The Winnipeg Jets have called up forward Brayden Yager. He has had a great start to his season in the AHL with five goals, nine points, and 17 shots in six games. Yager, the 14^th overall pick back in 2023, was good-not-great during his rookie AHL campaign, but development isn't a rocket ship, and it's not always linear, so we'll see if he's got the offence necessary to stick in the NHL. The Jets do play on Sunday, at home to Montreal, on a day with just five games, so keep an eye on Yager if you need an extra game for your H2H leagues.

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It appears as if Ottawa defenceman Jake Sanderson is on the verge of returning as reporter Alex Adams noted he was running the top PP unit at practice on Monday. Sanderson has played less than one period of one game this season, but looks to be ready for Ottawa's next game at home on Wednesday.

However, it isn't all good news, as the team also announced that Thomas Chabot will be out at least a week. One goes out, one comes in.

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New York Islanders forwards Matias Maccelli and Calum Ritchie are out for a little while:

Per #Isles:

Matias Maccelli will miss the next 2-4 weeks with a lower-body injury.

Cal Ritchie will miss the next 4-6 weeks with a lower-body injury.

— Stefen Rosner (@stefen_rosner) October 19, 2026

For now, it looks like Simon Holmstrom will take PP1 duties with those two out.

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The Detroit Red Wings had new power play lines at practice on Monday:

Different power play looks today

Seider
DeBrincat MBN Finnie
Copp

ASP
Danielson Larkin Raymond
Arvidsson

— Max Bultman (@m_bultman) October 19, 2026

To me, this looks like a team trying to split their talent evenly across two units. That is bad news for the fantasy values of top guys like Moritz Seider and Dylan Larkin but good news for the secondary options like Emmitt Finnie and Axel Sandin-Pellikka. Detroit only has games on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday this week but they're in Seattle, Calgary, and Vegas. That is about as good as a schedule gets, so deep leaguers might want to look for guys like Finnie and ASP if they're desperate.

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The New York Rangers improved to 7-3-1 thanks to a 5-2 win at home to Anaheim. Oliver Bjorkstrand scored twice with solo tallies from J.T. Miller, Gabe Perreault, and Sean Durzi. Despite Bjorkstrand's demotion to the fourth line early in the season, he now has four goals in 11 games, which is a very solid first three weeks.

Dylan Garand stopped 28 of 30 shots for the win. He has four wins in six starts with a .928 save percentage.

A.J. Greer and Nick Jensen scored for the Ducks and goalie Ville Husso gave up five goals on 30 shots for the loss.

Mikael Granlund was returned to the lineup for the Ducks, back in his top-6/top power play role.

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The Philadelphia Flyers have now won back-to-back games thanks to a 3-2 win at home to Colorado. Matvei Michkov scored twice (one PP) while Noel Acciari tallied his first in a Flyers uniform. Michkov has three goals and five points in his last three games and six goals in 11 games. He has scored over one-third of the Flyers' goals this season.

Trevor Zegras assisted all three goals, and he now has five points in his last four games after starting the year with three points in seven.

Joseph Woll held the Avalanche to two goals on 26 shots.

Martin Necas and T.J. Hughes tallied the markers for the Avs, and goalie Mackenzie Blackwood took another loss, giving up three goals on 24 shots faced.

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Auston Matthews posted a goal (PP) and two assists (one PP) with three shots and a block in Toronto's 3-1 home win over San Jose on Monday night. That puts him back in the top-5 for point production so far this season, trailing only Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel.

Nick Paul also scored while Darren Raddysh had an assist (PP), five shots, and two blocks in the win.

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 30 of 31 shots directed at his net in the victory. It is worth noting that Bobrovsky's first five starts this season came against Montreal, Ottawa, Vegas, Colorado, and Buffalo, all five being playoff teams last season and three of them being Conference Finalists. Posting a .902 save percentage through three weeks given that early schedule is a pretty good start.

The Maple Leafs now have 10 PP goals in 10 games. It took them until November 29^th, and 25 games, to get to 10 PP goals last season.  

Mason Marchment had the lone Sharks goal, and Yaroslav Askarov took the loss by allowing two goals on 31 shots.

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The Utah Mammoth took down the Pittsburgh Penguins (quite the animal mismatch) via 5-4 score on Monday night. Nick Schmaltz, Kevin Stenlund, Clayton Keller, and Nate Schmidt each had a goal and an assist with the Schmaltz goal and Keller assist being on the man advantage. The other goal came from Kailer Yamamoto. Schmaltz is off to a great start this season with 7 goals, 6 assists, 6 power-play points, 31 shots, 8 hits, and 4 blocks in 10 games.

Sebastian Cossa was in goal for the Mammoth, giving up four goals on 19 shots but still taking the win.

Erik Karlsson and Rickard Rakell both scored PP goals in the loss for Pittsburgh, with Rust assisting on both. Karlsson also assisted the Rakell goal, making him the fourth defenceman to post more than 10 points so far this season (Evan Bouchard, Quinn Hughes, and Mikhail Sergachev are the others).

The other Penguins tallies came from Egor Chinakhov and Declan Carlile.

Arturs Silovs gave up five goals on 29 shots against for the loss. That pushes his save percentage this season down to .866.

Bryan Rust was injured late in the second period and did not play the third. After the injury, Evgeni Malkin was moved to the top line next to Sidney Crosby.

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Over the summer, I did a 10-part series on the evolution of how defencemen play at the NHL level, and one part focused on the impact of offensive defencemen vs defensive defencemen on their team's success. We see the same thing among forwards – those who share the ice with good (or great) offensive defencemen tend to find more offensive success. Just think of Adam Fantilli with Zach Werenski, Nick Suzuki with Lane Hutson, or Filip Forsberg with Roman Josi.

There are a handful of players or situations that stood out to me, so let's go through them. Data is taken from NHL play-by-play, roster percentages are from Frozen Tools, and the viz are my own.

Charlie Coyle and Zach Werenski (Columbus Blue Jackets)

Last year, Coyle spent about 44% of his even-strength time with Werenski on the ice. That isn't a big surprise because Columbus likes to use Coyle in shutdown matchups, and Werenski is on the ice a lot both in a shutdown role or otherwise. It should come as no surprise that it not only has been more of the same this season, but to an even more severe degree:

Columbus has played just seven games and has had some injuries on the blue line, so this is probably skewed more than it should be. All the same, Coyle is getting an obscene amount of ice time with Werenski right now, and he's just 23% owned on Yahoo, 47% on Fantrax, and 51% on ESPN.

The problem is Columbus' schedule. They have played just seven games so far, but they aren't getting busier anytime soon: from today (October 19^th) through the next four weeks, they have just 11 games on the schedule, being 1 of 10 teams with 11 or fewer games in that span; there are 12 teams who played 13 or 14 games in that span. They also have several difficult matchups in that span as those 11 games include games at home against Vegas, Colorado, Dallas, Florida, and Tampa Bay as well as road games against Carolina, Dallas, and Buffalo. Coyle's situation has him set up for success, but a slow schedule and difficult matchups make it hard for shallow league fantasy owners to have any faith in reliable production.

Alex Newhook and Lane Hutson (Montreal Canadiens)

At the top, we mentioned that Suzuki and Hutson skate together quite a bit (and they do); Hutson skating with Montreal's top line isn't anything new. What stands out is that Newhook has skated nearly 50% of his even-strength ice time with Hutson on the ice:

Newhook is off to a modest start with 1 goal, 3 assists, 10 shots, 7 blocks, and 7 hits in eight games. The shot volume is low, even for him, but it's more a function of missing the net more than he should in a small sample. He should have 12-13 shots rather than 10, which adds up over a full season.

The good news is that unlike Coyle in Columbus, Newhook and the Habs have a good fantasy schedule over the next four weeks: 13 games with San Jose, Chicago, Winnipeg (x2), Toronto, and Pittsburgh among them. Newhook is currently skating 1:46 more per game than he did last year, has a lot of EVTOI with Hutson (for now, anyway), and Montreal's schedule is reasonable over the next four weeks. He is just 2-3% owned on Yahoo and ESPN with a 30% tag on Fantrax.

Depth Forwards Without Roman Josi (Nashville Predators)

We also mentioned Forsberg and Josi at the top, and while they're getting a lot of ice time together, it's more who isn't getting ice time with Josi that stands out. As expected, there's a lot of ice time with the likes of Forsberg, Ryan O'Reilly, and Steven Stamkos, but very little with names like Jack Drury, Nils Hoglander, and Ross Colton:

This is relevant for deep-league fantasy managers. Nashville has scored just 13 even-strength goals in eight games thus far, and Josi has been on the ice for more than half (7). The Predators also have zero defencemen on the ice for at least 52 shot attempts per 60 minutes – the league average is over 56. Nashville isn't scoring without Josi on the ice, and the team isn't generating many shots with anyone on the ice. Anyone hoping for a breakout from Drury or for Colton to return to the 20-goal mark is probably going to be disappointed.

Every Forward with Vince Dunn (Seattle Kraken)

This may be a function with how Seattle is running their forwards: no Kraken attacker is higher than 17:17 per game in TOI and all 12 regular forwards are between 12:30 and 17:30. That is a drastic change from last season when both Chandler Stephenson and Matty Beniers averaged over 19 minutes a game, Jordan Eberle was at 18:29, and Bobby McMann skated 17:58 per game after the trade. Regardless of the cause, Dunn has been on the ice for between 33-39% of even-strength ice time for every single Kraken forward:

For now, it's hard to argue with the results, because Settle is 5-3-1 in their first nine games, but the shared/spread ice time reflects their production: every regular Kraken forward has at least four points, but none have more than eight. It won't happen, but this kind of pace means all their regular forwards post at least 35 points this year, but none post more than 75. It will be interesting to see where they end in April, but for now, all their forwards are difficult to rely on for production.