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Brad Marchand was not in the lineup for Florida on Thursday night as he's dealing with a lingering ailment. He was pulled from the team's last game for the same reason, so though it doesn't seem serious, it's something to keep an eye on.

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There is a chance that William Nylander returns to Toronto's lineup this weekend:

Berube tells media in Philly that Nylander a possibility to play Saturday at home vs. Vancouver. Hildeby likely in net tonight.

— Lance Hornby 🇺🇦🇨🇦 (@sunhornby) January 8, 2026

Not an official confirmation by any means, and whether he returns this weekend or not, at least it seems he's on the verge of doing so.

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Anaheim announced that Troy Terry is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. It would appear to be nothing major, but the last couple of seasons have seen players go from 'day-to-day' to 'well, I guess he'll miss two weeks' far too often.

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Patrick Kane scored twice in Detroit's 5-1 home win over Vancouver, once on the power play, and that performance pushed him to 500 career goals. That makes him the sixth American to reach the mark, and he's now 23 points away from setting the record for most points ever by an American-born player.

Lucas Raymond, J.T. Compher, and Axel Sandin-Pellikka each had a goal and an assist in the win. Raymond finished with two shots, two blocks, and a hit in a solid multi-cat effort. Goaltender John Gibson stopped 25 of 26 shots for his 15^th win.

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Sean Kuraly managed a goal and an assist while Elias Lindholm, Casey Mittelstadt, and Mason Lohrei all scored as Boston extinguished the Calgary Flames by a 4-1 margin. Charlie McAvoy registered an assist, four blocks, and two PIMs in a solid multi-cat effort. Goaltender Joonas Korpisalo gave up just one goal on 29 shots in victory.

Calgary's Blake Coleman left the game twice due to injury, the second time in the third period and it was for the rest of the game. Something to keep an eye on.

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Logan Stankoven, Taylor Hall, and Jalen Chatfield all had a goal and an assist in Carolina's 5-2 win at home to Anaheim. That makes a four-game point streak for Stankoven where he's scored three goals and added a pair of assists.

Mark Jankowski and Jackson Blake had the other goals for the Hurricanes. Goaltender Frederik Andersen faced just 13 shots but stopped 11 of them for the win.

Ville Husso was in net for the Ducks and gave up four goals on 30 shots.

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Scott Laughton scored a goal with just over six minutes left in Toronto's road game in Philadelphia to even things up 1-1, and then Easton Cowan put the game away with an OT winner to lift the Leafs to a 2-1 victory. Cowan now has three goals in his last 10 games after scoring just three times in the previous 22 games.

Dennis Hildeby was solid in net for Toronto, stopped 21 of 22 shots for his fourth win.

Travis Konecny left that game after the second period and did not return. Nikita Grebenkin took his spot next to Trevor Zegras, for anyone in need of a potential streamer as the Flyers have five games in eight days starting Saturday.

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Evgeni Malkin returned to the lineup for Pittsburgh and the Penguins responded with a 4-1 win over New Jersey. Both Erik Karlsson and Connor Dewar had a goal and an assist while Malkin and Blake Lizotte managed the other tallies. Malkin finished with four shots, a block, and two PIMs in 18:19 of total ice time.

Stuart Skinner was very good for the Penguins, holding the Devils to one goal on 29 shots.

Simon Nemec was back in the lineup for New Jersey and was back on the top PP unit by the third period. It is a good time to check the waiver wire.

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Alexandre Texier scored in the final minute of Montreal's 6-2 win over Florida and that goal capped off his first career hat trick. He finished with six shots and a hit, and after posting three points on Wednesday night, Texier wound up with four goals and two assists in 24 hours. Not bad.

Oliver Kapanen also had a three-point night (1 goal, 2 assists), Juraj Slafkovsky managed a goal and an assist, and Noah Dobson scored his eighth goal of the year to round out Montreal's night. Dobson finished with four shots and three blocks as he continues to pile up the peripherals.

Samuel Montembeault gave up just two goals on 26 shots in the win.

Sergei Bobrovsky is down to an .881 save percentage after giving up five goals on 19 shots.

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Jason Zucker, Ryan McLeod, and Mattias Samuelsson each added a goal and an assist to their season's totals as the Buffalo Sabres beat the New York Rangers 5-2. Samuelsson added four shots and two hits, too, and that goal pushed him to seven on the year. That is as many as he had in 212 career games prior to that.

Alex Tuch and Josh Doan also scored, and Doan added three hits to push him to 41 on the year. With 14 goals and 15 assists, he's turning into a very solid multi-category guy.

Colten Ellis was stellar for the Sabres, stopping 30 of 32 shots in the win.

Vincent Trocheck and Mika Zibanejad scored for the Rangers. That keeps Zibanejad's point streak alive as he has four goals and five assists in his last four games.

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There was an interesting thread a few days ago from C.J. Turtoro, a public hockey analyst who has done a lot of work with game tracking in the past (and is a suffering New Jersey Devils fan). Long story short: there is some wonkiness with the public expected goals (xG) models this season. A lot of the ones we use frequently – Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, Moneypuck – had been overestimating the value of expected goals compared to actual goals. To be more specific, shots with moderate expected goals values – roughly between 0.2 and 0.6 – had been underestimating the actual goal value, whereas shots with high xG values – typically shots from close to the net – had been overestimating the actual goal value. So, shots from mid-range were going in more often than expected and shots from in close less often. I encourage everyone to read that thread for more complete analysis of what's going on.

This is crucial for us in the fantasy realm. We use those xG indicators to see who has been creating quality, who hasn't, and who might be due for some regression (both positive and negative). Just as an example, players who live around the net like Anders Lee or Brady Tkachuk might have overinflated xG numbers which would throw off our analysis, and possibly by quite a bit. That matters a lot.  

I thought I would dig in a little bit more to see the year-to-year correlations between a team's individual xG rate and their actual goal-scoring rate. For today, we are using Evolving Hockey's data, we're putting everything on a 60-minute rate, and data is current as of the morning of January 8^th.

As of today, there are 1362 individual team games played. Using all-situations data, here is the correlation map between individual team xG per 60 minutes and goals-for per 60 minutes:

As we can see, that is a pretty strong upward trajectory for teams creating more expected goals. And when we run the correlation analysis, the r-squared is 0.559:

For those who may have pushed their high school math out of mind, a correlation of 0.559 is very high for anything related to hockey. It is a chaotic sport, and it's an indication that creating a lot of xG is leading to a lot of goals.

But if this season (and last) is different, then what did it look like at this time last year? Well, after the first 1374 individual team games of 2024-25, here is the correlation map between xG and actual goals:

We still see a strong upward trend, but it's not quite as steep as the 2025-26 trend, and when we run the correlation analysis, we see a drastic difference:

We see here the r-squared is 0.323. Overall, it's still not bad for NHL analysis, but relatively speaking, that is a 36% drop compared to what we've seen in the 2025-26 season. In other words, the correlation between xG and goal scoring is much, much stronger so far this season than it was last season.

But how does it compare to an earlier season? In the thread from Mr. Turtoro linked above, he selects the 2018-19 season as a control year. It is prior to the current puck-tracking technology that has been recently added, and it's the last full season prior to the pandemic. So, here are the first 1372 games of the 2018-19 season using the same correlation map to see what the results were between xG and goal scoring:

Still an upward trend, but the key is the correlation analysis. Here is the r-squared for between xG and goal scoring for the first 1372 games of the 2018-19 season:

An r-squared of 0.357 is good for hockey, is a bit better than what we saw for the 2024-25 season, but still pales in comparison to what we've seen so far in 2025-26.

So, despite this public xG model overinflating and underinflating expected goals from certain distances, the correlation between xG and goal scoring is much stronger than last year, or the final season pre-pandemic. The question here is: why?

I will be honest: I have no idea why this is the case. One thing that stuck out was in both this season and last, there were far more expected goals per 60 minutes than actual goals, but in 2018-19 the reverse was true: 2.87 xGF/60 was the league average for xG but 2.99 GF/60 was the league average for actual goal scoring. That wouldn't bother me as much if there wasn't such a big gap between this year's correlation and last year's, so we can't just point to a difference between the last couple years and pre-pandemic seasons. That difference is nearly just as drastic between 2024-25 and 2025-26 as it is between 2018-19 and 2025-26.

Whatever the cause, it's important to know that up to this point, even with some wonkiness in this particular xG model, the correlation between xG and goal scoring is very strong. I would not abandon public xG models (or at least this one) in favour of something else because there's no immediate replacement available and that correlation should provide confidence that we can keep using the same xG models we always have. I will write more on this next week, but for now, and for us fantasy managers, this should be treated more as a curiousity than a cause for concern.