mammoth goals.

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My season review started last week, and this is what we've covered so far:

• Forwards whose projections I missed on badly.
• Defencemen whose projections I missed on badly.
• Goalies I missed on.

Today, we're going to continue the season review, but shifting focus back to the forwards, specifically on younger forwards, and seeing which ones changed their market share of shot attempts.

The term 'market share' (or market%) might be unfamiliar to some, so for a bit of clarity, it's the percentage of a team's shot attempts (or shots on goal or expected goals) a player takes when they're on the ice. So, if Edmonton creates 60 shot attempts per 60 minutes with Connor McDavid on the ice, and he takes 20 shot attempts/60 minutes himself, then his market share is 33%.

Our focus will be on shot attempts rather than shots on goal because the rate of shot attempts correlates better from one season to the next than shots on goal. For example, of all forwards with at least 600 minutes of even strength ice time in both 2023-24 and 2024-25, here is the correlation (the number in the red circle) of their market% of shot attempts from 2023-24 to 2024-25:

And the correlation of market% of shots on goal from 2023-24 to 2024-25 for that same group of forwards:

Shot attempt correlation is higher, which means it should be used rather than shots on goal. And just to ensure that the correlations aren't a one-year blip, these are the correlations for market% of shot attempts and shots on goal among forwards with 600 minutes of even strength time in each 2024-25 and 2025-26:

• Shots on goal: 0.3855
• Shot attempts: 0.6766

Again, shot attempts correlate best from one year to the next, so that will be our focus. We are just looking at even strength rates (per Evolving Hockey) and excluding empty-net situations. Which forwards age-25 or younger saw big improvements in their market share of shot attempts?

Cole Perfetti (Winnipeg Jets)

Anyone banking on Perfetti to improve on his 50-point season from 2024-25 was bitterly disappointed in 2025-26, but it wasn't a complete loss. Of the 246 forwards in our sample, he had the 10^th-largest improvement in his market%, and the largest of any player under the age of 26:

He scored just 12 total goals in 68 games but did so shooting 8.8%. If he had shot 12% and played 82 games, he would have scored 20 goals. Including playoff appearances, Perfetti has over 300 career NHL games to his name, and next season is his age-25 campaign. It feels like a make-or-break year for him, and that he showed a big upswing in his shot rate is a good start.  

Shane Pinto (Ottawa Senators)

It was a weird year for Pinto, who scored 8 goals in 9 games to start the season and then scored just 15 times in the next 63 games. It did lead to a career-high 23 goals, though, and in the three seasons he's played at least 70 games, he managed at least 20 tallies in each campaign. That consistency is underscored by Pinto coming in 13^th by his raw improvement in shot attempt market%, and second highest among forwards in their age-25 season or younger:

Being responsible for about 25% of Ottawa's shot attempts when he's on the ice puts Pinto at a low-end, top-line rate similar to Lucas Raymond's and William Nylander's. It isn't to say Pinto's offence is on the level of those players overall (it's not), but it does describe the security in goal scoring that Pinto has if he keeps skating around 17:30 – 18:30 per game.  

Connor Bedard (Chicago Blackhawks)

With 3.28 shots per game, Bedard's 82-game pace for shots on goal was 269 shots – the average across his first two seasons was 219. Adding an additional 50 shots to that 82-game pace is a huge leap in his age-20 season, and that is backed up by his shot attempt market% having a big increase as well:

Put it all together and Bedard's 82-game paces from 2025-26 were for 36 goals, 54 assists, and 269 shots, and that is as a 20-year-old skating on a team tied for the second-fewest goals scored. Another increase in market% anywhere close to the one he just had and Bedard will be among the elite volume shooters like Auston Matthews and David Pastrnak, and the only limit here is the quality of the roster around him.  

Tim Stützle (Ottawa Senators)

Requiring a lot of minutes for meaningful shot volume is always a concern because if the minutes disappear, so will the meaningful shot volume. We don't really have to worry about that with Stützle because he's Ottawa's top-line centre until further notice, but it's also nice to see his shot attempt market share rise at a rate that was very similar to teammate Pinto:

The issue is that this simply represents a rebound from a decline in 2024-25, as both his overall rates in 2022-23 and 2023-24 were higher than what he did in 2025-26. All the same, it is better to see a sizeable rebound than a continuing decline, and had he played all 82 games, he may have reached the 200-shot plateau. He just turned 24 years old in January so he might be as much of a finished product as he'll get, but he also might have another shot volume jump in the offing, and that would give us a lot of security in his goal-scoring and shot-rate floor as a high-end fantasy option.

Aliaksei Protas (Washington Capitals)

People are calling Protas the Nikolaj Ehlers of Brandon Hagels, and by people, I mean me. Or, more simply, the question is, 'What would Protas' production look like if he got consistent top power-play time'. That is neither here nor there, it's just pointing out he's averaged 64 points every 82 games across the last two seasons and done so with just two power-play points.

The production is accompanied by elevated market% of Protas' shot attempts:

That overall rate of 23.5% of the shot attempts is of a high-end second line forward, in line with names like Dylan Cozen and Rickard Rakell. That rate of shot attempts, with the ice time that Protas gets outside of the power play, including with the empty net, gives him a 20-goal floor. The ceiling depends entirely on whether the Capitals want to give him regular PP minutes or not.  

Leo Carlsson (Anaheim Ducks) and Juraj Slafkovsky (Montreal Canadiens)

A quick shout out to Carlsson and Slafkovský, both of whom saw a good increase in their shot attempts, if not to the level of the young forwards already listed:

Overall, their shot attempt market shares are those of mid-tier second liners, but both get top line and top PP time, so that helps with their shot volume floor. They also just finished their respective age-21 seasons, so another jump like this is very possible, and it would take them to genuine top-line shooting forwards at even strength.