Going into Monday night's game against Buffalo, the New York Rangers had been surviving the injury to defenceman Adam Fox. They had gone 8-1-1 without him in the lineup, their lone loss coming in Dallas. He wasn't expected to miss a significant amount of time, and they got good news about Fox at Monday's morning skate:

Adam Fox is a full participant in #NYR morning skate. No more red non-contact jersey. He's eligible to return Wednesday.

— Mollie Walker (@MollieeWalkerr) November 27, 2023

The coaching staff would say that he has no limitation but would not commit to him playing on Wednesday. It seems probable he returns then, but we'll have to wait and see.

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Pittsburgh also got good injury news on winger Bryan Rust:

And now injured winger Bryan Rust has hit the ice. We will see if he stays for Penguins practice. pic.twitter.com/LNV1NYK0h0

— Shelly Anderson (@_ShellyAnderson) November 27, 2023

He didn't go through the normal line rotations, but he was back on the top PP unit. That is a very good sign for him returning shortly. Pittsburgh plays Tuesday night in Nashville before heading to Tampa Bay.

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Minnesota fired coach Dean Evason after the team’s poor start. There are a lot of things wrong with the team and it starts with being short-handed cap-wise because of the buyouts. Those go on for another year so this issue is nowhere near resolved. I will have more on Evason later this morning. (EDIT: Brennan posted a piece covering the firing late last night so check that out here.)

John Hynes was named as his replacement.

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Some interesting New Jersey Devils lines at practice:

The #NJDevils used the following workflow…

Palat – Hischier – Bratt
Holtz – McLeod – Lazar
Toffoli – Hughes – Mercer
Smith / Willman – Tierney – Bastian

Siegenthaler – Hamilton
Bahl – Marino / Smith
Hughes – Miller

(Smith did rushes on both F and D)

— Sam Kasan (@samikasan) November 27, 2023

In Nico Hischier's return to the lineup, Michael McLeod (14+) and Alex Holtz (13+) still retained reasonable roles. The score may have played a factor, but that duo has had really good returns in a very small sample. I am interested to see how these two young players fare moving forward, especially if injuries stay an issue for the team.

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San Jose sent Filip Zadina to the injured reserve. He had been having a tough year, as have all the Sharks that aren't playing goal. The injury also has bad timing as the team has been showing some signs of life over the last couple of weeks.

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Juuso Valimaki was back on the ice for practice with Arizona. He has turned into their top defensive defenceman so his return will be welcomed by their goalies. It likely means fewer minutes for JJ Moser going forward.

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Vegas changed up their lines for Saturday's game in Calgary as Jack Eichel got Mark Stone as a winger while William Karlsson was reunited with Jonathan Marchessault.

As mentioned often in these Ramblings, the Stone-Stephenson duo has been a shell of what they usually had been able to offer, so maybe this is what Stone needs to get going a bit. It certainly helps his fantasy value to have Eichel as his center. We will see how long these lines last but a Stone-Eichel pairing up front is very intriguing.

Vegas lost that game to Calgary 2-1 in overtime. Only Karlssons scored for Vegas with MacKenzie Weegar and AJ Greer leading the Flames to victory. Weegar hd four total shots, two PIMs, and three hits in a very good fantasy outing.

Karlsson had three shots, two blocks, and two hits in the loss, along with his tally. He now has 10 goals and 11 assists in 22 games.

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Buffalo's top line, sans Tage Thompson, gave the New York Rangers all they could handle on Monday with Alex Tuch (2+0), Casey Mittelstadt (1+2), and Jeff Skinner (0+1) all getting on the board. Tuch finished the game with eight shots and a couple PIMs so help round out his multi-cat night. Mittelstadt is up to 20 points in 22 games with just three of those points coming on the power play.

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was solid again in net as he has been often this year, stopping 25 of 26 in the win. I was a Devon Levi believer in the offseason, but it sure seems as if UPL is running away with the job.

Igor Shesterkin allowed four goals on 38 shots.

Owen Power had two assists and is now up to 12 points in 22 games. His five blocks in the game give him 40 on the year, though the lack of hits (9) is balancing that fantasy equation.

Kaapo Kakko took an awkward spill into the boards and seemed to injure something in his lower body. He left the game and did not return. More updates will be provided as we get them.

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Boston is now 1-4 in their last five games thanks to a 5-2 loss to Columbus. The Blue Jackets were playing their second game in as many nights and outshot Boston 39-33, so this really wasn't a great showing from the Bruins.

Ivan Provorov, Dmitri Voronkov, Yegor Chinakhov, Kirill Marchenko (PP), and Justin Danforth all scored. That was Marchenko's 80^th career game and he now has 28 goals and 190 shots in that span. He is quietly becoming a very dangerous scorer in the league.

Spencer Martin saved 31 of 33 shots faced for the win.

Jeremy Swayman was pulled after allowing two goals on 19 shots.

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In a game that got very chippy in the third period, Florida cruised past Ottawa 5-0 on Monday night. Two power play goals from Sam Reinhart and one from Sam Bennett had this game near-over halfway through the second.

Aleksander Barkov had assists on all three power play goals and he's now up to 20 points in 18 games on the year. Barkov had three shots, a block, and a hit, and his current paces would make him a threat for 200 shots, 35 blocks, and 75 hits. A pretty good multi-cat effort so far when he can stay healthy.

Carter Verhaeghe had a goal on seven shots, bringing him to 71 shots on the season with nine goals to show for it. He is such a good player.

Sergei Bobrovsky only needed to make 20 saves for the shutout win.

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Two goals from Ryan Johansen and a goal and assist from Cale Makar helped lift Colorado to a 4-1 win over Tampa Bay. Alexandar Georgiev did a lot of the heavy lifting with a 37-save performance, allowing just one tally from Anthony Cirelli in the win.

Nathan MacKinnon, who was a game-time decision with an illness, ended up playing and registering a pair of helpers (one on the PP) with three shots and a hit.

In a funny quirk of the early-season portion, Johansen now has nine goals and one assist on the year. This is a guy who, over a five-year span, had nearly twice as many assists (140) as goals (70).

This was another game, like Ottawa-Florida, where a bunch of guys ended up with 10-minute misconducts. It appears the NHL ate some testosterone-boosted turkey for Thanksgiving.

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With Tomas Hertl out of the lineup, San Jose took a 2-1 win over Washington thanks to goals from Luke Kunin and Fabian Zetterlund. Zetterlund finished the game with six shots and a hit. He is now on pace for over 20 goals, which would be a very good year on this very bad team.

MacKenzie Blackwood saved 33 of 34 shots for the win. His saved percentage has climbed to .902 which, again, is excellent on this particular roster.

Martin Fehervary returned to the lineup after over two weeks away, registering an assist, a shot, two hits, and two PIMs in the loss.

San Jose is now 5-5-1 in their last 11 games after starting the year 0-10-1.

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One thing I've been writing about so far this season is how shot rates are changing in the league. Notably, fewer shot attempts are turning into shots on goal as shot-blocking and misses are rising. This was from a few weeks ago, but the same holds now.

I thought it'd be worth looking at individual players who've had this issue affect them this season. Let's look at some players with shot attempts turning into fewer shots on goal than normal. Data from Natural Stat Trick and as of Sunday afternoon.

Here are the 13 players needing at least one extra shot attempt to create a shot on goal, as expressed by shot attempts per shot on target:

The first thing that sticks out, clearly, is that it's largely defencemen at the top of the list. That makes a lot of sense when we think about where they're shooting from, and the recent season-over-season increases in shot blocking.

Let's skip the defencemen and look at just the forwards. Here are the 10 attackers needing more shot attempts to create a shot on goal, relative to the prior two seasons:

We see Radek Faksa and Tomas Tatar at the top, and they're the clear leaders (or losers, I guess) in this regard. What is interesting is that over half the top-10 are from two teams: the Carolina Hurricanes and the New York Rangers.

As for the Rangers, they have a new coach in town with Peter Laviolette. While the team has changed the way it plays, where they shoot from hasn't really changed a whole lot at 5-on-5. HockeyViz has them below average when it comes to shots from the mid-slot or blue line in 2022-23:

Note that while they are below average from the mid-slot area in by expected goals created, they still shot some from the slot. It's just that they focus more down low and the left circle. When we think of guys like Chris Kreider and Artemi Panarin, those locations make sense.

This year is a different story. They still have a similar attacking profile, but they've gone from around 0.1-0.3 expected goals below average from the slot to 0.6-0.8, and it extends all the way down to the crease:

For someone like Barclay Goodrow, it means creating a little around the crease to rarely around the crease. The same can be said for Vincent Trocheck as the team is almost exclusively from the circles with him on the ice (especially now that he's skating with Panarin and Lafrenière), where the offence with him on the ice used to come from around the crease.

It is even more drastic in Carolina. This was a team that habitually created offence from three areas: either the left or right point, or directly in front of the net through direct passes or tips/rebounds. Here is the team's shot map from 2022-23:

And here is their shot map from this season:

That is a drastic, drastic change in attack. To save from inundating with charts, yes, it looks similar with Sebastian Aho or Andrei Svechnikov on the ice this year compared to last. It isn't just affecting some depth guys; this is affecting some of their top offensive stars.

Perhaps with Svechnikov there is still some acclimation after returning from injury. Regardless, the changes in offence are affecting guys like Aho, Trocheck, and Svechnikov. This kind of attack is also apparent on teams like Buffalo and Vegas. We will note, finally, that none of Carolina, Vegas, Buffalo, or New York are among the top dozen teams in goals per minute at 5-on-5 this season (the highest is Carolina at 16^th).

I do genuinely think several teams (maybe eight, give or take?) have greatly altered their offensive approach and it helps explain why guys like Aho and Trocheck are having their worst 5-on-5 seasons in years. It is just a quarter of the season, and these teams/players should improve as the campaign wears one, but this is something to monitor. It is expected that players will start landing more shots on goal as they get more acclimated and the sample grows, but there is a difference between improving and returning to prior levels. Fantasy owners really would like to see the latter, but we may not know what happened until the season is over.