Fantasy hockey shots on goal risers: October 2026

Shot volume is the quickest stat to trust

Goals are noisy early in a season. A skater can score on 25% of his shots over nine games and 10% over the next nine. Shots on goal are different: they depend on role, line and power-play time, which a coach sets every night. In leagues where shots on goal is a category, and in any format where a goal needs a shot first, the question is who is taking more of them than last year.

The desk compared every skater's shots per game this season with his 2025-26 rate. Of the 529 skaters who qualify (5 or more games this season, 20 or more last season), the table below shows the 20 with the biggest increase.

Read it with the sample in mind. Players here have 5 to 10 games, which means a single 8-shot night moves a rate by almost a full shot. These are early signals, not new roles.

The 20 biggest shots-per-game risers

Source: NHL skater summary reports, 2025-26 and 2026-27 regular seasons, read Oct 21 2026. Positions and teams confirmed against Sleeper the same day.

Volume that comes with more minutes

Seventeen of the 20 gained ice time, and that is the pattern worth trusting. A player who plays more and shoots more has a reason for both.

Noah Ostlund, Buffalo. The biggest ice-time gain in the table, up 4:54 a game, and his shots are up from 1.00 to 2.22 over 9 games. His teammates Tage Thompson (4.67 a game, 42 shots) and Olen Zellweger (2.50, a defenseman) are also on the list, so Buffalo has three of the 20.

Kent Johnson and Denton Mateychuk, Columbus. Johnson is up 4:11 in ice time and from 1.50 to 2.50 shots a game over 8 games. Mateychuk, a defenseman, is up 3:55 and from 1.17 to 2.25. Mateychuk also led the ice-time risers guide on Oct 13, now with 8 games instead of 4. The role has held across both reads.

Adam Edstrom, Nashville. Up 4:14 a game and from 0.89 to 1.88 shots, with 4 goals on 15 shots. That shooting rate will not last, but the added shots and minutes are the part to watch. His last-season sample is only 35 games.

Colton Dach, Edmonton and Kailer Yamamoto, Utah. Both are up about 3 minutes and about 1.4 shots a game, but each has only 5 games this season, so they are the weakest samples in the table.

High-volume stars getting even more

Five of the risers were already high-volume shooters: Hagel (4.56 a game), Thompson (4.67), Connor (4.56), Celebrini (4.62) and Boldy (4.40). Each had 3.0 to 3.5 shots a game last season over 71 to 82 games. A rise of one shot or more on a base that large is a bigger signal than a rise from 1 to 2, because it comes from a player who already shoots a lot. Hagel is the clearest case: 41 shots in 9 games, 7 goals, and ice time up 1:47.

Kyle Connor has 8 goals on 41 shots, a 20% rate against 14% last season. Expect the goals to cool while the shots stay.

Shots up, minutes flat or down

Three risers lost or barely changed ice time. Tyler Seguin in Dallas is at 2.67 shots a game against 1.15 last season, but his ice time is down 1:41 and he played only 27 games last year, so the base is thin. Kyle Connor is down 0:42 and Jesper Boqvist in New Jersey down 0:13. A shot rise without added minutes is more likely to come from shot selection or line mates than from a changed role.

The fallers

The drops run the other way, with the same short samples.

Source: same NHL reports, read Oct 21 2026.

Alex Ovechkin's drop comes with ice time down 3:14 a game. That is a role change, not just a cold stretch. Connor McDavid is different: his shots are down from 3.73 to 2.44 a game, but he has 6 goals on 22 shots (27%, against 16% last season), so his goal total is holding up. Leo Carlsson and Jackson LaCombe, both Anaheim, are down together, which points to the team and not to either player. Eight or ten games is too few to drop anyone for it.

How to read the table

Three columns do the work. Shots per game this season and last season give the size of the change, and the games columns tell you how much weight each rate can carry: 82 games of 2025-26 data is a settled baseline, while 22 games (Martin Pospisil) or 27 games (Tyler Seguin) is not. The ice time column separates a real role change from a hot week. A player whose shots rose by a full shot with a minute or more of added ice time has a reason; one whose minutes fell has to prove it.

Goals are shown on purpose. A player with many shots and few goals, such as Colton Dach (12 shots, 0 goals) or Justin Barron (10 shots, 0 goals), is the kind of add that pays off if the volume holds, because his shooting rate has room to rise. A player with a high goal count on modest volume has the opposite problem.

What to do with this

1. Add on shots plus minutes. Ostlund, Johnson, Mateychuk and Edstrom have both. Check whether they are free on the waiver wire page.
2. Do not pay for goals that outran the shots. Connor and Edstrom are scoring at rates above last season's, and those rates tend to come down.
3. Read power-play time next. The power-play units guide shows which roles produce shots. The Parlae rankings update as samples grow.
4. Recheck at 20 games. Every number here comes from 5 to 10 games.