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Atlantic Notes: Matthews, Järnkrok, Dahlin, Ullmark, Eliasson
Maple Leafs forwards Auston Matthews and Calle Järnkrok remain absent from practice Wednesday after they were given injury designations by the club yesterday, per Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star.
Matthews’ ailment appears to be the most minor of minor injuries. He’s not listed as day-to-day by the club, which instead said he’s out for maintenance today. Head coach Craig Berube said Tuesday that he’d sustained a minor upper-body injury that caused him to leave practice early, but that there wasn’t much cause for concern.
Järnkrok, meanwhile, is still listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury and is still a little bit away from returning. Both should be considered doubtful for Thursday’s preseason match against the Canadiens at this stage, especially for a game with no standings implications.
More news and notes from around the Atlantic Division:
- Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin is with his teammates in Germany today and has shed his non-contact jersey ahead of Friday’s exhibition game against EHC Munich, the team said. He’s been held out of preseason action thus far after sustaining an undisclosed injury one week ago. It appears he’ll be ready to go for the overseas contest later this week, and should be all systems go for their regular season opener against the Devils in Prague in nine days.
- Senators goalie Linus Ullmark is back at practice Wednesday, per Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch. He was held out of practice for the past couple of days while battling an undisclosed injury. He could be an option to play in Thursday’s home game against the Sabres’ B-squad, Garrioch added.
- Still with Ottawa, they now know where 2024 second-round pick Gabriel Eliasson will play this season. After being cut from their training camp roster earlier this week, the Swedish defenseman’s major junior rights were picked up by the OHL’s Barrie Colts today in a trade with the Niagara IceDogs. The hulking 6’7″, 216-lb 18-year-old is expected to sign a scholarship and development agreement and report to the Colts for his first season in North America after spending the last two seasons in his native Sweden in HV71’s junior system.
Ryan Lindgren Out “At Least” Multiple Weeks With Upper-Body Injury
Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren will miss “at least a few weeks” with an upper-body injury sustained in last night’s win over the Islanders, head coach Peter Laviolette told reporters today (including the New York Post’s Mollie Walker).
Lindgren’s availability for the start of the regular season is now squarely in doubt. He did not return after fighting Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield in the first period. The fight followed a knee-on-knee hit that Mayfield laid on Rangers center Filip Chytil, temporarily knocking him out of the game, but he later returned and isn’t expected to miss any time.
The 26-year-old Lindgren is no stranger to injuries. He powered through to play 76 games last season, but he was rarely healthy – manifesting in the form of the worst possession play he’s displayed in his six-year NHL career. His -3.0 relative CF% and 48.6 xGF% were career-lows despite still seeing routine top-pairing usage at even strength alongside Adam Fox.
When healthy, Lindgren is a minute-munching stay-at-home defender who regularly contributes between 15 to 20 points and hovers around 20 minutes per game without being a possession liability. The Rangers were banking on him returning to that form alongside Fox once again, but they’ll have to wait to get him back in the regular rotation.
In the meantime, it’s a premier opportunity for 23-year-old Zachary Jones. He’s now slated for top-four duties to start the campaign after spending most of last season in the press box as the Blueshirts’ seventh defenseman, limited to 31 appearances. The 2019 third-round pick has 17 points and a -10 rating in 69 career NHL appearances over the last four seasons, averaging 15 minutes per game.
He’ll see a sharp uptick in usage, especially if he’s deployed as a direct replacement for Lindgren alongside Fox. That could very well be the case, allowing the Rangers to keep having K’Andre Miller anchor his own pairing behind Fox.
Lindgren’s season-opening absence also means a left-shot defenseman previously expected to start the season with the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack will be on the NHL roster instead to assume third-pairing duties as Jones was expected to. Line rushes today indicate that it could be 28-year-old Connor Mackey, who skated alongside Fox, per Walker. Mackey made a lone appearance for the Rags last year but has 40 total NHL appearances to his name. He posted 11 points, 82 PIMs and a +12 rating in 44 contests for Hartford in 2023-24.
Flyers Sign Eetu Mäkiniemi To One-Year Deal
Sep. 25: The Flyers made Mäkiniemi’s signing official Wednesday.
Sep. 24: The Philadelphia Flyers have signed goaltender Eetu Mäkiniemi to a one-year, two-way contract (as per PuckPedia). The 25-year-old was attending Flyers training camp on a PTO and now has a guarantee heading into the 2024-25 season. The deal will see the former fourth-round pick earn $200K in the minors while making $775K if he sees NHL time.
Mäkiniemi will likely be a Group 6 UFA again next summer unless he happens to play 26 NHL games this upcoming season, in which case he would be an RFA (as per PuckPedia). The likelihood of him seeing 26 NHL games is pretty low given that the Flyers already have Samuel Ersson and Ivan Fedotov ready to start the season in the NHL as well as veteran Cal Petersen who could start the year as the AHL starter.
Mäkiniemi has a little bit of NHL experience having spent the last two years with the San Jose Sharks where he dressed in two games back in 2022-23. He played almost all of last season with the Sharks affiliate the San Jose Barracuda going 8-8 with a .900 save percentage and a 3.14 goals-against average. Mäkiniemi also played in three ECHL games for the Wichita Thunder.
Mäkiniemi started the Flyers preseason game against the Montreal Canadiens last night and played just over 31 minutes stopping 13 out of the 14 shots that were fired his way. He looked relatively composed for an inexperienced goaltender fighting for a job and did enough in the small sample size to secure a contract with Philadelphia.
Utah’s Nick Bjugstad Expected To Miss Start Of Season
Utah center Nick Bjugstad is expected to miss the franchise’s first-ever regular season game with an upper-body injury, a source tells ALL Utah Hockey’s Craig Morgan. The 32-year-old pivot has yet to participate in training camp due to the injury and was listed as week-to-week when it opened last week.
It’s a tough break for a solid veteran fixture that’s done well to shed his injury-prone label. Bjugstad has appeared in 70-plus games in each of the past two seasons, his first time doing that on back-to-back occasions since the 2013-14 and 2014-15 campaigns.
The Minneapolis native spent the last two years with the Coyotes, aside from a brief post-trade deadline stint with the Oilers in 2023, returning to Arizona as a free agent the following offseason. He’s entering the second season of a two-year, $4.2MM deal and followed the rest of the former Coyotes roster to Utah this summer.
Last season marked a career resurgence for Bjugstad, a first-round pick of the Panthers back in 2010. His 22 goals, 23 assists, 45 points, and +11 rating in 76 games were all his best totals since posting a career-high 49 points with Florida in the 2017-18 season. He also logged a career-high 17:27 per game for the Yotes last year, finished seventh among qualified Arizona skaters with a 49.4 CF%, and finished fifth on the team with 118 hits.
The 6’6″, 209-lb pivot is projected to be an all-around fixture for Utah in its first season when he returns to health. But for now, his absence is a good indication that 22-year-old Josh Doan, who finished last season with five goals and nine points in 11 games for the Coyotes after a call-up from AHL Tucson, should crack the opening night roster and take the ice on Oct. 8 for their home opener against the Blackhawks.
In better injury news, defenseman John Marino has been upgraded from week-to-week to day-to-day with his upper-body injury, Morgan said. Marino, acquired from the Devils in a trade for draft picks on June 29, also has yet to skate in training camp. The 27-year-old posted 25 points (4 G, 21 A) with a -6 rating in 75 games for New Jersey last year, averaging over 20 minutes per game for the fifth straight season to begin his NHL career. He’ll slot into Utah’s top four to begin the season.
LeBrun’s Latest: Swayman, Kessel, Shattenkirk, Ullmark, Draft
The Bruins and RFA netminder Jeremy Swayman are only discussing long-term contract options at this late stage in negotiations, Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic wrote Tuesday. But beyond that, there’s still a sizeable gap between the two sides in desired AAV/cap hit, and there’s no sign of movement with under two weeks to go until Boston’s regular-season opener.
If it gets done before the season, it’ll likely be with little time to spare before Oct. 8, LeBrun writes. Swayman isn’t expected to participate in the remainder of the preseason at all.
That leaves plenty of opportunity in the run-up for Joonas Korpisalo, who’s looked decent early on in camp after struggling to the tune of a .890 SV% in 55 appearances with the Senators last season. Acquired in the Linus Ullmark swap to be Swayman’s backup, he’ll be thrust back into a No. 1 role if the contract stalemate extends into the regular season.
There’s more from LeBrun:
- Over a week into training camps and two weeks after Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman indicated he was still hoping to catch on, free agent winger Phil Kessel still isn’t considering retirement, LeBrun said. Teams can still sign players to professional tryouts, and while it’s rare to do so after the start of camp, it does happen. “A couple of teams” have stayed in contact with Kessel’s camp while waiting to see how some early training camp battles played out, so there could be some movement there in the coming days. “He’s also not begging for a job, but he genuinely believes he can still help someone,” LeBrun wrote.
- Defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk finds himself in a similar situation, LeBrun said, although he at least logged NHL minutes last year. In fact, he did fairly well with the Bruins, posting 24 points and a -2 rating in 64 contests while averaging 15:47 per game. “I would imagine Shattenkirk will land somewhere on the cheap over the next few weeks,” LeBrun said, indicating Shattenkirk could remain unsigned past opening night but sign somewhere quickly if an early-season injury arises.
- It’s also status quo between Ullmark and his new home in Ottawa on a lack of extension talks, LeBrun relays from colleague Chris Johnston on Tuesday’s edition of Insider Trading. “GM Steve Staios wants to give Ullmark time to get as excited about the team and city as the organization is already about having him in the fold,” wrote LeBrun.
- There were some slight rumblings that the NHL’s general managers would reverse their October 2023 vote to decentralize the league’s entry draft starting in 2025 after the success of the 2024 event in Vegas at Sphere. Those rumblings will go unfulfilled; as the league told LeBrun, “At the request of a large majority of clubs, it is moving forward with plans for a decentralized draft for June 2025.” Prospects will still attend an event, but team staff won’t be traveling.
East Notes: Fox, Panarin, Kulemin
Rangers defenseman Adam Fox is back to full health after playing through a re-aggravated strained MCL in his right knee in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs, he told the New York Post’s Mollie Walker on Tuesday.
“It’s funny because I missed 10 games, but it feels like you’ve missed like 30 when you’re sitting out and everything,” Fox said, referring to when he initially sustained the injury in November of last season. “I think when people get hurt, you maybe come back and you’re tentative. I think it’s a normal reaction. I think overall, still, the year was good. Obviously, now, that’s in the past and I feel healthy now. Not too worried about any of that stuff anymore.”
The re-occurrence of the injury during the Rangers’ First Round win over the Capitals did limit Fox’s effectiveness, keeping him to a rather pedestrian eight assists in 16 games. But it didn’t hamper him at all upon his return during the regular season. The 26-year-old managed the best offensive showing of his five-year NHL career, torching opponents for 56 assists and 73 points in 72 games – not career-highs, but his first time breaking the point-per-game plateau. He averaged north of 23 minutes per game and finished top five in Norris Trophy voting for the fourth year in a row.
There’s more out of the Eastern Conference:
- The Rangers had a contender for the most memorable game of the preseason Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, erasing a 4-1 deficit in the final 6:10 of regulation to defeat the Islanders 6-4. But it came with a price – star winger Artemi Panarin left the game in the third period with a lower-body injury and is still being evaluated, head coach Peter Laviolette said last night. There’s yet to be an update on the 32-year-old, who finished fifth in Hart Trophy voting last season after leading the Rangers in scoring with 120 points (49 G, 71 A) in 82 games. The team also lost top-four defenseman Ryan Lindgren to an upper-body injury, likely sustained in his fight with Islanders defender Scott Mayfield after the latter laid a knee-on-knee hit on Rangers center Filip Chytil. Chytil, who played just 10 games last season due to concussion symptoms, was able to return.
- Many eyebrows were raised when the Senators signed 38-year-old winger Nikolai Kulemin to a professional tryout a few weeks ago. After all, he hasn’t played in the NHL since the 2017-18 season and spent the past six years as a serviceable but non-dominant force in the Kontinental Hockey League. Kulemin recently told Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic that his son, Aleks Kulemin, will play U-16 hockey with the Toronto-area Don Mills Flyers this season and wasn’t ready to part with his family or his playing career, leading him to once again pursue opportunities in North America, preferably north of the border.
Evening Notes: Lavoie, Carlsson, Lindgren
Edmonton Oilers forward Raphael Lavoie will miss the next few days with an apparent lower-body injury (as per Daniel Nugent-Bowman from The Athletic) Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch told the media that the 23-year-old will likely get back on the ice Friday and will miss tomorrow night’s game against Winnipeg. Lavoie has played well in preseason scoring a goal on Sunday night against the Jets.
Lavoie was a bit of a long shot to make the Oilers out of training camp as the team is pretty set at forward in the top nine, and his style of play isn’t what most teams would prefer on a fourth line. Lavoie’s pace has always been the thing that kept him out of the NHL, and it remains to be seen if this will be the year he finally breaks through.
In other evening notes:
- Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now is reporting that San Jose Sharks defenseman Lucas Carlsson could be ready for the club’s AHL training camp. Carlsson hasn’t dressed for the Sharks NHL training camp after offseason surgery to repair a lower-body injury. He spent all of last season in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers, registering 15 goals and 24 assists in 52 games and hasn’t seen NHL action since November 1st, 2022. Given the fact that Carlsson hasn’t dressed in an NHL game in nearly two years and that he will miss NHL training camp, it seems like a foregone conclusion that he will start the year with the Barracuda.
- New York Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren left tonight’s preseason game with an apparent upper-body injury (as per Remy Mastey of The Hockey News). Lindgren fought New York Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield in the first period after Mayfield hit Filip Chytil with an open-ice knee-on-knee hit. The fight may or may not have been when the injury occurred, and no update has been provided on Lindgren’s status going forward. Fortunately, Chytil was able to continue in the game, but Lindgren did not return.
Injury Notes: Celebrini, Karlsson, Svechkov
Max Miller of The Hockey News is reporting that San Jose Sharks rookie phenom Macklin Celebrini left practice today with a lower-body issue. No specifics were given to the media as the Sharks coaching staff referred to the issue as a “Little bit of everything” and they believe that the 18-year-old will practice tomorrow with the team.
The first overall pick in this year’s NHL entry draft had a strong preseason debut on Sunday night against the Vegas Golden Knights scoring a goal and adding an assist. No word on whether or not the issue popped up from something that happened in the game or during training camp. The Sharks aren’t expected to compete for the playoffs this season, but it will be an important season nonetheless as they try to develop their young core.
In other injury notes from around the league:
- Vegas Golden Knights forward William Karlsson took a maintenance day today and did not practice with the team (as per SinBin.Vegas). Karlsson’s absence is injury-related, although the ailment is being kept out of the media at this time. The 31-year-old won’t play tomorrow but Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy wouldn’t rule him out beyond tomorrow. Karlsson has been relatively durable throughout his career but dealt with a lower-body injury in the second half of last season that kept him out of action for over a month.
- Alex Daugherty of The Tennessean writes that Nashville Predators forward Fedor Svechkov will be out of action week-to-week with what appears to be a lower-body injury. The 2021 first-round pick has yet to see NHL action after he came over to North America last season and spent the year in the AHL. He appeared to be injured in the Predators preseason game against the Florida Panthers on Sunday after he took a hit from Tobias Bjornfot. Svechkov couldn’t put weight on his left leg as he headed off the ice and down the tunnel.
Jets Notes: Perfetti, Penalty Kill, Ehlers
TSN’s John Lu is reporting that recently re-signed forward Cole Perfetti will start the season playing wing on the Winnipeg Jets second line. Perfetti has played center in the past but will get an opportunity to try out the wing which could open him up to more opportunities to use his playmaking. Perfetti isn’t the quickest skater, which is something that could hold him back from being a top-six center in the NHL this season, along with his inconsistency thus far in the NHL.
A top-six opportunity on the wing could be exactly what the 22-year-old Perfetti needs as his versatility can be put on full display. Perfetti’s playmaking and hockey sense are both high end and if he can mesh with his second-line teammates, he will most certainly top the career-high 38 points he had last season.
In other Jets notes:
- Scott Billick of The Winnipeg Sun is reporting that Jets center Mark Scheifele and winger Kyle Connor will be seeing time this season on the Jets penalty kill. Scott Arniel told the media that the two players are excited about the additional work which could open them up to an opportunity to use their strong hockey sense when shorthanded. The Jets are hardly the first team to use this strategy as the Edmonton Oilers used Connor McDavid on the penalty kill during the 2022-23 season with strong results. Winnipeg has used Connor on the PK in the past during the 2021-22 season with good numbers and Scheifele was also a regular contributor up until 2019.
- Jets forward Nikolaj Ehlers is reportedly learning a new role on Winnipeg’s power play (as per Scott Billick of The Winnipeg Sun). Ehlers has been working in the high slot in practice and has been studying Hurricanes forward Sebastian Aho as well as the now-retired Patrice Bergeron. This season is a big one for the 28-year-old as he is in the final year of his seven-year $42MM contract and will be an unrestricted free agent next July. His name has popped up in trade rumors for several years now, but it appears he is embracing the summer changes in Winnipeg as he gets set for his 10th season with the Jets.