The Detroit Red Wings announced that winger Lucas Raymond was day-to-day after leaving their game against Toronto on Monday with an injury. He did not play on Wednesday night, though it seems as if this will be a short-term thing.

Even without Raymond in the lineup, Detroit was able to post its third win in four games to start the season, taking a 4-1 win at home over Florida. Mason Appleton, moved to the top line alongside Dylan Larkin, scored a pair of goals, Patrick Kane tallied one on the power play, and Michael Rasmussen added an empty netter for the Red Wings. Larkin finished the game with a pair of assists (one PP), two shots, and two hits. He is up to five points, 14 shots, and five hits in four games.

Cam Talbot again got the start in net for Detroit, and again was solid as he stopped 21 of 22 shots faced in the win. He is now up to a .933 save percentage in four games (three starts).

Brad Marchand had the lone tally for the Panthers, totaling four shots.

Sergei Bobrovsky gave up just two goals on 23 shots but took the loss in net.

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New Jersey announced a recall of goalie Nico Daws as Jacob Markstrom was not at practice. Reporter Kristy Flannery tweeted that Markstrom is expected to miss a couple weeks with injury, which is the reason for the Daws call-up. We saw Jake Allen have a great extended stretch in early 2025 when Markstrom was out, so let's see if he can do it again.  

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Florida defenceman Dmitry Kulikov is expected to be out five months, or most of the regular season, due to surgery to repair a torn labrum, per the team. That should mean a game-in, game-out role for Uvis Balinskis.

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After what could be deemed a questionable hit on Tuesday, Brian Rea said that Matt Duchene is considered day-to-day. We will see what Thursday brings as Dallas is at home to the Vancouver Canucks.

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Buffalo's offence came alive in a big way in their home game against Ottawa on Wednesday night as they put up an eight-spot on the Senators, taking the game by an 8-4 margin. After going three games without a power-play goal, Buffalo scored three (!) PP goals in this one: two from Jason Zucker and one from Jack Quinn. Quinn added another goal in the third period, Ryan McLeod scored twice, and both Alex Tuch and Jiri Kulich had solitary tallies.

Zach Benson and Josh Doan each had three assists in the win, each managing one on the power play as both were stationed on the top PP unit. Benson had two shots, a block, and a hit while Doan had three shots, a block, and two hits. (Note: A fourth assist for Benson was added on the Kulich empty-net goal.)

Both Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin had a pair of helpers, and Thompson wound up with five hits in the game.

Alex Lyon was in net for Buffalo and managed the win, stopping 33 of 37 shots overall.

Tim Stutzle, Shane Pinto, and Lars Eller all scored for Ottawa. Also scoring was Jake Sanderson (PP), and he added an assist on the Pinto goal to go with three shots and two blocks. Sanderson now has five points in four games on the year.

Jordan Spence had a trio of helpers in the game and was the only Ottawa defenceman not on the ice for a goal against at any strength.

Leevi Merilainen was in net for Ottawa and gave up seven goals on 26 shots.

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In the second eight-spot of the night, the Chicago Blackhawks went into St. Louis and laid waste to the Blues by an 8-3 score. This was actually a 2-2 game through 20 minutes before Chicago scored three in the second period and then three more in the third.

Leading the way was Lukas Reichel with his first three-point game since March of 2024, totaling two goals, an assist, and five shots in 13:11 of ice time.

Both Ilya Mikheyev and Tyler Bertuzzi had a goal and an assist, the former with three shots and the latter with one, while Connor Bedard had three helpers (one PP) and a shot.

Jason Dickinson, Ryan Greene, Ryan Donato, and Frank Nazar all scored. Going back to last season, Nazar has eight goals and eight assists in 16 games.

Alex Vlasic had a productive night from the back end with two assists and two blocks in 22:07 of ice time.

Arvid Soderblom got the start in net for Chicago and stopped 23 of 26 shots.

Jake Neighbours had a very good fantasy night in a losing effort, posting a goal, an assist, four PIMs, and three hits. He is up to four goals, five points, and 14 hits in four games.

Dylan Holloway and Tyler Tucker had the other goals for the Blues. That was Holloway's first goal (and point) of the year but he does have 10 shots and 16 hits in four games.

Joel Hofer was in net for St. Louis and gave up seven goals on 22 shots, being pulled for Jordan Binnington halfway through the second period before coming back in for the third period.  

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Calgary has now lost four straight games since their huge comeback against Edmonton with their latest loss being a 3-1 defeat in Utah. The Mammoth got goals from JJ Peterka, Barrett Hayton, and Kevin Stenlund, and Nick Schmaltz assisted on the Hayton tally. Schmaltz also had six shots and a hit, so even if he hasn't scored yet this year, he has three assists and 16 shots in four games to start the season.

Karel Vejmelka wasn't very busy, but was solid, allowing just one goal on 20 shots.

Rasmus Andersson (PP) scored the lone goal for the Flames as goaltender Devin Cooley allowed two goals on 31 shots for the loss.

Utah went 0/6 on the power play and they are now 1/16 with the man advantage on the season. They have not scored more than three goals in any game and are tied for the second-lowest goals/game mark on the season with the New York Rangers. To make sure we're all on the same page, that is a New York Rangers team that has been shut out three times in five games.

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We are just over a week into the season and it's still far too early to make any determinations on player or team performance just yet. A couple things we can look at are line combinations – check out the 'Lining Up' column or the line combos tool at Frozen Tools for more on those – and player usage (available under Ice Time Reports at Frozen Tools). One other thing we can look at is the market share of shots. That is simply looking at what percentage of a team's shot attempts (CF) with a given player on the ice are being taken by that player. So, if a player has been on the ice for 20 of their team's shot attempts, and they've taken five of them individually, then their market share is 25% (5/20). Let's look at which players, both up front and on the blue line, are taking a big market share early on.

Data is at all strengths, taken from Evolving Hockey, limited to players with at least 30 minutes of ice time, and current as of the morning of Wednesday, October 15^th.

For a couple reference points, the league average market share for a forward is 21.4% and for a defenceman it is 18.2%. Last year, only two forwards skated at least 800 minutes and had at least 33% of their team's market share and only 9 of 322 forwards were over 30%. Among defencemen, no one exceeded 27% and just 5 of 189 blue liners cracked 25%. That should give readers an idea of how high would be too high at each position this early in the season.

To start with, the very top of the league among forwards – or two standard deviations above average – consists of a few notable players as well as a few surprises:

It is curious seeing Jeff Skinner here at the top. Part of this is that he's been stuck on San Jose's third line and second PP unit, and even if he's on the downside of his career, he is still the most talented offensive player the Sharks have in the bottom-half of the roster. All the same, his shot attempt rate is over 26 per 60 minutes, reminiscent of his best seasons a decade ago in Carolina rather than his last couple seasons with Buffalo and Edmonton. He has two goals and eight shots in three games, but before we get too excited, he’s skating 11:29 per game. That little ice time means very little fantasy value, especially considering his line mates. Just keep an eye on him in case he starts earning a bigger role.

The same can be said for Patrik Laine. It is nice seeing him have a high market share, but he's also skating on Montreal's fourth line and second PP unit. Things can change fast, but if he keeps averaging under 13 minutes a game as he has so far this season, there's no real fantasy value here outside very deep formats.

It is great to see Auston Matthews so high on this list. There (rightly) was some concern about how he'd fare without Mitch Marner riding shotgun, and so far, Matthews has three goals and four points in four games while averaging five shots per game. His shot attempt rate through four games is over 25 per 60 minutes, compared to finishing under 21 per 60 minutes in 2024-25. If he can stay at this level, we shouldn't worry about Matthews being a goal-scoring machine once again.

Dylan Guenther went into Utah's game on Wednesday night with two goals, two assists, and 13 shots in three games. He has a top role at even strength, on the power play, and the penalty kill. There was a lot of excitement about Guenther's upside this season and he's making good on that. Let's see where things stand a month from now, but an excellent start.

There are a couple more names not far from the top worth discussing, one a high fantasy pick and one a deep-league selection:

Jack Hughes, from 2023-2025, averaged 27.9% of his team's shot attempts at all strengths, and he sits at 35.7% so far this season. He has yet to score on the year, so I'm sure there are some fantasy managers getting a bit antsy, but for me the bigger concern isn't Hughes, but the fact the Devils are generating about 22% fewer shot attempts with him on the ice than they did the previous couple of seasons. It would be nice to see more shots from the Devils when he's on the ice.  

Last year, Ilya Mikheyev had a very quiet 20-goal season for Chicago while being excellent defensively. Heading into Wednesday night's game, he had two goals in four contests and through he's locked again in a defensive role, he's been the offensive focal point of his line. In the same vein as Hughes, it's nice to see Mikheyev at this level to start this campaign, but the team needs to start creating way more shots when he's on the ice for him to be a productive fantasy option.

Let's look at a few defencemen, starting at the top with the four largest market shares:

Louis Crevier and Connor Murphy play on separate defence pairs, and I'm going to guess that Chicago is going to struggle to score if two defencemen on two different defence pairs remain at the top of the league in market share of shot attempts. This will change, but the question is how much.

On the flipside, it seems Zach Werenski is right where he should be. His individual shot attempt rate of 28.6 per 60 minutes not only leads all defencemen, but he's third in the league among all skaters, trailing only Tage Thompson (32.2) and teammate Kirill Marchenko (29.1). That two Columbus skaters – one forward and one defenceman – are among the top-3 in the league should tell us about how well the top of that roster is performing offensively right now.

While Chicago has two names at the top of the defenceman list, there are a pair of New York Islanders defencemen not far behind:

It isn't that I didn't think Matthew Schaefer was a high-end prospect, it's that I definitely did not see him cracking the 26-minute mark in two of his first three career games at the age of 18. It will be fascinating to see if he can keep up anywhere close to this level of shot volume over the course of the season, and the same can be said for Adam Pelech because he's skating just 17 minutes a game right now. If he starts earning more ice time and can stay above a 20% market share mark, he could have good multi-cat value.