It was reported by TSN's Darren Dreger that prospect Gavin McKenna will be heading to the World Championships for Team Canada. If nothing else, this will be a good opportunity for fans and fantasy managers alike to see what McKenna looks like skating next to some top talents like Macklin Celebrini and Mathew Barzal.

*

We got a positive injury updates from the Minnesota wild on forwards Yakov Trenin and Mats Zuccarello:

Zuccarello practicing on No. 1 power play. Yakov Trenin also just came out for practice https://t.co/STZfgddYe2

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) April 27, 2026

Zuccarello was also skating on the top PP unit in practice so it looks like he should be good to go for Game 5.

*

The Pittsburgh Penguins have clawed out of a 3-0 series deficit to push things to a Game 6 thanks to a 3-2 win on Monday night. A shot off Kris Letang's stick took a weird bounce and got behind Philadelphia goalie Dan Vladar, who mistakenly kicked it into his own net, for the game-winning tally. Weird bounces are a part of playoff hockey, and the Penguins got one they desperately needed.

Elmer Soderblom and Connor Dewar also scored for the Pens. Alex Bump and Travis Sanheim replied for the Flyers. Rasmus Ristolainen assisted on both Flyers goals and he now has five points (1 goal, 4 assists) in the series.

Arturs Silovs stopped 18 of 20 shots for the win.

Flyers forward Matvei Michkov was a healthy scratch to get Bump into the lineup. Given his minimal usage in the series, and now this, it's clear he's at the bottom of the depth chart right now. Things change fast in the postseason, though.

*

Despite blowing a 3-0 lead in Game 4, the Vegas Golden Knights pulled out a 5-4 win in overtime. Shea Theodore blasted home a one-timer off a pass from Jack Eichel and beat Karel Vejmelka clean. That ties the series at two games each with Game 5 on Wednesday night.

Brett Howden had a huge game for the Golden Knights with two goals, an assist on the OT winner, three shots, and a pair of hits. He now has 11 goals in 44 career playoff games for Vegas, which is a pretty good scoring rate for a secondary player.

Eichel finished with a trio of helpers, six shots, and a pair of hits. He has six points over the last three games and is giving Vegas exactly what they need to stay in the series.

Noah Hanifin had a pair of helpers in the win, giving him four points in four games so far these playoffs.

Nick Schmaltz had a goal and an assist in the loss while line mate Clayton Keller scored once on seven shots. Defenceman Mikhail Sergachev registered three helpers, totaling a shot and two blocks along the way.

Vejmelka gave up five goals on 36 shots in the loss.

*

Last week, my review of the 2025-26 fantasy hockey season started. First, we covered projections I missed among some key forwards, including Jonathan Marchessault, Dylan Lakrin, Sean Monahan, Mason McTavish, and Ville Koivunen. After that, we went over projection misses on the blue line, including MacKenzie Weegar, Dougie Hamilton, Vince Dunn, Kris Letang, and Sam Rinzel. Today, we'll finish the three positions by reviewing projection misses among goalies.

Darcy Kuemper over Karel Vejmelka

This one wasn't an outright projection, but a question during Bubble Keeper Week in August. It boiled down to this: keep Kuemper or Vejmelka?

My answer was that if I was pushing for a league title in the next year or two, it would be Kuemper. The belief is that even with the losses of Jordan Spence and Vladislav Gavrikov (replaced by Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin), the Los Angeles Kings would still be no worse than a mid-pack defensive team, and Kuemper was the locked starter for the franchise. Well, by the end of the season, Kuemper lost the net to Anton Forsberg while Vejmelka finished with the second-most wins in the league (38) and had a mid-tier goals against average. Vejmelka didn't have a great season himself, but he played a lot of games for a good team and never lost his starting gig. That is worth its weight in gold.

As far as Kuemper is concerned, there is always the question of whether he was playing through some kind of injury. Up until December 15^th, Kuemper had a .917 save percentage across 23 starts. That save percentage tied him with Andrei Vasilevskiy for third in the league among starters, and his 2.19 goals against average had him in sole possession of third place. It was a great start.

In a game on December 15^th, Dallas forward Mikko Rantanen drove across the crease and hit Kuemper in the head with his arm. Kuemper left the game and missed the next two weeks with an "upper-body" injury. After returning on January 1^st, Kuemper made 27 more starts and posted an .868 save percentage, fifth-worst among regular starters (and the bottom-5 were closely bunched together in their own tier of sadness). We may never know if Kuemper suffered a head/neck injury that affected the rest of his season, but it certainly seems possible. Either way, keeping Kuemper over Vejmelka clearly did not work out.

Keep Sam Montembeault

In that same Bubble Keeper Week article, a question was sent in where a person needed to keep two players from a group of eight. While my recommendation was to keep Matthew Knies and Lukas Dostal, the person who sent in the question mentioned that they didn't have their second- and third-round picks in their league's draft. So, with 72 players kept across the league, and only one pick in the first three rounds, if the person didn't keep two goalies, and didn't take a goalie with their first-round pick, then 108 players (at minimum) would be off the board before getting a chance at their second goalie. It could have worked out if they managed to get someone like Jet Greaves or one of the Minnesota goalies, but it was a risk, so keeping Sam Montembeault instead of Matthew Knies was realistic.

I really hope this person didn't keep Montembeault because he was one of the worst fantasy goalies that got any meaningful number of starts. As a fan of the Montreal Canadiens, I still don't know what happened here. Montembeault posted a .902 save percentage across 143 games (139 starts) from 2022-2025, which wasn't elite, but was very good considering how bad Montreal was defensively across those three seasons. In fact, among 36 goalies who faced at least 3000 shots in those three years, Evolving Hockey had Montembeault facing the third-most expected goals per 60 minutes, and the most outside of any goalie not in Anaheim. Despite that, he required the fourth-fewest shots against per Goal Saved Above Expected:

What that all means is Montembeault faced exceedingly high shot quality, but when taking that shot quality faced into account, he performed similarly to Ilya Sorokin and Igor Shesterkin. Montembeault was great behind the worst defensive team not named the Anaheim Ducks.

That is what makes his 2025-26 season so confounding. He went from one GSAx every 66 shots faced to one GSAx every 383 shots faced. He eventually lost the starting role and has not played a game since March 6^th.  Given the play of Jakub Dobes, Montembeault has at least lost the starter's job, and if the team wants to keep Jacob Fowler in the NHL, then Montembeault may have played his last game in Montreal. He was very good for three years, so betting on him finding his way back is a good value bet wherever he lands for 2026-27, but this was a huge miss.

Jacob Markstrom over Logan Thompson

I have discussed playing Best Ball formats this season, and one of the goalies I bet on a lot was Jacob Markström. He found his way to four of my 22 rosters, and he was going around the 16^th goalie off the board. Once we got past the top-12 goalies, Markström and Montembeault were two goalies I drafted quite often, completely eschewing Washington's Logan Thompson:

The top-12 goalie by ADP I drafted most often was Linus Ullmark (8/22 teams). That was a rough start but worked well in the second half, which is important for head-to-head playoffs. The goalie I drafted from outside the top-24 most often was Jet Greaves, and that worked well right until the final couple of weeks (10/22 teams). In between those two, though, it was an absolute horror show as both Markström and Montembeault were no-shows basically all season long.

At this point, it's fair to wonder if this is the end of the road for Markström. He turned 36 years old in January and has an .896 save percentage over the last four seasons. Among 35 goalies with at least 125 starts in that span, that ranks 33^rd, with only Elvis Merzlikins and Samuel Ersson ranking worse. By Evolving Hockey's shots per Goals Saved Above Expected, Markström is 25/32 starting goalies across the last two seasons. He has been vastly out-performed by backup Jake Allen, and the Devils have a hard decision to make this summer about whether they believe in Markström to rebound or not (given that his contract extension kicks in this upcoming season, their decision might be made for them). We have seen older goalies bounce back in recent seasons – Cam Talbot and Darcy Kuemper come to mind – but this is a much more open question than it was 10 months ago.

Stuart Skinner

Back in August, I wrote an article called 'Finding This Year's Fantasy Hockey Darcy Kuemper'. The parameters were:

• A goalie not being drafted among the top-10 fantasy netminders.
• Coming off a bad season but has at least one good season to their name.
• Has a real chance at getting over half their team's starts.

One goalie that was named was Skinner, and, uh… not great!

Skinner had a rough start to the season with an .891 save percentage through 23 starts in Edmonton. The team got so nervous about their goaltending that they traded Skinner to Pittsburgh, acquired Tristan Jarry, and eventually turned to Connor Ingram late in the season. Skinner didn't fare any better in Pittsburgh, posting an .885 save percentage and winning just 12 of his 27 starts.

The funny part is that Skinner had an .891 save percentage with the Oilers before he was traded on December 12^th. From that point onward, Jarry and Ingram combined for an .883 save percentage. Ingram was much better, which is why he got the nod in net to start the postseason, but it didn't matter who was in net for the Oilers, they struggled to just be average. Ingram was solid, but that was about as good as it got.

All that aside, Skinner's results did not get better with Pittsburgh, and he eventually lost the playoff starting gig to Arturs Silovs. With Skinner as a pending free agent, we'll see where he lands next year, but it will be hard to trust him as a top-25 fantasy goalie.