Columbus Blue Jackets rookie Adam Fantilli suffered a lower-body injury during his team's 4-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken on Sunday night.

The incident occurred in the second period when Fantilli laid a hit on Kraken forward Jared McCann. Fantilli hopped off the ice and limped down the tunnel, favoring his lower left leg.

McCann's skate appeared to catch Fantilli on the calf.

Fantilli saw 7:30 minutes of ice time before departing. He was unable to return to the contest.

Heading into Sunday's action, the 19-year-old ranked third on the Blue Jackets with 12 goals and second with 27 points in 48 games.

Fantilli sits in fourth place in the rookie scoring race, trailing Marco Rossi, Brock Faber, and Connor Bedard.

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New Jersey Devils captain Nico Hischier was frustrated by his squad's performance during Saturday's 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

"Disappointing, I'm embarrassed a bit, to be honest," he said. "Just outworked, outplayed in such a big game. The way we performed is embarrassing."

The Lightning dominated play in virtually every category, outshooting the Devils 42-24 at all strengths while controlling over 60% of the shot attempts, scoring chances, high-danger chances, and expected goals at five-on-five, per Natural Stat Trick.

The third period, in particular, was rough for the Devils. All three of their goals came in the final frame, but the Lightning had a quick response for each of them. In the case of Ondrej Palat and Tyler Toffoli's tallies, the Bolts restored their two-goal lead within one minute.

Hischier was a man of few words when asked why the Devils have been unable to match the intensity of their opponents this season.

"I wish I could answer that," he said. "Just not good enough. Gotta calm down here and think about it. I don't have an answer to that right now."

The center added that he thought his team needed to have more "emotion" on the bench.

Saturday's clash featured two teams on opposite trajectories. The Lightning have now won eight of their last nine games, while the Devils have only picked up two wins in their last seven contests.

As a result, New Jersey is now in sixth place in the Metropolitan Division with a 24-20-3 record. The Devils are six points behind the Detroit Red Wings for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, though the former has two games in hand. Tampa Bay, meanwhile, occupies third place in the Atlantic Division.

Hischier and Co. will fight for their playoff lives when they return from the All-Star break on Feb. 6 against the dangerous Colorado Avalanche.

"I hope everybody goes and rests up a bit and thinks about what team they want to be a part of coming down the stretch," Hischier said. "If we want to be a playoff team, we've gotta figure something out. ... Everybody's gotta start looking in the mirror."

Last season, the Devils made the playoffs for the first time since 2018. They were eliminated in the second round by the Carolina Hurricanes.

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New York Rangers captain Jacob Trouba has been suspended two games for elbowing Vegas Golden Knights rookie Pavel Dorofeyev during Friday's contest, the NHL's Department of Player Safety announced on Saturday.

Trouba was not penalized for the incident, which occurred late in the second period of the Rangers' 5-2 loss. Dorofeyev was unable to return to the game.

Both players were jockeying for position in New York's zone following a faceoff. Trouba's elbow struck Dorofeyev up high, knocking the forward to the ice. The league found that Trouba wasn't attempting to make a play on the puck, nor was the motion natural or incidental.

Trouba had previously been suspended once and fined twice in his 727-game NHL career. In 2017, he was handed a two-game ban for an illegal check to Mark Stone's head.

The defenseman missed the Rangers' clash against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday and won't play in New York's showdown against the Colorado Avalanche on Feb. 5 following the All-Star break.

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New York Islanders forward Mathew Barzal believes his team's middling 20-17-11 record was the driving factor behind Zach Parise's decision to sign with the Colorado Avalanche.

"I'm sure if we had won eight of the games that we probably could have this year and were 15, 16 points - 10 points even - ahead of where we're at today, I'm sure he'd be in blue and orange," Barzal said ahead of Saturday's clash against the Florida Panthers, per Newsday's Andrew Gross.

"He knows his time is ticking and Colorado is a front-runner for winning the Cup. I wish that we had done a better job to allow him to come here."

The Islanders currently sit sixth in the Metropolitan Division and seventh in terms of points percentage, ahead of only the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets. New York is four points behind the Detroit Red Wings for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference and has played the same number of games.

The Avalanche, meanwhile, won the Stanley Cup in 2022 and remain one of the league's best teams. They've been challenging for first place in the Central Division all season and currently hold the top spot with a 32-14-3 record, but the Winnipeg Jets are two points behind with three games in hand, while the Dallas Stars are trailing by just one point.

Parise is 39 years old and has never lifted Lord Stanley's Mug. He appeared in the 2012 Stanley Cup Final as a member of the New Jersey Devils, but they fell to the Los Angeles Kings in six games.

The veteran signed a one-year, $825,000 pact with the Avalanche on Friday after spending the last two seasons on Long Island. He didn't miss a game while wearing an Islanders jersey, totaling 36 goals and 69 points in 164 contests.

"It's exciting for him," Islanders forward Brock Nelson said of his former teammate's new opportunity. "We definitely would have loved to have him here. He was a great guy for this group. A veteran guy that deserves to win and has another chance to do that in Colorado."

Last spring, both the Islanders and Avalanche were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. Parise told reporters in May that he'd likely return to New York or retire.

The Islanders will not face Colorado again this campaign.

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Patrick Roy knows he's a popular figure in Montreal, but he wants all the attention to be on the New York Islanders when the Canadiens host his new team Thursday.

"We just don't want to have distractions. ... I don't want it to be about me," the Islanders head coach said after Wednesday's practice. "I want it to be about the Islanders. We're going there to win a hockey game. We're not going there to win for the coach, it's for our team."

Roy is even planning to forgo the team's morning skate in the city where the legendary goaltender won his first two Stanley Cup championships, as well as three Vezina Trophies and two Conn Smythes.

"They're going to ask questions about me, they're going to say this and that," Roy added. "I don't need this, and they don't need that. ... I want an Islanders game."

Though Roy is keeping a low profile, Thursday's game is still significant for Martin St. Louis, who's set to coach against his childhood idol for the first time.

"The amount of times I was Patrick Roy in the street playing goalie," the Canadiens bench boss said, per Sportsnet. "We all admire him and idolize him. He meant a lot to me, the rest of the kids growing up here, he was kind of the backbone of the franchise for a long time."

The Islanders hired the Hall of Famer to be their new head coach Saturday to replace the fired Lane Lambert. New York beat the Dallas Stars 3-2 in overtime during Roy's debut but dropped its next game 3-2 against the Vegas Golden Knights on Tuesday.

Roy outlined what he wants to see from the Islanders in game No. 3.

"The next step for me is the mindset," he said. "The structure is the first step, and I think the players are buying into the structure, and I think we're getting better and better. But the next step is the mindset: How do we approach the first game after a win? How do we approach the first game after a loss?"

The Islanders return home Saturday against the Florida Panthers before taking to the road again Monday versus the Toronto Maple Leafs. They'll then have a four-game homestand. Roy said he's looking forward to sitting with his players one-on-one to get to know them better once the dust settles.

New York currently sits in fifth place in the Metropolitan Division with a 20-16-11 record.

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The Philadelphia Flyers granted goaltender Carter Hart an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons, the team announced Tuesday.

The club won't comment further on the matter at this time.

Hart owns a 12-9-3 record this season to go along with a .906 save percentage and 2.80 goals against average.

The Flyers sit second in the Metropolitan Division after going 25-16-6 through the first half of the campaign.

Philadelphia selected Hart in the second round of the 2016 NHL Draft. He owns a career .906 save percentage and 2.94 goals against average across 227 contests.

Hart's 96 wins since his debut in the 2018-19 campaign are the 18th most among all goalies over that span.

He last played Saturday against the Colorado Avalanche. He was pulled after surrendering five goals on 15 shots en route to a 7-4 defeat.

The 25-year-old can become a restricted free agent with arbitration rights at the end of this season. Hart is currently playing out the final campaign of a three-year pact with a $3.979-million cap hit.

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Todd McLellan thinks it's high time that center Pierre-Luc Dubois makes a substantial impact on the Los Angeles Kings.

"At the end of the day, whether PL gets four minutes or gets 24 minutes, he has to be a difference-maker," the bench boss said after Monday's 4-3 shootout loss to the San Jose Sharks, per Hockey Royalty's Russell Morgan. "And with or without the puck, we've gone through this long enough. It's time."

Dubois is in his first season in Los Angeles after forcing a trade out of Winnipeg this past offseason. The Kings acquired his services from the Jets in a sign-and-trade that sent forwards Gabriel Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari, and a 2024 second-round pick north of the border.

Prior to the swap, the Jets inked Dubois to an eight-year extension with an average annual value of $8.5 million. That cap hit will make the 25-year-old the highest-paid forward on the Kings next season, when captain Anze Kopitar's two-year, $14-million pact kicks in.

However, Dubois and the Kings have hardly been a match made in heaven.

L.A.'s flashy addition has mustered just nine goals and 19 points in 44 games while averaging under 16 minutes of ice time. He is also a minus-13 on a Kings squad that boasts a plus-25 goal differential, and he ranks last on the team in both goals above replacement (minus-5.4) and wins above replacement (minus-0.9), per Evolving Hockey.

Dubois is on pace for just 35 points, which would be a new career low, excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 campaign. He's frequently fallen out of favor in the top six, and McLellan has at times demoted him to the fourth line.

The Kings enjoyed a hot start to the campaign, going 20-7-4 through late December. However, Los Angeles picked up just two wins in its last 13 games in an uninspiring skid that featured an eight-game losing streak. As a result, the red-hot Edmonton Oilers have usurped the Kings for third place in the Pacific Division.

Despite L.A.'s suddenly precarious playoff positioning, general manager Rob Blake said Thursday he isn't considering a coaching change.

"Our philosophy here for the past three, four years is on the structure and the system and the design and the buy-in of the players, and (McLellan has) gotten that from the players," he said, per The Athletic's Eric Stephens. "I'm going to rely on the players and the leadership to get us out of that."

Dubois and the Kings' next chance to get things back on track will come Wednesday against the Buffalo Sabres.

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The Pittsburgh Penguins ended up on the highlight reel for all the wrong reasons after allowing a disastrous own goal to the Arizona Coyotes during Monday's 5-2 defeat.

Lars Eller, who could only watch helplessly from the bench as his teammates scored on the wrong net, offered a blunt assessment of the gaffe.

"Shit happens," he said, per Pittsburgh Hockey Now's Dan Kingerski.

The blunder occurred with the Coyotes on a delayed penalty early in the third period and Penguins goaltender Tristan Jarry on the bench to give his team an extra attacker. Workhorse defenseman Kris Letang controlled the puck in Pittsburgh's zone when he chucked a pass behind him to Evgeni Malkin. The veteran forward couldn't corral the puck and inadvertently directed it into the net.

The result was a two-goal lead for the Coyotes and, ultimately, a second-straight loss for the Penguins.

"If you look at it, my pass was going in the corner; it was not going in the net," Letang said of the miscue. "But I should know better. I should not go backward when there's no goalie."

Bench boss Mike Sullivan said his team should have been more cognizant of the situation, adding the Penguins' response after the error was "not good enough."

"I think we just have to have a heightened awareness that we don't have a goalie in the net in that scenario," Sullivan said. "We've got to try to avoid making plays in that area. I think if we have a heightened awareness, then we don't fall victim to a bad bounce or whatever it may be."

The Penguins also suffered a frustrating loss to the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday. Pittsburgh carried a 2-0 lead heading into the third period of the contest, but the reigning Stanley Cup champions scored three unanswered goals to win in regulation.

Despite the demoralizing nature of the Penguins' last four periods, Sullivan refused to look down on his squad.

"I'm not discouraged," he said. "I believe in this group. I think we have good players. I believe we have what it takes to win consistently. Obviously, we're disappointed with the last four periods; we recognize that it's not our best.

"I don't think discouraged is a word that should enter our dressing room. I think we've just got to get more determined."

The Penguins have lost four of their last five games and are five points out of a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, though they have games in hand.

Pittsburgh's next chance at redemption comes Friday against the Florida Panthers at home.

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New York Rangers forward Vincent Trocheck and Winnipeg Jets sniper Kyle Connor will replace the injured Jack Eichel and Connor Bedard at next month's All-Star Weekend, the league announced Monday.

Trocheck last appeared at the All-Star Game in 2017. He'll now be joining goaltender Igor Shesterkin as the Big Apple's representatives at the festivities. Trocheck is currently tied with Mika Zibanejad for the second-most points (44) and third-most goals (15) on the Rangers across 46 contests. He's on pace for around 78 points, which would be a new career high.

Connor, meanwhile, is also in line for his second All-Star appearance after representing the Jets in 2022. The 27-year-old leads Winnipeg with 18 goals in 28 outings this campaign. Connor missed 16 contests with a knee injury, but he appeared no worse for wear after scoring a goal in his return. Winnipeg now has three representatives with Connor in the mix, alongside netminder Connor Hellebuyck and head coach Rick Bowness.

Eichel has been out of action since suffering a lower-body injury Jan. 11. The Vegas Golden Knights center is considered week-to-week after he underwent surgery to address the ailment a few days later.

Bedard hasn't played since fracturing his jaw Jan. 5. The Chicago Blackhawks rookie was given a six-to-eight-week recovery timeline after getting surgery.

As it stands now, neither Vegas nor Chicago will have a player participating in the All-Star Game.

All-Star Weekend kicks off Feb. 1 in Toronto.

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Carson Soucy finds himself on the sidelines yet again.

The Vancouver Canucks defenseman is expected to miss five-to-six weeks with a hand injury, head coach Rick Tocchet announced Monday, according to Postmedia's Ben Kuzma.

Vancouver recalled defenseman Mark Friedman and forward Linus Karlsson from the AHL.

Soucy missed the third period of Saturday's 6-4 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs after blocking a shot.

The injury marks his second lengthy absence of the campaign. Soucy previously missed 23 games due to a lower-body ailment, returning to the lineup on Jan. 6 against the New Jersey Devils. He suited up for just eight contests before suffering his latest injury.

The 29-year-old is in his first season as a Canuck. He signed a three-year, $9.75-million deal with Vancouver as an unrestricted free agent on July 1 and has been key to the team's much-improved penalty kill.

Soucy has chipped in with two goals and six points in 21 games so far this campaign while averaging 17:25 minutes of ice time per contest. When healthy, he's spent the bulk of his time on a pair with Tyler Myers.

The Canucks have just three games remaining before the All-Star break, starting with a clash against the Chicago Blackhawks on Monday.

Vancouver currently leads the league with a 31-11-4 record.

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