Nobody knows who first said, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” But after a payback-themed Tuesday night in the NHL, we know what revenge feels like.
“F—ing amazing,” Trevor Zegras said after scoring two goals against the franchise that drafted him, the Anaheim Ducks, in the Philadelphia Flyers’ 5-2 victory at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
Zegras was one of four players to score against his former team Tuesday. The revenge vibes weren’t limited to individuals, either.
In Toronto, the Maple Leafs downed the Florida Panthers, 4-1, at Scotiabank Arena. A regular-season win doesn’t erase the sting of Stanley Cup playoff defeats in 2025 and 2023, but their victory did pull the Maple Leafs even with the Panthers in the standings.
Each team has 47 points through 42 games — further congesting an Eastern Conference wild-card race in which all eight of the non-playoff teams are within 7 points of the top wild card (Washington Capitals, 50 points) and within 6 of the second wild card (Pittsburgh Penguins, 49 points).
Toronto might be onto something, as Jonas Siegel notes in this analysis of the Maple Leafs’ surge.
Back to Zegras, whose celebration after his first goal against the Ducks — he mimed hanging up a phone — was some serious shade.
Trevor Zegras says his celebration was a reenactment of how fast Anaheim hung up after telling him he was traded 😭🔥 pic.twitter.com/G0VkOdQOaW
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) January 7, 2026
“That’s about how quick the (trade) phone call was before. I thought it’d be pretty good,” Zegras told NBC Sports Philadelphia during a postgame bench interview.
The Flyers and Ducks are both surprising postseason contenders, so it’s not like either team’s general manager is being criticized for offseason moves such as the one that swapped Zegras for multiple draft picks and Ryan Poehling in June.
Plus, one of the Ducks’ centerpiece players, Cutter Gauthier, got in on the revenge game theme with a power-play goal.
The Flyers drafted Gauthier with the No. 5 pick in 2022. He reportedly didn’t want to play in Philadelphia, and the Flyers addressed a need on defense by trading him to the Ducks two years ago. The Athletic’s Kevin Kurz and Eric Stephens revisited each of the notable trades between the Flyers and Ducks in this story.
A revenge goal for a player on each team seems as though it should be a rare occurrence in the NHL — except that it happened twice Tuesday.
At Lenovo Center in Raleigh, N.C., revenge was on the menu in a potential Stanley Cup Final preview between the Carolina Hurricanes and Dallas Stars. What made this one unique was that the goals were scored by players who were traded for one another last season.
Some background: The Hurricanes hoped they were landing a difference-making forward to put them over the top when they acquired Mikko Rantanen from the Colorado Avalanche in a three-team trade last January. Rantanen was in the final season of his contract with the Avalanche, for whom he had scored 287 goals and 681 points in nine-plus seasons — and that’s not counting his five goals and 25 points during Colorado’s 2022 Cup run.
The Hurricanes added Rantanen without a promise he would re-sign. When it became clear he wouldn’t, Carolina traded him to the Stars for a package that included four draft picks, including two in the first round, and Logan Stankoven.
It only made sense, then, that Stankoven tallied late in the first period Tuesday to put the Hurricanes up by two goals. Carolina added a couple of more goals in the second period, and the rout was on.
How poetic?
Logan Stankoven dances right past Mikko Rantanen and gives his group a two-goal lead. pic.twitter.com/A7HcHMhjji
— Walt Ruff (@WaltRuff) January 7, 2026
Rantanen needed only 36 seconds in the third period to score against the team he played all of 13 games with last season.
It was too little, too late, and the Stars lost 6-3. Also, though technically a revenge goal — after all, it’s not like the term is official — it’s fair to wonder if Rantanen would even want revenge against the Hurricanes. They sent him where he wanted to go, and he wasted no time in signing an eight-year contract worth $96 million with Dallas.
Stankoven might have had the best revenge goal of anybody. His quick-release goal followed a nifty move around Rantanen.
Hurricanes fans serenaded him and Rantanen with chants of “Logan’s better.” Stankoven said he has heard those chants before.
Stankoven on if he’s had a “Logan’s better!” chant before: “Actually, I have. When I was playing in Kamloops with my junior team, when Bedard came to town. I think we beat them pretty handily, but the chants were going on there too. So that’s actually pretty funny, kind of full…
— Cory Lavalette (@CoryLavalette) January 7, 2026
There are five NHL games scheduled for Wednesday. Sadly, the slate offers little chance for a sequel to the Revenge Night that was Tuesday.