The Utah Mammoth announced the signing of Caleb Desnoyers to his three-year entry-level deal. The fourth overall pick from 2025 had 78 points in 45 games with the Moncton Wildcats in the QMJHL this year. It will be interesting to see how the Mammoth decide to use him for the balance of the campaign considering they're likely to reach the postseason.

*

The New Jersey Devils indicated that defenceman Brett Pesce may not return this season, according to Amanda Stein. Pesce has been out for three weeks with a lower-body injury and had only played 37 of the 61 games leading up to the injury in what has been a forgettable season for him and the franchise. It does provide minutes security for notable fantasy options like Simon Nemec.

*

In some good news for the Minnesota Wild, each of Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Marcus Foligno practice for the team on Monday, as tweeted by Michael Russo. Eriksson Ek has been out for over a week while Kaprizov has missed the team's last two games. A positive sign that both players should be good to go very soon.

*

Some positive San Jose injury updates on Igor Chernyshov, Tyler Toffoli, and Yaroslav Askarov as they were all practicing on Monday:

Full practice! Chernyshov, Askarov, Toffoli & Desharnais all on the ice, wearing regular jerseys

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) March 23, 2026

Laurent Brossoit was demoted back to the AHL after practice, so it seems as if Askarov is ready to return, but the other two are less certain.

*

In one of the funniest games of the season, Mika Zibanejad suited up for his 1000^th NHL regular season game as the New York Rangers hosted the Ottawa Senators. There was a nice ceremony before the game and his teammates all dressed up with wigs in the design of Zibanejad's haircuts over the years. And then the Rangers went out and lost 2-1, putting up nine (!) shots on goal, which was the lowest total for a regular season game since 2003 (according to Hockey Reference). I shut the game off after the first period because this Rangers team made the Toronto Maple Leafs look like they were putting in a lot of effort recently.

Anyway, Warren Foegele and Shane Pinto had the goals for the Sens. Pinto is now one goal shy of his third 20-goal season in four years.

Thomas Chabot was injured after taking a crosscheck to the wrist from J.T. Miller at the end of the first period. Chabot left the game and did not return. With Jake Sanderson already missing from the lineup, that is what makes the Rangers' effort even funnier. Lassi Thomson was also injured for the Sens, and Travis Green said after the game that both blue liners will be 'out a while', according to Dan Rosen.

*

Every month or so this season, these Ramblings have reviewed changes in a player's circumstance or performance, discussing things like ice-time changes, role changes, shot volume changes, and so forth. With a little over three weeks left in the regular season, let's do that one last time.

We are using player shot data from Evolving Hockey and ice time data from Frozen Tools. We are going to look at data up until the Olympic break and compare it to data since the Olympic break ended four weeks ago. All is current as of Monday, March 23^rd.

Kent Johnson and Denton Mateychuk (Columbus Blue Jackets)

There can be multiple things that are true of Kent Johnson's season:

• He had a poor start.
• His production hasn't really picked up since the Olympic break.
• There are signs of him breaking out of that funk.

The signs of him breaking out are market share of shot attempts and market share of expected goals. A quick explainer:

• 'Market share' means the percentage of a team's shot attempts, shots, or expected goals a specific player takes when he's on the ice. For example: if Connor McDavid is on the ice for 2000 shot attempts taken by the Edmonton Oilers this season, and he takes 500 of those 2000 attempts himself, his market share is 25% (500 divided by 2000). That same idea applies to shots on goal and expected goals.

Using specific ice time restraints for each of the pre- and post-Olympic sections, which gives us 310 forwards, Johnson has the fifth-largest improvement in market share of shot attempts and the tenth-largest improvement in market share of expected goals:

He isn't getting much ice time and is shooting under 5%, so the raw fantasy numbers are meagre, and his fantasy value is minimal for the vast majority of fantasy leagues this season, but it does give some hope for next season.

Teammate Denton Mateychuk also has multiple true things about him right now: his market shares of shot attempts and expected goals have increased slightly since the Olympics, which is good, but his ice time has been completely nuked, which is not. Mateychuk has seen the fifth-largest drop in percentage of his team's short-handed ice time, the 28^th-largest drop in percentage of power play time, and the 29^th-largest drop in percentage of even-strength ice time:

Put it all together and Mateychuk has seen 1 of the 10 largest drops in ice time (tied with two others). He is now clearly a bottom-pair option for the Blue Jackets, so while his long-term outlook is still bright, barring an injury or two, he may not have much fantasy value over the next few weeks.

Cole Perfetti (Winnipeg Jets)

At 0.48 points/game, Perfetti's production rate this season is the lowest of his career (excluding his brief 18-game appearance in 2021-22). That is not what we want to see, but the good news is there have been improvements of late because of the 116 forwards in our sample with improved market shares of shot attempts and expected goals, he has the largest improvement in percentage of ice time:

It isn't a true hot streak, but Perfetti has 9 points in 14 games since the Olympics, a 53-point pace over a full season. Not a high-end mark, but a lot better than his 35-point pace pre-Olympics, and those last 14 games have seen him shoot under 8%. He isn't excelling yet, but he is showing signs of improvement, so let's see if he can keep it up for the next 3+ weeks.

Noah Ostlund (Buffalo Sabres)

There are plenty of great stories around the Buffalo Sabres' season, and one is definitely Östlund’s ascension. He didn't even start the season on the NHL roster but has been trusted more as the season has worn on. When we look at forwards who've seen similar improvements in share of team EVTOI and PPTOI since the Olympics, some impressive names pop up:

Tommy Novak's increase was because of injury to Sidney Crosby and suspension to Evgeni Malkin, but Dylan Holloway has been a fantasy beast, Martin Necas is who he is, and Anze Kopitar has found another gear with Artemi Panarin. Östlund has gone from AHLer to third-line/second PP staple this season and done it for a team that might win the most competitive division we've seen in years. It is hard to not be impressed with what Östlund has done, and it bodes well for next season and beyond. 

Rickard Rakell (Pittsburgh Penguins)

It isn't a surprise that Pittsburgh going for weeks without Crosby and five games without Malkin caused Rakell to lose some shot volume. What is surprising is that not just the total volume dropped, but his share of the team's shot attempts was the largest drop of any forward in our sample:

To go with that huge drop in shot attempts is a good-sized drop in the even-strength ice time share. That might be more to do with how well the likes of Egor Chinakhov and Anthony Mantha are playing rather than Rakell himself, but it is notable. What is also notable is that Rakell has been over 20 minutes in two of the three games since Crosby's return, so it isn't all bad news.

Linus Karlsson and Tom Willander (Vancouver Canucks)

There are only two Canucks forwards with more than 10 goals at 5-on-5 this season: Drew O'Connor (12) and Linus Karlsson (11). That is what makes Karlsson's usage kind of curious because of the 310 forwards in our sample, he has the ninth-largest improvement in percentage of his team's even-strength ice time, but also has seen a decline in power-play usage:

Only Karlsson's name is highlighted here but he's 1 of 9 players to see a similarly large increase in EVTOI coupled with a decline in PPTOI. The Canucks have to give their top guys the power-play time when they're healthy, so it makes sense, but it's clear that Karlsson is working his way up the depth chart in Vancouver, and that makes him a name to keep in mind this offseason, especially in banger formats where he has 76 hits in 66 games.

With the trades of Quinn Hughes and Tyler Myers, there were a lot of minutes for the rest of Vancouver's defencemen to hoover up. Filip Hronek has been one big beneficiary of that vacuum, but so has Tom Willander as he's seen the second-largest ice-time improvement of the 162 defencemen in our sample (Logan Mailloux is first), and improvements in all three phases of the game:

Willander is getting a bit of power-play time, but he's also the team's third-most used defenceman at even strength and on the PK since the Trade Deadline. It will likely take a couple of more seasons of improvements before Willander becomes a reliable fantasy option, but it's still notable he's getting slightly more overall usage than Zeev Buium and much more even-strength usage than Other Elias Pettersson.