NHL Morning Coffee Headlines – September 20, 2026
Recapping Saturday’s preseason action plus the latest on Senators goalie Linus Ullmark, Rangers winger Pavel Dorofeyev, and more in today’s NHL Morning Coffee Headlines.
PRESEASON GAME RECAPS
NHL.COM: The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs in split-squad action in their preseason openers on Saturday.
Montreal Canadiens defenseman Lane Hutson (NHL Images).
Cole Caufield scored in overtime and Lane Hutson had a goal and two assists to nip the Maple Leafs 4-3 in Montreal, while Phillip Danault tallied twice for a 4-1 victory in Toronto. In the latter contest, Darren Raddysh scored in his preseason debut with the Maple Leafs, while Leafs rookie Gavin McKenna was held scoreless in his first NHL preseason contest.
Edmonton Oilers superstars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl each had a goal and an assist to down the Winnipeg Jets 5-2. Evan Bouchard collected four assists for the Oilers.
The Minnesota Wild defeated the Chicago Blackhawks 3-2 on an overtime goal by Tyler Pitlick.
Vegas Golden Knights prospect Jackson Hallum scored twice to double up the Los Angeles Kings 4-2.
The Seattle Kraken beat the Vancouver Canucks 4-2. Prospect center Jake O’Brien scored and added an assist for the Kraken.
The Dallas Stars defeated the St. Louis Blues 2-1 on a goal by minor-league center Jack Becker.
HEADLINES
OTTAWA SUN: Senators goaltender Linus Ullmark is refreshed, confident, and looking forward to his season after enduring a difficult 2025-26 campaign.
Ullmark struggled through the first half of last season and took a leave of absence for mental health reasons. He returned to backstop the Senators into the playoffs.
SPECTOR’S NOTE: Inconsistent goaltending nearly derailed the Senators last season until Ullmark returned to form in the second half. A more consistent effort on his part could push the Senators higher in the standings this season.
NEW YORK POST: Pavel Dorofeyev is looking forward to starting this season with the Rangers. They acquired the 25-year-old scoring winger from the Vegas Golden Knights last June and signed a seven-year, $77-million contract.
SPECTOR’S NOTE: Dorofeyev is coming off two seasons with 35 or more goals. He’s expected to play a significant role on their first line and on the power play. How he adjusts to playing for an Original Six club in one of hockey’s biggest markets will be a factor in determining whether the Rangers will be a playoff contender.
DAILY FACEOFF: The Anaheim Ducks signed center Tim Washe to a four-year contract extension that comes with an average annual value of $2.25 million.
Washe, 25, had two goals and five points in 39 games with the Ducks last season. He’s in the final year of his entry-level contract.
Ozzy and Oasiz Wiesblatt took sibling rivalry to another level when the two Nashville Predators youngsters got into a tussle during an intrasquad scrimmage on Saturday. Neither brother was injured during the scrap.
Both are battling for jobs with the Predators. Ozzy has 45 NHL games on his resume while Oasiz spent last season with the Preds’ AHL affiliate in Milwaukee.
CBS SPORTS: San Jose Sharks winger Adam Gaudette is day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
NESN: The Boston Bruins announced team executive Alex Gimenez’s death on Friday.
Gimenez spent more than a decade with MLB’s Boston Red Sox. He recently joined the Bruins as Director of Hockey Operations, Collective Bargaining Agreement, which was a newly created position within the organization.
SPECTOR’S NOTE: My condolences to Gimenez’s family, friends, and the Bruins’ organization.
Here’s hoping we can get a full season from Ullmark along the lines of his 4-game series against Carolina when he posted .932 save % along with a 2.03 ga average, and that Ersson can provide steady, consistent back-up.
George O watched Ullmark in Boston and he was excellent most of the time. Not sure how much I would totally put on that since the Bruins always play with good defensive structure! Hope he plays well! Good person!
If he does Sr, Ottawa might surprise this season. Last season he was gone for 35 days at the start, and neither Meerilainen nor Sogaard could handle the pressure, leading to the signing of 38 y/o Reimer (who performed reasonably well until Ullmark returned).
Despite that ongoing uncertainty in nets for a good portion of the early season, they still wound up just 1 point shy of 100 in the tough Atlantic.
George, I’m a Habs fan living in Ottawa so I get to hear a lot of the media and fan banter about the Sens. One thing that a fan pointed out that I have to repeat is that looking at the Ottawa schedule and results last season showed that Ottawa played more back up goalies than any of their division rivals. And it wasn’t even close. Every time a team came for a road trip through Mtl-Ott-Tor or Tor-Ott-Mtl then being the middle game Ott almost always got the back up goalie and the starter played Tor and Mtl, especially early in the season when Tor was not as bad as they were in the 2nd half. That will be something that may not change as the geography of Mtl-Ott-Tor won’t change but it is significant to keep in mind.
Drive for 25 … not doubting what you say … but since game-by-game tracking of how many times each specific NHL team faced an opponent’s backup goalie over an entire 82-game season is not a standard publicly tracked or readily available official league statistic, I’d sure like to know where that “fan” got his/her information.
They looked at the game summaries off nhl.com for each team to see who the goalies were. It’s pretty easy to determine who is a starter and who is a back up.
From some of your posts I’ve read you seem to like using AI mode, maybe AI could verify? I haven’t tried it to see.
Heh. I like using AI at times simply because it draws together consensus analyst observations/opinions. So, since you asked, here’s what it says about whether or not Ottawa routinely faces the back-up goalie:
“No, NHL teams do not routinely save their starter for Toronto and Montreal and start their backup goalie against Ottawa as a matter of routine. While this strategy might happen occasionally due to specific scheduling quirks, modern NHL goalie management relies on data-driven workload factoring rather than a default “automatic rest” for a particular city.
The decision of which goalie starts is dictated by a few primary rules:
1. The Back-to-Back Rule (The Travel Factor)
The most common reason a backup plays in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal (Battle of Ontario / Atlantic Division) road cycle is the schedule. If a visiting team plays on consecutive nights (e.g., Saturday night in Toronto, Sunday night in Ottawa), the coach will almost always split the weekend, playing one goalie in each game. If Ottawa happens to be the second half of a back-to-back, the backup will start simply because the starter played the night before—not because of the opponent.
2. The Move to Goalie Tandems
The concept of a “workhorse #1” who plays 70 games while a backup only gets 12 is largely obsolete in the modern NHL. Most teams now employ a 1A/1B goalie tandem or platoon system to combat fatigue and high-speed play. Because both goalies see heavy action, a team visiting Eastern Canada is highly likely to rotate their goaltenders naturally throughout the trip regardless of which of the three cities they are in.
3. Competitiveness Matters
The Ottawa Senators are a highly competitive Atlantic division team. NHL coaches respect division opponents and rarely “punt” a game by putting in a backup strictly because they look past a franchise. If Ottawa is higher in the standings, riding a hot streak, or if the visiting team desperately needs division points, a coach will absolutely start their number-one goaltender in Ottawa.”
So I suppose, to your point of view, Ottawa ranks third behind Toronto and Montreal as to perceived difficulty. But I would also point out that a full 20 of the 32 teams employs the 1A/1B concept – including Montreal and Toronto.
George I just spent an hour crunching this info for you. I looked at the teams who played in at least 2 of the 3 east cities (Tor-Ott-Mtl) on a particular road trip. Note all 16 west teams did a trip of 2/3 cities or all 3 cities, plus 5 east teams also did a similar trip (Bos, Pit, Flo, NYI and TB). The main things to pull out of this is how many times Ott got a back up and the others didn’t. I think it says a lot about what Ottawa’s record was both against these backups and also against the few starters they played. Especially compared to Mtl and Tor, but see below for the details and summary at the end.
1) Nas: Oct 13th Ott vs Saros 4-1W, 14th Tor vs Annunen 4-7L, 16th Mtl vs Saros 2-3L
2) Sea: Oct 14th Mtl vs Daccord 4-5L, 16th Ott vs Grubauer 3-4L, 18th Tor vs Daccord 4-3W
3) Cgy: Oct 28th Tor vs Wolf 3-4L, 30th Ott vs Cooley 3-4L
4) Uta: Nov 5th Tor vs Vanecek 3-5L, 8th Mtl vs Vejmelka 2-6L, 9th Ott vs Vanecek 2-4L
5) LA: Nov 11th Mtl vs Kuemper 5-1W, 13th Tor vs Kuemper 4-3W, 15th Ott vs Forsberg 1-0W
6) Dal: Nov 11th Ott vs Oettinger 3-2W, 13th Mtl vs DeSmith 7-0W
7) Bos: Nov 11th Tor vs Swayman 5-3W, 13th Ott vs Korpisalo 3-5L, 15th Mtl vs Swayman 3-2W
8) StL: Dec 6th Ott vs Hofer 2-1W, 7th Mtl vs Binnington 4-3W
9) Edm: Dec 13th Tor vs Jarry 6-3W, 14th Mtl vs Pickard 1-4L
10) Chi: Dec 16th Tor vs Knight 2-3L, 18th Mtl vs Knight 1-4L, 20th Ott vs Soderblom 4-6L
11) Pit: Dec 18th Ott vs Silovs 0-4L, 20th Mtl vs Skinner 0-4L
12) Wpg: Jan 1st Tor vs Comrie 5-6L, 3rd Ott vs Hellebuyck 2-4L
13) Flo: Jan 6th Tor vs Bobrovsky 1-4L, 8th Mtl vs Bobrovsky 2-6L, 10th Ott vs Bobrovsky 3-2W
14) Van: Jan 10th Tor vs Demko (Lankinen in 2nd & 3rd) 0-5L, 12th Mtl vs Tolopilo 3-6L, 13th Ott vs Lankinen 1-2L
15) Min: Jan 19th Tor vs Gustavsson 6-3W, 20th Mtl vs Wallstedt 3-4L
16) Veg: Jan 23rd Tor vs Hill 6-3W, 25th Ott vs Hill 1-7L, 27th Mtl vs Schmid 2-3L
17) Col: Jan 25th Tor vs Blackwood 4-1W, 28th Ott vs Blackwood 2-5L, 29th Mtl vs Wedgewood 3-7L
18) Ana: Mar 12th Tor vs Dostal 4-6L, 14th Ott vs Husso 0-2L, 15th Mtl vs Dostal 4-3W
19) SJ: Mar 14th Mtl vs Nedeljkovic 4-2W, 15th Ott vs Brossoit 4-7L
20) NYI: Mar 17th Tor vs Sorokin 3-1W, 19th Ott vs Sorokin 2-3L, 21st Mtl vs Sorokin 3-7L
21) TB: Apr 6th Buf vs Vasilevskiy 2-4L, 7th Ott vs Johansson 2-6L, 9th Mtl vs Vasilevskiy 1-2L
Ottawa opponents/result:
Saros loss, Grubauer win, Cooley win, Vanecek win, Forsberg loss, Oettinger loss, Korpisalo win, Hofer loss, Soderblom win, Silovs win, Hellebuyck win, Bobrovsky loss, Lankinen win, Hill win, Blackwood win, Husso win, Brossoit win, Sorokin win, Johansson win.
Record against starters: 3-3
Record against backups: 11-2
Toronto opponents/result:
Annunen win, Daccord loss, Wolf win, Vanecek win, Kuemper loss, Swayman loss, Jarry loss, Knight win, Comrie win, Bobrovsky win, Demko win, Gustavsson loss, Hill loss, Blackwood loss, Dostal win, Sorokin loss.
Record against starters: 5-6
Record against backups: 3-2
Mtl opponents/result:
Saros win, Daccord win, Vejmelka win, Kuemper loss, DeSmith loss, Swayman loss, Binnington loss, Knight win, Skinner win, Bobrovsky win, Tolopilo win, Wallstedt win, Schmid win, Wedgewood win, Dostal loss, Nedeljkovic loss, Sorokin win, Vasilevskiy win.
Record against starters: 9-5
Record against backups: 3-1
Note that Ottawa got 13 games against backups versus only 5 for Tor and 4 for Mtl. On the flip side Ottawa only played a starter 6 times whereas Tor had 11 and Mtl 14.
If I were a Sens fan I would ask myself if they had played half of those 13 games against a starter and assume they would win half of them (so a record of 7-6 instead of 11-2) that would mean 4 less wins, 8 less points. They would be at 91 pts instead of 99 and tied with NYI for 12th in the East.
I’d temper expectations for the Sens in my opinion.
Nice work Drive For 25. I guess all we can do now is sit back and see where they stand by mid-December. That’s about when the wheat starts to separate from the chaff.
As for “tempering my expectations” – just for the record I’ve been saying all along that they will be “in the mix” again for this season’s playoffs – and that’s about the extent of my expectations.
And if they continue to draw the back-up (or 1B), who’s to say they won’t get in again?
Not reading too much into a preseason game, but the Oilers looked a lot more ready and played with more drive than I recall recently during preseason games. I am talking about the tempo of the play, the back checking, solid play by all not the score or scoresheets. Leon skating hard to get back. The team playing physical…those type of things.
Past time the stars seemed content to just slowly amp up until the season started. Maybe its trying to find favor under babcock, maybe its the new preseason format, maybe they just “on” but a very good showing all in all.
Lots of cheers when Formenton scored 😉 and he looked good. I am doubling down he starts on the roster as an Oiler. Not sure what they do with a healthy roster but that is not for me to sort out.
And Jarry looked really good.
All that said…it is what it is…but a good kickoff to the preseason to my eyes
Planning that parade already?
“Jarry looked good” Lol.
Curious to see what the Panthers will look like this year, coming off a down season. They are the team to watch this year. The East will be tougher again this year.
Carlson in TB will be a pivotal player as well. Hockey is back!
Toronto St Pats, the general consensus is that it will take 97 points in the East to make the last WC spot. For the 8 playoff teams that finished with 98 points or better, here’s the minimum in terms of a collapse each would need to experience in order to drop below 97:
Carolina (113) -17; Buffalo (109) -13; Montreal & Tampa (106) -10; Boston (100) -4; Ottawa (99) – 3;
Pittsburgh & Philadelphia (98) – 2.
For the non-playoff teams that finished with 79 to 95 points. here’s the minimum number of points each would need to improve by in order to reach 97:
NYR (77) +20; Toronto (78) +19; Florida (84) +13; New Jersey (87) +10, NYI (91) +6;
Columbus & Detroit (92) +5; Washington (95) +2.
To me, given roster improvements and – hopefully – reductions in serious injuries that severely hampered several last season, I can see the tightest race in the East from start to finish that we’ve seen since it became a 16-team Conference.
Hold onto your hats!
Yeah this is going to be fun. Baseball wishes their regular season meant as much as ours!
George,
I see the Sens having a stronger season than last year. A young team that made few changes but they are improvements to go along with an identity change.
Eklund will replace the goals
Greig will be more like Amadio and less like Brady
Burakovsky is the dark horse, in a contract year
Ullmark is healthy, that’s huge.
Brady gone is a plus
Some Habs who had limited expectations who looked very good last night in the 2 TML games.
Montembeault seemed the sharpest of the 4 goalies
Reinbacher is NHL ready.
Beck is NHL ready.
Luke Mittelstadt is going to be a problem forHuGo, he played error-free and had the composure of a vet. LD is even more crowded now.
TML-
McKenna showed why he was #1 OA
Tavares continues to play great hockey, he’ll be on the list of top hockey players to never win a SC.
Emil Andrae is small but knows how to play the game much better than Benoit.
Let’s relax a bit. It’s a preseason game. But Hutson already seems in mid season form. Although it might take Danault 20 regular season games to reach 2 goals.
If Reinbacher can avoid injury he could probably play a regular top 4 role. Beck can play in the NHL but I’m not sure he has enough offense to be other than a 4th liner. He’s best off starting in the AHL and being given offensive opportunities to see what he can do. Middlestadt is a career AHLer.
I watched the split squad game in Mtl last night and saw the highlights of the game in Tor. I have to agree that Reinbacher looks like he’s ready. If Mtl can pair him with Matheson to mentor him then I can see him on the team come the 29th.
As for Beck, he appears nhl ready too but he projects as a at best 4th line C elite on faceoffs and above average defensively but will supply little offensively (even though he does have a good shot).
Mittlestadt has a shot to be a 3rd pair D someday but he needs at lease a year in the AHL playing a lot of minutes.
Boo-boo-chard for Helly straight up
Waive Jarry, then trade him when sent down, retain a million for a 3rd or 4th or a B prospect
Is there anything less relevant to a hockey player’s performance than being on an “Original Six” team? Yet that line is constantly trotted out. Dorofeyev will most likely be impacted by less elite linemates and his own development.
Have to agree there 100% Robert P.
Since the first expansion season of 1967-68 there have been 58 Cup winners (none in 2004-05), with 21 of them won by an original 6 team – just 36% of the total: Montreal 10; Detroit 4; Chicago & Boson 3 each; NYR 1; Toronto 0. The last of the 21 was going on 12 years ago (2015) by Chicago, and where the Rangers are concerned (1994) it’s going on 33 years.
While it may be of some passing interest to Dorofeyev, I do believe the “luster” – or any pressure related thereto – would be lost on someone who wasn’t even alive and kicking the last time the Rangers took home the bacon.
George, you and Robert P are missing the point. It’s not about the “luster” of an Original Six franchise; it’s the pressure of playing in those markets. Dorofeyev is moving from a still-new market to one of hockey’s biggest, where the press coverage is more overwhelming, the fan base is much larger, and the pressure is much higher.