The Pittsburgh Penguins announced that forward Justin Brazeau and goaltender Tristan Jarry will be out for four weeks and three weeks, respectively, with upper- and lower-body injuries, respectively. Both are a big part of the great start that the Penguins have had and are a loss for the team. My suspicion is there will be a lot of different forwards skating on the second line so it's not as easy as saying, "Grab Philip Tomasino" or whomever off the waiver wire. It is clear that the net belongs to Arturs Silovs now, though. Sergei Murashov was the recall to back him up.

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Matias Maccelli got some revenge on his former team as the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Utah Mammoth 5-3. Maccelli scored the game-winner with under five minutes left after assisting on Auston Matthews' eighth goal of the season back in the second period. That gives Maccelli seven even-strength points in 13 games to start the season.

Matthew Knies had a goal (PP) and an assist, as did William Nylander and John Tavares. That gave Nylander 20 points on the campaign and made him the fourth player in the league to reach that mark so far this season.

Morgan Rielly had a solid multi-cat night with an assist, three shots, and a block, as goaltender Anthony Stolarz took the win by allowing just three goals on 23 shots.

Michael Carcone, Mikhail Sergachev, and Dylan Guenther all scored for Utah. Rookie defenceman Dmitriy Simashev registered his first career point, an assist, on the Sergachev tally.

Vitek Vanecek faced just 18 shots but gave up four goals and took the loss for the Mammoth.

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For the seventh time in 14 games, the St. Louis Blues gave up at least five goals, this time losing 6-1 to Washington. Jordan Binnington was pulled after allowing four goals on 15 shots, lowering his overall save percentage to .859. It has been a less-than-sterling start to his season.

Both Anthony Beauvillier and Tom Wilson scored a pair of goals, with Wilson getting one on the power play. The power forward finished with two goals on five shots, a block, two PIMs, and a hit in a great multi-cat effort.

Alex Ovechkin scored his 900^th goal of his career.

John Carlson had a multi-point night with a goal and a PP assist, totaling three shots and a block while teammate Jakob Chychrun had a trio of helpers (one PP), three shots, and two blocks.

Logan Thompson was solid in net again, stopping 23 of 24 shots faced. He has given up two-or-fewer goals in all nine of his starts, allowing just 13 goals against in total.

Alexey Toropchenko scored the lone goal for the Blues.

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Conor Garland returned to the lineup for the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday night as they played host to the Chicago Blackhawks. Slowly, but surely, the Canucks are starting to get healthy.

Chicago took that game by a 5-2 margin thanks to a Tyler Bertuzzi hat trick. Bertuzzi scored three times (once on the PP) in a span of 8 minutes and 31 seconds in the third period, and that was all the Blackhawks really needed to take the two points. That is Bertuzzi's fourth career regular season hat trick, and he totaled four shots, two PIMs, and two hits to go along with it.

Connor Bedard had a goal on five shots, a PP assist on the Bertuzzi goal, a block, and two PIMs while Ilya Mikheyev also scored. It was a good night for players with Vancouver connections for one reason or another.

After giving up 12 goals in his previous three starts, Spencer Knight was tremendous in net by saving 43 of 45 shots. He is up to five wins in 10 starts with a .919 save percentage.

Aatu Raty and Evander Kane scored for the Canucks. Kane had 10 shots and a hit in the game, pushing him to 44 shots and 31 hits in 15 games.

Kevin Lankinen got the start in net for the Canucks, allowing 23 goals on 27 shots.

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In Nazem Kadri's 1000^th career regular season game, the Calgary Flames earned their second win in as many games for the first time this season thanks to a 5-1 victory at home to Columbus. Kadri scored once on three shots and added a couple of blocks for good measure.

Morgan Frost, Blake Coleman, Adam Klapka, and Mikael Backlund had the other tallies. Coleman totaled three shots and three hits to go with his goal, giving him six goals, 40 shots, and 31 hits on the season. He is 1 of 4 players so far this season with at least 40 shots and 30 hits, joining Filip Forsberg, Adrian Kempe, and the aforementioned Evander Kane.

Rasmus Andersson was an effective multi-cat option on this night with an assist, a shot, two blocks, and two PIMs.

Dustin Wolf had his best start of the season for Calgary, stopping 42 of 43 shots.

Kirill Marchenko scored the lone Blue Jackets goal, his first short-handed goal of his career. He finished with five shots and a hit, maintaining his point-per-game pace with 13 points in 13 appearances.

Jet Greaves took the loss in net by allowing four pucks to get past him on 25 pucks thrown his way.

Sean Monahan was injured at some point in the game and eventually left early in the third period.

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San Jose went into Seattle and laid a beatdown on the Kraken by a 6-1 margin. Macklin Celebrini led the way with a goal, two assists (one PP), two shots, two blocks, and two PIMs. That is Celebrini's fourth three-point game of the season, and third in his last eight outings. He has 15 points in those eight games.

Will Smith, Tyler Toffoli, and John Klingberg each had a goal and an assist, with Klingberg's goal coming on the power play and Smith earning a helper on that tally. It was San Jose's first PP goal this season with Klingberg on the top unit. Toffoli finished with three shots, a block, and two PIMs in the game.

Ty Dellandrea and Ethan Cardwell had the other goals for the Sharks while Mario Ferraro had an assist, a shot, three blocks, and two hits. Ferraro is now pacing for a career-high 23 points and has 2.5 blocks and 1.9 hits per game.

Yaroslav Askarov was in goal for the Sharks and stopped 28 of the 29 pucks directed his way. He has three wins in his last five starts with a .901 save percentage in that span.

Ryan Winterton scored his first career goal and it was Seattle's lone tally on the night. Goaltender Joey Daccord was pulled after allowing five goals on 20 shots.

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In my Ramblings on Tuesday morning, I wrote about three players off to hot starts and whether to hold or trade them. Today, let's go in the other direction and look at three players off to cold starts and what fantasy managers should do with them.

Data is from Evolving Hockey and is current as of the morning of November 5^th, 2025.

Artemi Panarin (New York Rangers)

With two goals and seven points in 14 games, it has been a brutal stretch to start the season for Panarin, considering he averaged 39 goals every 82 games over the prior three seasons. While it's easy to look at his 4.9% shooting and say he's been unlucky (he has), we do have to look a bit deeper.

On the year, Panarin is averaging 0.8 individual expected goals per 60 minutes at all strengths. Here are his individual expected goal (ixG) and actual goal rates in two pairs of seasons from 2021-2023 and from 2023-2025, and the shooting percentages in each stretch:

In the two seasons from 2021-2023, Panarin's ixG rate was close to what it is now, and he scored 1.0 goals per 60 minutes. From 2023-2025, his ixG rate was nearly 38% higher than it is now, and his goal-scoring rate reflected that improvement. It was the difference between averaging 27 goals every 82 games or 44 goals every 82 games.

The good news is he won't keep shooting under 5%. The bad news is that these ixG rates, based on what he's done in recent seasons, would mean a shooter closer to 13% than 16%. At the rate he's currently landing shots on goal, if he shot 13% the rest of the way, he would fall short of the 30-goal mark on the year, and that's not good enough for a guy who was a top-20 fantasy pick.

Lastly, it's worth noting the Rangers are drawing the fifth-fewest power-play opportunities per game in the league. That is not a death-knell as they were 25^th by PP opportunities per game last season and Panarin still had 37 goals and 89 points. They are due for some positive regression, too, so his man advantage production (two PP points in 14 games) will improve, and that will help his rebound immensely.

What to do: This is a case where if I could trade him for a similar-type of option like Brayden Point or Sam Reinhart, then that would be fine. Otherwise, I would hold. He is skating 21:08 per game, which is a career-high, and there is too much positive regression to come to treat him as a top-75 fantasy forward rather than a top-25 fantasy forward. Last year, he had a stretch from early December to mid-January where he scored twice in 16 games and he still finished with 37 goals on the campaign.

Quinn Hughes (Vancouver Canucks)

Hughes has missed a few games, but he still has just seven points in 10 appearances, or 0.7 points per game, his worst mark of his career outside his 5-game debut in 2018-19. The Canucks sit 25^th in goals per game, so it's not as if he's just had a run of bad luck on a high-scoring team. In fact, his points per 60 minutes (1.57) is the lowest of his career, including that 5-game debut in 2018-19.

There are a lot of good signs here, though.

The first positive sign is he's skating 26:46 per game, by far a career-high, exceeding his previous mark by over a full minute. It isn't as if ice time was ever a concern with him, but he leads the league in TOI per game.

The second is that despite Vancouver's scoring struggles, they are creating well with him on the ice: the Canucks are averaging a whopping 71 shot attempts and 5.3 expected goals per 60 minutes when Hughes is on the ice. That rate of shot attempts would be the second-highest of his career (75 per 60 minutes in 2023-24) and that rate of expected goals would be far-and-away the highest of his career.

The third is that his individual shot attempt rate is 16.14 every 60 minutes. Over the previous two seasons when he had shown a penchant for shooting, that rate was 16.44. It is basically in line with the elevated rate of recent seasons and is balanced out completely by the increase in ice time.

Lastly, the team is scoring 3.95 goals per 60 minutes with him on the ice. Last year, when he had 76 points in 68 games, Vancouver managed 4.22 goals per 60 minutes. At his elevated rate of ice time, we are looking at being on the ice for seven fewer goals in a full 82-game season, and that's if the team doesn't start converting at a higher rate than it is now.

It all comes down to Hughes registering a point on just 41.2% of Vancouver's goals so far. He has never been below 53.5% in a season and averaged 57.3% across the prior three seasons (per Natural Stat Trick). If he were at that 57.3% goal participation rate this year, he'd be a point-per-game defenceman.

What to do: This is a clear hold, or even a buy for those without Hughes on their rosters. He won't get worse than he is now and there is a good argument that without some bad luck, he has 10 points in 10 appearances already. There is upside beyond that, so hold or buy.

Andrei Vasilevskiy (Tampa Bay Lightning)

With just three wins in nine starts, and a .900 save percentage, there may be some consternation around Andrei Vasilevskiy. While it's understandable, there needs to be patience.

To start with, there are 31 goalies with at least 400 minutes played so far this season. Of those 31 goalies, Vasilevskiy has the third-furthest shot distance faced at 37.3 feet (again from Natural Stat Trick). Last year, five regular goalies had an average shot distance faced of 37 feet or further, none had a save percentage under .900 and they averaged a .909 save percentage with a 2.41 goals against average. Not elite, but very good, nonetheless.

The second aspect of this is Vasilevskiy's goal support. He allowed nine goals in his first two games, losing both outings. In the seven games since, he's allowed just 15 goals but has gotten just 17 goals of support in return. That is a rate of 2.43 goals-for per game which would rank near the bottom of the league between Nashville and the New York Rangers. As a team, the Lightning sit with 2.85 goals per game, which isn't great, but a lot better than the recent stretch.

Finally, Vasilevskiy has 4.98 Goals Saved Above Expected in his nine games. In a full season, that would be the best rate of his career on a per-minute basis. He has been playing as well as ever, but the Lightning started slow before picking things up in the last couple of weeks, and their goal scoring has increased with it.

What to do: This is another clear hold-or-buy. Tampa Bay has found their groove and once they finish their current road trip, they have the sixth-easiest schedule from this weekend until the Christmas break by opponent points percentage (per the Frozen Tools scheduler). Anyone who survived the first month with Vasilevskiy as their top goalie is likely to be rewarded for their patience.