Shayne Gostisbehere was not at Carolina’s practice on Monday, according to Cory Lavalette. He was injured on Friday and did not play on Saturday, and it looks like he won’t be ready for Tuesday night’s matchup against Pittsburgh. Alex Nikishin will continue to get top power-play minutes until Ghost is ready to go, and K’Andre Miller skated on the second PP unit in their most recent contest.

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The Florida Panthers gave an update on Brad Marchand:

Paul Maurice says Brad Marchand going to visit doctors, he’s out tomorrow — and probably longer.

— George Richards (@GeorgeRichards) March 9, 2026

We have to wait for some sort of timeline to be provided by the team, but Marchand has clearly been fighting injury (or injuries) for months now, and there’s a little over a month left in the season.

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A not-so-positive update on Ottawa defenceman Jake Sanderson:

Travis Green tells reporters in Vancouver that Jake Sanderson is week-to-week. #Sens

— Bruce Garrioch (@SunGarrioch) March 9, 2026

Sanderson was injured over the weekend and while we don’t know exactly what’s wrong, the play that caused the injury had Sanderson favouring his shoulder. Like Marchand, we’ll have to wait for a firm update on his timeline, but there’s a little over five weeks left in the campaign and Sanderson being deemed week-to-week doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room.

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The Seattle Kraken announced that winger Jaden Schwartz is out indefinitely with an upper-body injury. He had 21 points in 42 games this season as he’s been in and out of the lineup since late November. With the team trading for Bobby McMann at the Trade Deadline, they have someone who can fill his spot, but it also means Berkly Catton should be able to keep at least a third-line role for now.  

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Travis Konecny was back in the lineup for Philadelphia on Monday night after missing three games with an upper-body injury. He was skating on a line with Christian Dvorak and Alex Bump.

The New York Rangers put a beatdown on the Flyers by a 6-2 margin in that game. The top line did a lot of the damage as Mika Zibanejad scored twice, added an assist, and posted three total shots while both Alexis Lafreniere and Gabriel Perreault each posted a goal and an assist. Tye Kartye scored his first for the Rangers, deflecting home a shot from Vladislav Gavrikov. Gavrikov finished with two assists, a shot, a block, and two PIMs in the win.

With those three points, Zibanejad has 29 points in 21 games in calendar 2026.

Igor Shesterkin stopped 32 of 34 shots in the win.

Matvei Michkov scored for the Flyers, and he has six goals and 34 shots in his last 15 games.

Dan Vladar was pulled after the second period, giving up six goals on 24 shots.

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In an afternoon make-up game for one that was postponed in January, the Los Angeles Kings went into Columbus and skated out with a 5-4 win. Adrian Kempe scored twice, including the overtime winner, while Brian Dumoulin managed a goal and two assists. Both Artemi Panarin and Scott Laughton had a goal and an assist apiece.

Conor Garland scored twice, his first two goals in a Columbus uniform, and one more goal than he had in his final 30 games in a Vancouver uniform. Denton Mateychukl scored his 10th goal of the year and Kirill Marchenko had the other tally.

Anton Forsberg stopped 28 of 32 shots in the win. Columbus defenceman Erik Gudbranson left the game late in the first period and did not return.

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Justin Sourdif had a goal, two assists, and four shots in Washington’s 7-3 win over Calgary on Monday night. Connor McMichael scored twice while Tom Wilson had a goal, two shots, two blocks, and a hit in a very good multi-cat night.

The Caps moved Pierre-Luc Dubois to the top power-play unit towards the end of the game. That would be a nice little boost to his fantasy value.

Logan Thompson stopped 23 of 26 shots for his 22nd win.

Blake Coleman scored a goal on six shots and posted two blocks and two hits in the loss.

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Frank Nazar (more on him later) scored on the power play in overtime to lift the Chicago Blackhawks to a 3-2 win. Connor Bedard assisted on that goal and an earlier Ryan Greene goal, adding five shots, two PIMs, and four hits.

Drew Commesso started for Chicago and stopped 22 of 24 shots for his second victory of the season.

Dylan Guenther scored his 30th goal of the season and he needs five more assists for his first career 30-30 season.

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Without Sanderson, the Senators still managed a 2-0 win in Vancouver. James Reimer faced just 16 shots but stopped them all for his fourth win in his eighth start.

Brady Tkachuk and Ridly Greig scored the goals for Ottawa. Tkachuk is now on a six-game point streak with 22 shots, 12 hits, and four blocks in that span.

Thomas Chabot took the top PP role in Sanderson’s absence, earning an assist, a block, and four PIMs in 24:29 of ice time.

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We are at the point of the fantasy season where managers are either in their head-to-head playoffs, contending for a roto championship, or looking ahead to next season. There are a handful of players who’ve either seen their situation change dramatically since the Trade Deadline, or who’ve otherwise stood out to me this season. Today’s Ramblings will feature five forwards I’m keeping a closer eye on over the final quarter of the season.

Individual player and team data is from Evolving Hockey, tracking data is from All Three Zones, all data is at 5-on-5 unless otherwise indicated, schedule information is from Frozen Tools, and all this is current as of Monday, March 9th.

The red and blue dotted lines in the graphs below represent the league average the statistic being discussed. We are limiting the sample to forwards with at least 400 minutes at 5-on-5 and 100 tracked minutes, which gives us a sample of 323 forwards.

Matias Maccelli (Toronto Maple Leafs)

With Nicolas Roy and Scott Laughton traded, Toronto’s depth forward group has been thinned out. That means guys like Maccelli and Easton Cowan, who were sometimes scratched this season, should be full-time players from here on out.

Over Toronto’s last three contests, Maccelli is fourth by TOI/game at 5-on-5 among their forwards, and he’s spent a couple of games on the top line with Auston Matthews. That ice time is important because some of the tracking data has been very favourable for Maccelli this season. Specifically, when looking at his rate of scoring chance assists (assisting on a teammate’s scoring chance), scoring chance contributions (those assists plus individual scoring chances) while also being above average by primary points rate (goals and first assists), here are Maccelli’s comps this year:

The names are bunched, but Maccelli compares well to Robert Thomas, Ivan Demidov, Logan Cooley, and Luke Evangelista. Over Maccelli’s last 25 games, he has 8 goals and 8 assists, and that works out to a 26-goal, 26-assist pace over an 82-game season.

Maccelli’s two issues are a lack of top power-play time and a lack of peripherals. The Leafs have 1 of the 10 hardest schedules remaining by opponent points% while being tied for the second-fewest games remaining. All that makes Maccelli nothing more than a streamer in non-shallow points-only formats. However, he has a chance to try and lock down a top-6 role for next season, so he’s a guy to keep an eye on over the final five weeks.

Tommy Novak (Pittsburgh Penguins)

The 5-game suspension to Evgeni Malkin and injury to Sidney Crosby means a lot of centre depth missing from the Penguins right now. In Pittsburgh’s two games since the Malkin suspension, Novak has averaged 16:16 per game in TOI against an average of 13:33 per game in January/February. He even got a bit of top PP time in Pittsburgh’s win on Sunday.

It has been a nice rebound season for Novak, averaging 0.57 points per game despite skating under 14 minutes a game. In fact, when isolating just forwards in the 84th percentile (or higher) by primary assists/60 minutes, here are the closest comparable performances to Novak’s by the scoring chance assist stat we just saw with Maccelli along with zone entries per 60 minutes:

A few of those names are bunched up, but that is David Pastrnak, Nick Suzuki, Mark Scheifele, and Connor Bedard. Novak has been an extremely productive facilitator for the Penguins this season and, like Maccelli, is having a good rebound effort. With the Pittsburgh forward depth being challenged right now, and the team marching towards the playoffs anyway, Novak will be a player to watch down the stretch.

Frank Nazar (Chicago Blackhawks)

Injury kept Nazar out of the lineup for a month but with the trade of Jason Dickinson, Nazar is now the absolute locked-in second-line centre, and there’s no defensive protection on the third line. The Blackhawks have a brutal schedule over the next two weeks with Utah, Vegas, Minnesota (x2), Colorado, and Nashville ahead, so it’s a good time for the 22-year-old Nazar to show that he can be The Guy after The Guy.

Knowing that, it is important to note how well Nazar has been facilitating for his teammates. When looking at just forwards with an above-average rate of primary assists, here are the comparable players by combined rate of zone entries+zone exits and the percentage of zone entries carried in:

Nazar is responsible for a lot of zone exits and is very efficient on zone entries. He is still a work in progress, but there is a lot of good under the hood, and it would be nice to see him start to piece it together over the next five weeks.

Dmitri Voronkov (Columbus Blue Jackets)

Up until January 11th, Voronkov had 16 and 13 assists in 45 games while skating 16:31 per game. Since then, he has three points in 16 games while skating 10:19 per game. It is clear new head coach Rick Bowness, hired on January 12th, has zero faith in Voronkov, and it’s kind of a surprise he wasn’t traded at the Trade Deadline.

It will be interesting to see if Bowness has any use for Voronkov down the stretch because Voronkov has been efficient with good peripherals this season. Among forwards with an above-average rate of primary points at 5-on-5, here is who he compares to by rate of hits+blocks per 60 minutes and shot attempts per expected goal (the lower the number, the better):

It is an eclectic mix of players between skilled (Elias Pettersson) and scoring grit, and Voronkov falls somewhere between them. Columbus has a very tough stretch of games left and if the wins start to slow, Voronkov’s availability should change.

Parker Kelly (Colorado Avalanche)

In Colorado, bottom-6 forwards aren’t going to get a lot of press, but we have to highlight the season Kelly is having. Among forwards who have an above-average rate of primary points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, and then evaluating by combined hits+blocks per 60 minutes and zone entries per 60 minutes, here are the closest comparable names to Kelly:

The overlapped names are A.J. Greer – who is himself having a great season – and Vincent Trocheck. Kelly has increased his goals/60, primary assists/60, and individual expected goals/60 in each of the past two seasons, and he has been excellent depth for the Avalanche. Kelly recently lined up on Colorado’s third line, but that was with Artturi Lehkonen and Gabriel Landeskog out of the lineup. It is worth keeping tabs on Kelly’s usage from here on out because we may have a late bloomer who can be a huge multi-cat contributor.