The St. Louis Blues announced the signing of winger Robby Fabbri to a one-year, two-way contract. This is on the heels of them also announcing that winger Jordan Kyrou is week-to-week with a lower-body injury with Alexey Toropchenko still on the shelf and Nick Bjugstad also ailing. Fabbri was with the Blues for their Stanley Cup run, so there's some familiarity with the organization, so let's see how they decide to use him and go from there.  

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After the Chicago Blackhawks had a brutal weekend in California, they bounced back in a big way by shutting out the New York Rangers 3-0 on Wednesday night. Goaltender Spencer Knight was rock-solid for the 'Hawks, stopping all 21 shots he faced for his second shutout of the season. That was his 10^th win in his 21^st start, raising his save percentage to .916.

Connor Bedard managed one goal on three shots, adding an assist on a Tyler Bertuzzi goal, and Bertuzzi finished with two shots, two blocks, and a hit. Louis Crevier had a very good multi-cat fantasy night with a one goal, three shots, two PIMs, and a pair of hits.

Igor Shesterkin took the loss in net for the Rangers, allowing three goals on 25 shots.

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Detroit got out to a 4-0 lead in Calgary on Wednesday night and managed to hang on for a 4-3 win. Alex DeBrincat had a huge fantasy night with two goals, one assist, four shots, three blocks, and a hit in under 15 minutes of ice time. Dylan Larkin and Axel Sandin-Pellikka scored the other tallies as Patrick Kane picked up a pair of assists.

John Gibsons held the Flames to three goals on 37 shots for the win.

Matt Coronato, Morgan Frost, and MacKenzie Weegar scored the goals for the Flames. Weegar totaled four shots and a pair of hits in over 25 minutes of ice time. Goaltender devin Cooley gave up four goals on 27 shots in the loss.

Simon Edvinsson left the game late in the second period with an injury and did not return.

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Anton Lundell scored in the final minute of Florida's game on Wednesday and it pushed the Panthers to a 4-3 win over the Utah Mammoth. Sam Bennett led the way offensively with two goals, one assist, four shots, and three hits while Carter Verhaeghe had one of each, four shots, and a pair of hits himself.

Aaron Ekblad had a solid multi-cat night with an assist, a shot, and four blocks.

Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 27 of the 30 shots he faced for the win.

Dylan Guenther scored twice on three shots while adding a hit in the loss. Jack McBain had the other tally for the Mammoth as Sean Durzi had a decent multi-cat night with an assist, a pair of shots, two blocks, and two PIMs.

Karel Vejmelka was in goal for Utah, earning the loss by giving up four goals on 36 shots.

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Seattle scored three power-play goals, including one from Matty Beniers with 26 seconds left in regulation and one from Vince Dunn in overtime, to take a 3-2 win at home to Los Angeles. Dunn figured in on all three Kraken goals, assisting on a second-period Jared McCann PP tally on top of the Beniers goal. Dunn finished with one goal and two assists, three PPPs, three shots, and a block.

Eeli Tolvanen had a solid fantasy effort with a pair of PP assists, a shot, two blocks, and four hits. Goaltender Joey Daccord stopped 24 of 26 shots for the win.

Kevin Fiala (PP) and Alex Laferriere scored the goals for Los Angeles as goalie Anton Forsberg gave up three goals on 33 shots for the loss.

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When judging fantasy performance, figuring out what is 'for real' and what is more of a mirage is crucial to avoiding roster missteps. To do that, we are going to look dig into market share of shot attempts and expected goals (xG). Data is from Evolving Hockey and is current as of the morning of Wednesday, December 10^th.

Market share of shot attempts (or xG) is simply the percentage of a team's shot attempts (or xG) a player takes when he's on the ice. For example, so far this season, Alex DeBrincat has been on the ice for 661 of Detroit's shot attempts, and he's taken 198 of them. That is a market share of 30%. The same is repeated for expected goals, though obviously with different numbers. Clear? Great.  

Today, we are only going to investigate forwards. We are only including those with at least 1250 minutes played at all strengths from 2023-25 and at least 250 minutes played thus far in 2025-26. It gives us a sample of 280 forwards to comb through.

Shane Pinto (Ottawa Senators)

There are four forwards in our 280-player sample who've increased both their share of shot attempts and expected goals by at least 5%. One of them is Nick Bjugstad which… ok? Two of the others are Jason Robertson and Brandon Hagel, which isn't a surprise. The fourth is Ottawa's $28-million-dollar man:

(Note: Just to ensure clarity, the red dotted line on this chart, and all subsequent charts, is the average change in shot attempt market share and the blue dotted line is the average change in expected goal market share).

This is an important development because there may be reticence in believing Pinto's fantasy profile has taken a step forward due to that incredible hot streak to open the season with eight goals in nine games. However, there is a genuine under-the-hood improvement to back up his 36-goal/82-game pace.

What is key here is this is not just a function of some extra power-play time or something. Pinto has a 28% market share of shot attempts at even strength against a 20.4% rate across the prior two seasons. It is a gigantic improvement and once (if?) he can ever start earning regular top power-play time, his fantasy profile will round into a forward capable of 30-goal, 30-assist, 200-shot seasons.

Trevor Zegras (Philadelphia Flyers)

An assist and five shots on Tuesday night brought Zegras to a 79-point, 211-shot pace, which would obviously be career-highs, but even a little bit of pull back would still have him pacing for a career year. Zegras is reestablishing himself as a forward capable of a point per game, and the shooting profile is a big reason why. He fell a smidge short of the +5/+5 cutoff we saw from Pinto, but he's clearly showing a whole new dimension:

Through the first 28 games of Zegras' rookie 2021-22 season, he took under 22% of the shot attempts, and under 20% of the attempts through 28 games of the 2022-23 season. What Zegras is doing this year isn't a function of a small sample of games – he's taking a bigger slice of the shot-taking pie than he ever has, and there's a similar shot-quality improvement to go with it.

A big chunk of the improvement in shot quality is from the power play, and things can change fast with the man advantage. That said, under a new coach and with Zegras looking like the player he was destined to be 3-4 years ago, I wouldn't bet against him staying very productive on the man advantage, too.

Jake Neighbours (St. Louis Blues)

It was interesting to see Neighbours' name pop up here because St. Louis isn't having a very good season as a team, but he has seen genuine improvements as his shot attempt market share has jumped 3% and his xG market share is the third-biggest jump in the sample (12.1%):

The one caveat here is that Neighbours has played just 19 of St. Louis' 31 games, so there is still a bit of noise here as far as the xG jump is concerned. Setting that aside, the fact that his shot attempt share has also seen a sizeable jump means that an xG increase is very reasonable, it's just the size of that increase that is in dispute.

Either way, Neighbours' xG rate sits at 1.51 on the year, a mark that puts him inside the top-30 forwards of the league, and it exceeds his mark of 1.23 from two seasons ago when he posted 27 goals in 77 games. He won't keep shooting over 28%, so he has to start hitting the net more often, but Neighbours is gobbling up more of the team's shot and xG volume, and that's good news for his goal total.

Leo Carlsson (Anaheim Ducks)

Carlsson shooting nearly 21% should set off some alarm bells – very few players can sustain that kind of conversion rate – but the good news is that there are underlying improvements as well. In fact, of the 280 forwards in the sample, Carlsson is 1 of 19 forwards to increase their share of the shot attempts by at least 3.5% while also having a positive improvement in the xG share:

Shooting the puck isn't necessarily the core of Carlsson's game right now, but that his improved personal shot attempt and xG rates aren't a function of the team being much better offensively this year is a good sign. He may not be a 100-point player this season, but he has the ice time and now the shot volume necessary to be a 30-goal threat this year and for years to come. That he's a very good facilitator as well means that he is a genuine 30-goal, 50-assist threat moving forward. And, as a reminder, Carlsson doesn't turn 21 years old until Boxing Day. The production upside here is huge, just keep in mind that he has 77 combined hits and blocks in his last 106 games. The multi-cat value is not the same as the points-only value.