The Hurricanes got the kind of update they’ve been waiting for on Seth Jarvis. On Thursday, the star winger ditched the yellow non-contact jersey he’d worn since the start of training camp and skated in a regular sweater at morning skate, taking contact for the first time since offseason shoulder surgery.
“It’s probably the biggest step I’ve had so far,” Jarvis told reporters.
Jarvis still isn’t ready to jump back into game action. He worked as an extra, with the next phase focused on building back into contact after surgery in late June to repair a torn labrum and rotator cuff in his right shoulder. He’d been managing the injury since the 2023-24 season, playing through it in 71 regular-season games, then a 19-game run to the Stanley Cup last spring, along with five games for Canada at the 2026 Olympics.
The recovery timeline he was given stretched four to six months, putting his return somewhere between late October and December. Carolina’s leading goal scorer in each of the past two seasons is targeting the earlier end of that window, with late October or the team’s November trip to Finland in view.
Elsewhere around the league, Senators defenseman Artem Zub looks close to getting back in the mix. He resumed skating at Ottawa’s morning skate Thursday, according to Ottawa reporter Clair Hanna, after missing the first three games of the season with a knee injury that first popped up in last spring’s first-round playoff series against Carolina and flared again late in training camp.
Zub is coming off a career year that included 30 points, a plus-22 rating and 120 blocked shots in 81 games. Once he’s cleared, he’s expected to slide back onto Ottawa’s top pair next to Thomas Chabot or Jake Sanderson.
Vegas also got a tough break on one of its hottest starters. Coach Ryan Craig said Victor Olofsson is week-to-week after the winger was injured in Tuesday’s win over Seattle, where he left with an upper-body issue following a boarding major from the Kraken’s Ben Meyers.
Olofsson had opened the season with four goals and an assist in four games. With him sidelined, Trevor Connelly is expected to move onto Vegas’s top power-play unit.
In Minnesota, the injury list got longer. The Wild said veteran defenseman Olli Maatta was a late scratch against Tampa Bay because of a lower-body injury. Maatta had been logging more than 21 minutes a night through his first three games and is now day-to-day.
He joins an already crowded injured list that includes Brock Faber and Nick Foligno. David Spacek, 23, stepped into the lineup in Maatta’s place.
In Other News...
Golden Knights Showed Something Important In Comeback Win Over Toronto
Toronto came out with the kind of early push that can put a road team on its heels, but the Golden Knights found a way to settle in and answer with a game that had plenty of the sort of resilience coaches tend to point to later. Vegas got offense from Mitch Marner, William Karlsson and Brett Howden, and the comeback kept building until the game turned into the kind of tight, nerve-heavy finish that usually reveals a lot about a teams temperament.
Jack Eichel helped swing the momentum with a penalty shot goal in the second period, and Adin Hill did the rest of the heavy lifting once the game moved into overtime and beyond. Hill made several key stops to keep Vegas alive, and the shootout eventually tilted the Knights way after Trevor Connelly and Braeden Bowman both came through, a result that gave Vegas another reminder it can win even when the night does not start on its own terms. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Put Huge Pressure On Pavel Dorofeyev Right Away
Pavel Dorofeyevs exit from Vegas came on June 26, when the Golden Knights moved him to the Rangers in a deal that brought back multiple draft picks. For the Golden Knights, it was the kind of transaction that underlines how quickly a core piece can turn into future assets, even after a player has carved out a meaningful role in the organization. Dorofeyev himself treated it as part of the business, and teammates around him were quick to acknowledge what he had meant to the club.
The next chapter is moving fast, too. New York wasted little time committing to him on a long-term basis, and that kind of investment tends to bring expectations with it from the first day of camp onward. For Vegas, the trade closes one chapter while opening another, with the return now sitting in the background as the kind of haul teams hope will pay off long after a familiar name has moved on. [Read more 🡒]
Braeden Bowman Is Forcing A Real Golden Knights Shootout Debate
Braeden Bowman keeps giving the Golden Knights a reason to look twice whenever a game goes beyond regulation. In the recent win over the Toronto Maple Leafs, he stepped into the shootout and came through with a goal, adding another example to what has become a pretty convincing little track record in the skills competition. He also showed the same touch in a preseason shootout against the San Jose Sharks, which only adds to the sense that this is not a fluke but a usable part of his game.
For a Vegas team that has never been shy about leaning on the details in tight games, that matters. Shootouts are the kind of situation where confidence, timing and familiarity can matter as much as reputation, and Bowmans name is starting to feel less like an afterthought and more like a real option when the coach fills out the list. The question now is whether what he has shown in limited chances is enough to earn a bigger piece of that decision-making going forward. [Read more 🡒]