Emil Lilleberg has been deemed week-to-week, per Erik Erlendsson. Ryan McDonagh and Victor Hedman may be returning shortly – still TBD on that – but this now means that the Lightning are missing four defencemen from the lineup. It is amazing that they went into Monday night's game against Florida top in the division with all these injuries.

Staying in Tampa Bay, they hope to get Andrei Vasilevskiy back before the Christmas break, so that's more good injury news.

*

Dylan Holloway was injured in practice on Sunday and the team announced he will be out six weeks with a high-ankle sprain. It is a brutal hit for St. Louis as they can ill-afford to have any of their top players for an extended period, and this only adds to Jordan Kyrou et al. being out of the lineup.

Filip Forsberg capped off a hat trick with an empty-net goal to help push the Nashville Predators to a 5-2 win over the St. Louis Blues. He now has five goals, three assists, 14 shots, and five hits in his last five games. It is nice to see him come alive offensively after a slow start (by his standards).

Reid Schaefer and Michael Bunting had the other Nashville goals. Roman Josi managed a pair of assists (one PP) with two shots and a hit. Goaltender Juuse Saros held the Blues to just two goals on 22 shots for his 12^th win of the season.

Dalibor Dvorsky scored both goals for the Blues, including one on the power play. Joel Hofer got the start in net and allowed four goals on 25 shots for the loss.

*

Mika Zibanejad was scratched on Monday because he missed a team meeting. 

Cutter Gauthier scored twice, including a power-play marker, as the Anaheim Ducks went into New York and beat the Rangers 4-1. Gauthier finished with five shots and a pair of hits, and now has 18 goals in 33 games on the season.

Jackson LaCombe and Pavel Mintyukov had the other tallies for the Ducks. That makes four goals and seven assists in LaCombe's last 12 games, totaling 32 shots, 25 blocks, and 13 hits. That is a lot more like the fantasy option who was a top-25, if not top-20, defenceman off the board.

Lukas Dostal held things down in net for the Ducks, stopping 26 of 27 shots for his 12^th win.

Matthew Robertson had the lone goal for New York as goalie Igor Shesterkin allowed three goals on 25 shots.

*

Not great news for Connor Bedard:

Bedard out the rest of December. Blackhawks will reevaluate in the New Year.

— Tracey Myers (@Tramyers_NHL) December 15, 2025

That he could be re-evaluated in a few weeks is perhaps a good sign, but this now puts Chicago’s season in peril and also Bedard’s spot on Canada’s Olympic team. Expect Frank Nazar to see a lot of ice time until Bedard returns.

*

A pair of goals from Sam Reinhart, one on the power play and one short-handed, was a big part of Florida's 5-2 win over Tampa Bay on Monday night. That snaps a three-game goalless drought for Reinhart, and he's only gone four games without a goal once back in mid-October.

Carter Verhaeghe, Brad Marchand, and Anton Lundell all scored for the Panthers. Verhaeghe also assisted the Marchand goal, and he now has 16 points in his last 10 games, counting eight goals and eight assists. The new dad boost is a real thing.

Aaron Ekblad managed a pair of assists and a pair of blocks in the win while goalie Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 26 of 28 shots.

Max Crozier and JJ Moser scored the goals for the Lightning. Darren Raddysh posted an assist, five shots, a block, two PIMs, and two hits in a great multi-cat effort.

Jonas Johansson allowed five goals on 24 shots for Tampa Bay's loss.

*

Jake Sanderson tied Ottawa's Monday night game in Winnipeg 2-2 with a wrist shot from the blue line that deflected in off Mark Scheifele's stick with under two minutes left, and then Brady Tkachuk finished off a 2-on-1 pass from Tim Stutzle in overtime to lift the Senators to a 3-2 win. Stützle assisted on all three Sens goals – the first tally was from Nick Cousins – and totaled six shots and three hits.

Sanderson finished with a goal, an assist, a shot, a block, and nearly 30 minutes of ice time. Those two points give him 26 in 32 games, tying for seventh in the league for points among blue liners.

Linus Ullmark was stellar in net for Ottawa, stopping 23 of 25 shots in the victory.

Neal Pionk and Logan Stanley scored the goals for the Jets, and goalie Connor Hellebuyck allowed three goals on 31 shots for the overtime loss.

*

Wyatt Johnston, Mikko Rantanen, and Matt Duchene all totaled a goal and an assist as the Dallas Stars beat the Los Angeles Kings 4-1. Those two points move Rantanen into a tie for fourth place in league scoring with 44 points.

Oskar Back tallied the other Stars goal while defenceman Thomas Harley managed an assist, a pair of shots, and five blocks. Goalie Casey DeSmith was in net for Dallas and stopped 27 of 28 shots for the win.

Andrei Kuzmenko scored the lone goal for the Kings. Goaltender Darcy Kuemper got the start but left the game after taking a hit from Mikko Rantanen late in the first period. No further update has been provided since, but one should be coming soon.

*

Friday night saw one of the bigger trades in the NHL over the last decade as Vancouver sent defenceman Quinn Hughes to Minnesota for Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren, and a first-round pick. Ian had his breakdown of the trade that night and it can be read here.

With a trade of that magnitude, even if it's been a few days since everything went down, I wanted to offer a few of my thoughts.

On the Minnesota side, there are several ways this impacts the team. The most obvious impact is on the power play as this puts an end to the PP1 carousel that had been going on this year. The Wild started the season with Buium running things, Jared Spurgeon got a crack for a handful of games, and it had been Brock Faber of late. On Sunday, Hughes was running the top PP unit and as long as he's in the lineup, that is the way it will remain.

Hughes having the PP1 role locked down is a big deal for those other defencemen. Over the last 2.5 seasons, over 34% of Faber's points have come on the power play (32/93). In and of itself, it's not a huge percentage when compared to some other defencemen – Cale Makar is at 38.2% and Adam Fox is at 36.9% in that span. But taking away those points takes Faber from a 40-point/82-game pace to a 26-point/82-game pace. Even if he picks up a few PPPs in a secondary role, being removed from PP1 entirely brings him closer to a 30-point pace than a 40-point pace. A production drop of 25%, and all of it from power-play points, has an across-the-board impact on fantasy value. Considering how few hits Faber puts up, it puts him in a tier with names like Cam York and Damon Severson. It isn't ideal, and it similarly impacts Spurgeon, who is over 35 years old now and whose play is in decline.

On the plus side, Hughes is one of the better PP defencemen in the league. Not that it's a surprise, but it's worth quantifying nonetheless because over the last 2.5 seasons, there are 65 defencemen with at least 200 power-play minutes. Per Evolving Hockey, only two defencemen are in the top-10 by goals-for driving and expected goals-for driving on the power play in that span:

It isn't that Hughes is a good, or even great, PP defenceman, it's that he might be the best in the league. With how much the Minnesota power play has been scuffling for nearly two months now, this is a huge boost to their top guys like Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, and Joel Eriksson Ek. It didn't take long to pay off as the Wild power play went 2-for-3 on Sunday with Hughes in the lineup.

It goes beyond just the power play, too. Looking at Hughes' data from HockeyViz, he has one of the biggest impacts in expected goals driving as well as playmaking (setting) among all defencemen in the league:

Again, not that any of this is surprising, but it really hammers home just how big an impact Hughes can have on the Wild's offence. If he can boost the on-ice expected goal rate of Kirill Kaprizov by 15-20%, then Kaprizov moves from outside the top-125 forwards in the league inside the top-50, or even top-30. It is a massive jump.  

In Vancouver, this trade comes down to Buium's development. While he wasn't good to start the year in Minnesota, he just turned 20 years old a week ago and his most common partner was Zach Bogosian. Not that going to a (likely) bottom-5 team like Vancouver will help much, but if he can skate with someone like Filip Hronek, his impacts should improve.

Buium's tough start also hides that there has been some good under the hood. Looking at tracking data from All Three Zones, here are the four defencemen who are above average by total zone exits + zone entries per 60 minutes, who carry the puck into the zone at least 50% of the time, and who have a top-pair percentage of combined failed zone exits+botched defensive zone retrievals:

It is odd to see Jake Middleton's name here, but seeing Hughes and Cale Makar also on the list should tell us a little bit about the skills Buium has exhibited. His maturation will be a multi-year process, but if he can keep doing this on the regular, then the results will drastically improve with that maturation.

It does bring some concern about the Vancouver power play. Going into Monday night's slate, the Canucks were 10^th in the league by power play goals per game. Hughes is a big part of that and it's doubtful that Buium can immediately fill that role. Maybe in 2-3 years' time he can come close, but the Canucks are likely to see a downturn on the power play, and that hurts the top guys like Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser.

This is a fascinating trade from many aspects but anyone with the top fantasy options in Minnesota should be thrilled. Hughes is a game-changer who should elevate the production of those top names, even if those left behind in Vancouver are heading for a downturn production-wise.