Ramblings: Another Big Night for Tampa’s Top Line; Chychrun Continues Point Streak; Hot/Cold Starters by IPP – November 25
Kirill Marchenko was not in the lineup for Columbus on Monday night, having pulled a muscle during morning skate, according to Brian Hedger. The team doesn’t seem to think it’ll be a long-term absence so consider him day-to-day for now, but we should get a clearer update in the next day or two.
Columbus ended up losing their game against Washington by a 5-1 margin. Jakob Chychrun kept his hot streak going, posting two goals (one PP), four shots, and two PIMs in nearly 25 minutes of ice time. He now has points in eight straight games, a span that has seen him manage five goals, six assists, and 27 shots. I don’t think he wants November to end.
Chychrun’s defence-mate John Carlson also had an excellent fantasy night with a goal, an assist, and five shots. He is now just shy of a point-per-game pace with 21 points in 22 appearances.
The other Capitals goals were scored by Martin Fehervary and Tom Wilson, the latter player adding an assist on the Chychrun PP goal to go with two shots and a hit. After some rough outings lately, goalie Logan Thompson was very solid in net, stopping 22 of 23 shots against for the win.
Denton Mateychuk had one goal on three shots for Columbus while goalie Elvis Merzlikins allowed five goals on 31 shots.
Zach Werenski left the game late in the second period and did not return.
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After leaving Saturday’s game with an injury, Brayden Point did not play for Tampa Bay on Monday night. It also doesn’t seem to be a long-term issue and he may even be able to return as soon as Wednesday.
Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped all 20 shots he faced on Monday night as the Lightning blanked the Philadelphia Flyers 3-0. That is his first shutout of the season and it brings his save percentage up to .911. He has allowed just three goals against in his last four outings.
Brandon Hagel had two goals on four shots, assisted on a goal from Anthony Cirelli, totaled four shots, and added a block for good measure. After registering just one point in his first seven games of the season, Hagel has 11 goals and 10 assists in his last 14 games.
Cirelli had a multi-point night with that goal plus an assist while Nikita Kucherov assisted on all three Lightning goals.
Flyers goalie Samuel Ersson allowed two pucks to get past him on 17 shot his way for the loss.
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The New York Rangers snapped a four-game losing streak thanks to a 3-2 win at home to St. Louis. Vincent Trocheck, Alexis Lafreniere, and Adam Edmstrom all got in the goal column for the Rangers as Trocheck added two PIMs and four hits for a solid multi-cat night.
Both Adam Fox and Vladislav Gavrikov had a pair of assists, managed one and two shots apiece, respectively while blocked two and three shots, respectively. It’s cute how close they matched.
Igor Shesterkin earned the win for the Rangers, holding the Blues to two goals on 22 shots.
Brayden Schenn and Dylan Holloway scored for the Blues. That makes four goals in eight games for Holloway after scoring just two in his first 15 contests this season.
Joel Hofer was in net for St. Louis and allowed three goals on 20 shots for the loss.
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Cody Glass was back in the lineup for the New Jersey Devils on Monday night and he made good on his return with a first-period goal, helping the Devils to a 4-3 win at home to Detroit. All of Nico Hischier, Timo Meier, and Connor Brown had a goal and an assist in the victory. Since the off-ice injury to Jack Hughes, Hischier has four goals, two assists, 17 shots, 7 blocks, and 9 hits in five games. That is excellent multi-cat production as he’s stepping his game up for New Jersey.
Jacob Markstrom held things down in net, allowing just three goals on 35 shots faced, with 29 of those shots coming in the second and third periods alone.
Dylan Larkin, Alex DeBrincat, and James van Riemsdyk all scored for the Red Wings. That makes 13 goals, 12 assists, and 79 shots for Larkin in 23 games this year.
Moritz Seider had a monster multi-cat night with two assists, three shots, seven blocks, and a hit. He was also moved back to the top PP unit.
Lucas Raymond took a blindside hit away from the puck from Jonas Siegenthaler and while he remained in the game, there was a big kerfuffle at the end. We will see if the Department of Player Safety has anything to say about it (they won’t).
Cam Talbot faced just 19 shots but allowed four goals for the loss.
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Florida went into Nashville and put the boots to the Predators by an 8-3 margin. Sam Reinhart (1+2), Carter Verhaeghe (1+2), and AJ Greer (2+1) all had three-point nights with Reinhart having four total shots and Verhaeghe adding a pair of hits. Reinhart’s hot streak rolls on with 11 goals, 7 assists, and 45 shots in his last 14 games.
Both Evan Rodrigues and Gustav Forsling managed a goal and an assist while Sam Bennett and Jesper Boqvist scored their other tallies. Bennett has just five goals and nine points in 22 games on the year and even without Aleksander Barkov around all season, he’s lost nearly 40 seconds of ice time per game.
Daniil Tarasov was stellar in net for the Panthers with 36 saves on 39 shots for just his second win in six starts. He is up to a .913 save percentage in seven appearances this year.
Filip Forsberg, Fedor Svechkov, and Nick Blankenburg (PP) replied for the Predators. Forsberg is on pace for a 34-goal, 257-shot, 198-hit season which feels like a miracle on this lifeless Nashville roster.
Juuse Saros was pulled after allowing five goals on 16 shots.
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Logan Cooley had the performance of the night, and one of the top performances of the season, with a four-goal night on Monday in Utah’s 5-1 win at home to Vegas. He managed a first-period goal, and then peeled off three straight markers in the third period, including two into the empty net, for his quartet of tallies. He even assisted on a Dylan Guenther goal, finishing with five total shots and a hit. That is Cooley’s second hat trick of the year, joining Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard as the only players with more than one hat trick.
Guenther finished with a goal, an assist, two shots, a block, and a pair of hits in a little over 15 minutes of ice time while defenceman Nate Schmidt had a pair of assists, a block, and a couple of hits.
Goalie Karel Vejmelka stopped 33 of the 34 pucks launched his way for his 10th win of the campaign, becoming the fourth goalie to reach that mark this season.
Carl Lindbom was in net for Vegas, giving up three goals on 22 shots, and Ivan Barbashev scored their only goal.
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A late power-play goal from Brandt Clarke lifted the Los Angeles Kings to a 2-1 win over Ottawa on Monday night. He finished with three shots, a block, two PIMs, and a hit in a balanced fantasy effort. In the five games since-and-including the injury to Drew Doughty, Clarke has skated at least 20 minutes in each appearance, and has averaged a team-high 21:51 in that span. There hasn’t been a lot in the way of production (1 goal, 0 assists) or peripherals (9 shots, 2 blocks, 5 hits), but he’s genuinely getting good usage now.
Warren Foegele scored Los Angeles’ first goal of the game as goalie Darcy Kuemper stopped 27 of 28 shots in the victory. He is up to a .910 save percentage with a 2.30 goals-against average.
Fabian Zetterlund scored Ottawa’s lone goal. After a very slow start to the season, he now has goals in back-to-back games with three points in his last five outings.
Leevi Merilainen took the loss in net for the Senators, allowing two goals on 22 shots.
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Individual Points Percentage (IPP) is how often a player gets a point when they’re on the ice for a goal. So, if a player is on the ice for 100 team goals, and gets a point on 50 of them, their IPP is 50%. It is a straightforward way to measure goal participation and can help highlight players that are running hotter/colder than they should be.
When perusing the defencemen around the league, there were some names whose IPP so far in 2025-26 stood out for one way or another. Let’s look at those names, compare their points/60 and IPP rates across the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons to the first quarter of this season, and how that should inform decisions by fantasy managers. Data is from Natural Stat Trick.
Brandon Montour (Seattle Kraken)
The leader for improved IPP when compared to the two-season stretch from 2023-2025 is Joel Edmundson. In second place is Montour:
Montour sits with 0.67 points per game, considerably higher than his 0.51 points per game a year ago, which is a good start. The problem is Seattle is generating fewer shots per 60 minutes (25.8) with Montour on the ice than last season (28.5). The expected goals are up, but not significantly (about 7%). Also, in 2024-25, only three defencemen (Luke Hughes, Cale Makar, and Zach Werenski) finished with an IPP over 60%, and Hughes was at the top at 65.7%. Unless Seattle starts generating a lot more offence with Montour on the ice, he will be fortunate to manage 30 points the rest of the way. He will still be fine in multi-cat formats, but his points-only value has a big red flag.
Jacob Trouba (Anaheim Ducks)
Anaheim is off to a great start, and that performance is reflected in the leap in IPP from Trouba in his first full year with the Ducks:
The last time Trouba finished with at least 0.5 points per game was back in 2018-19 when he was with the Winnipeg Jets. So far this season, he sits at 0.59. While Anaheim’s team performance factors into that, so does the fact that his IPP is 67% higher than it was over the previous two years (relatively speaking). Like Montour, Trouba will be just fine in multi-cat formats because his rate of blocks (2.0/game) and hits (2.3/game) are stout, but it is very unlikely he posts 35 points the rest of the way – expect that number to be closer to 25 if we’re lucky.
Adam Pelech (New York Islanders)
It has been a very tough start to the season for Pelech with no goals and just a pair of assists in 23 games. As we can imagine, his IPP has been abysmal compared to his two prior seasons:
If Pelech’s IPP were normal (for him), he’d be on pace for over 30 points. Instead, he’s on pace for seven points. Clearly, he won’t stay this low the rest of the way, but there are two compounding issues. The first is that with the emergence of Matthew Schaefer, Pelech has lost 1:31 per game in ice time, and less ice time is rarely a good thing. That leads us to the second issue, which is that he’s dropped from 3.3 hits/60 minutes across his prior two seasons to just 1.33 hits/60 this season. That, plus the drop in ice time, has taken him from nearly 1.2 hits per game to a bit over 0.4 hits per game. Even with a rebound in point production, his multi-cat value is minimal unless he starts laying the body more often.
