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Earlier this off-season, the Montreal Canadiens made a big splash when they acquired Noah Dobson from the New York Islanders. They then quickly signed him to an eight-year, $76 million contract extension. With this, he is expected to be a major part of the Canadiens' blueline moving forward. 

Dobson has been a star throughout his career, and he has been rewarded for it. EA Sports has revealed that Dobson is one of the top 10 right-shot defenseman for NHL 26, which will be released on Sep. 12. 

Dobson earned the No. 9 spot, as EA Sports has given him an 88 overall rating. With this, he has the same rating as other star defensemen like Evan Bouchard, Colton Parayko, Moritz Seider, Dougie Hamilton, John Carlson, and Drew Doughty. That is certainly some great company. 

Cale Makar sits at 95 OVR in #NHL26.
Adam Fox trails at 90, too big of a gap? 🤔

See Defensive Ratings here: https://t.co/1ZOOUJeVAzpic.twitter.com/S004oecFDS

— EA SPORTS NHL (@EASPORTSNHL) August 25, 2025

In 71 games this past season with the Islanders, Dobson recorded 10 goals, 29 assists, and 39 points. Overall, he put up decent numbers in 2024-25, but he is a clear bounce-back candidate heading into 2025-26. Just back in 2023-24 with the Islanders, he scored 10 goals and set career highs with 60 assists and 70 points in 79 games. If he gets his numbers back up like that in 2025-26, it would be massive for the Canadiens. 

Canadiens' Arber Xhekaj Should Hit New LevelThe Montreal Canadiens have plenty of young players who fans should pay close attention to in 2025-26. Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj is certainly one of them.

Training camp and the start of the NHL preseason will make for a pivotal few weeks for forgotten Philadelphia Flyers prospect Adam Ginning, a defenseman now lost at the bottom of the pecking order.

Ginning, 25, has played just 11 NHL games for the Flyers over the course of the last three seasons, scoring one goal.

The 6-foot-3 Swede saw the bulk of that action in the 2023-24 season as an injury replacement, featuring in nine games under now-departed head coach John Tortorella.

Last season, as we know, is a different story, as Ginning played just one game - Jan. 30 against the New York Islanders - taking just 18 shifts and playing a total of 12:48 while picking up a -1 rating.

That's hardly a sign of trust as it is, and it was further evidenced by fellow Swedish defense prospects Emil Andrae and Helge Grans earning longer cameos in the NHL with the Flyers last season.

Now, with a new head coach in Rick Tocchet coming in and John Snowden now in charge of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms operation, any good faith Ginning has built over the years has been reduced to a clean slate.

That could work in the 25-year-old's favor, but it could also doom him to another full season in the AHL.

At this point, Andrae, Grans, Nick Seeler, Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Egor Zamula, Dennis Gilbert, and, probably, Hunter McDonald are all ahead of Ginning on the organizational depth chart.

The lack of upside hurts Ginning, too, as he'll turn 26 during the season (Jan. 13), has very little NHL experience relative to his peers bar McDonald, and produces a nominal amount of offense.

Ginning sunk his chances of making the NHL roster last season with a dreary preseason marred by turnovers, inaccurate and delayed passing, and generally being a slow operator at the heart of the Flyers' defense.

Tocchet, in his only two playoff appearances as an NHL head coach, heavily utilized puck-movers like Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jakob Chychrun, Alex Goligoski, and Tyler Myers.

The defensemen who didn't move the puck as well or put up as many points were defensive foils, like Niklas Hjalmarsson, Ian Cole, Nikita Zadorov, Carson Soucy, and Jason Demers; all of whom were fairly accomplished NHL defensemen at that point.

Flyers' Next Rebuild Step Hinges on Jamie Drysdale's DevelopmentHow Jamie Drysdale plays in the 2025-26 season will, for better or worse, alter the path of this rebuilding Philadelphia Flyers team.

Noah Juulsen, too, has joined Tocchet in Philadelphia, further muddying Ginning's chances of sticking with the Flyers.

The 2018 second-round pick also has just one year remaining on his contract with the Flyers, after which he'll become a Group-6 unrestricted free agent.

And, before Ginning signed that two-year extension with the Flyers last offseason, there were well-traveled rumors that the hulking rearguard could opt to return to Sweden rather than continue to compete for an NHL future.

Based on how last year went, from preseason on, Ginning is effectively on his last chance to make it happen before a move to Sweden becomes the ideal path forward.

The Flyers welcome the competition - it will be fierce this fall - but Ginning has a long and arduous few weeks ahead of him if he is to finally stick at the NHL level.

EA SPORTS NHL has revealed the top 10 right defensemen in NHL 26.

NHL 24 cover star Cale Makar tops this list at 95 overall, five rating points higher than Adam Fox, the next closest right handed defender. 

Makar is the tied with Quinn Hughes as the highest overall defensemen and comes in as the sixth-highest rated player in NHL 26. 

The top 10 right defensemen are:

1. Cale Makar - 95 overall
2. Adam Fox - 90 overall
3. Charlie McAvoy - 89 overall
4. Evan Bouchard - 88 overall
5. Colton Parayko - 88 overall
6. Moritz Seider - 88 overall
7. Dougie Hamilton - 88 overall
8. John Carlson - 88 overall
9. Noah Dobson - 88 overall
10. Drew Doughty - 88 overall

Makar also tops this list with 95 acceleration, 94 speed, 95 deking, and 95 passing.

Seven of the 10 defenders on this list come in at 88 overall, showing the disparity between the depth of high end left and right defensemen. 

Other highlights include, Evan Bouchard  with 95 slapshot power and 93 passing, Noah Dobson with 92 acceleration, John Carlson with 93 wrist and slapshot power, and Moritz Seider with 92 body checking. 

Each of these 10 players will come with an X-Factor.

The full list of the 20 highest rated defensemen in NHL 26 and their attributes can be seen here.   

NHL 26 is set to release Sept. 12, those who pre-order the deluxe edition get access Sept. 5. 

For more NHL Gaming news make sure you bookmark The Hockey News Gaming Site or follow our Google News Feed.  

If one thing is for certain when it comes to the Pittsburgh Penguins, it’s that their team defense has failed them in the three years since they’ve made the playoffs.

In a lot of ways, the entire backend needs to be reenvisioned and reinvented. General manager and president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas swung big in the summer of 2023 to acquire Erik Karlsson - which has come with mixed results - and with an aging Kris Letang and a whole lot of question marks in every other defensive slot, the Penguins need to both give younger guys opportunities and take chances on some blueliners in need of a change.

One of those blueliners is defenseman Matt Dumba, who the Penguins acquired from the Dallas Stars on Jul. 10. In 63 games with the Stars last season, Dumba put up one goal and 10 points and ended up a minus-5 while largely playing bottom-pair minutes. 

It wasn’t all that long ago that Dumba, 31, was playing solid hockey with the Minnesota Wild, but the last few seasons have been somewhat disastrous.

Last season, Dumba had a minus-7.3 defensive rating according to HockeyStatCards, which is - to put it quite bluntly - not ideal. In fact, it was the 11th-worst defensive rating among NHL defensemen last season. He also didn’t do much at all to contribute offensively, but that is a bit more understandable since he was playing largely bottom-pair minutes against the third and fourth lines of opposing teams.

Five Storylines To Watch For The Penguins In 2025-26NHL fans have been counting down the days to the 2025-26 season ever since the Florida Panthers raised the Stanley Cup for a second consecutive season back in June.

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So, is the veteran capable of having somewhat of a bounceback season for the Penguins?

The reality is that there are a lot of elements factoring into it. Of course, the largest one is that Dumba will be playing in a vastly different setting with very different expectations, as Dallas is one of the league’s premiere cup-contending teams, while Pittsburgh is in the midst of a rebuild. Naturally, that drops some of the stakes and gives him a bit more wiggle room in terms of the pressure to perform. Perhaps playing a bit looser and with less of a chip on his shoulder would benefit Dumba.

There’s also the fact that Dumba was a large topic of discussion within the trade picture last season, something that can certainly affect player performance. Now that a trade is over and done with, he shouldn’t have to worry about that until at least around deadline time, at which point he is probably hoping to perform well enough to be dealt back to a contender in the final year of his two-year, $7 million contract.

Do The Carolina Hurricanes Make Sense For Erik Karlsson?With only a few days remaining in July, all three of Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, and Erik Karlsson are still on the Pittsburgh Penguins' roster. 

Also, Dumba’s deployment with the Penguins will largely depend on whether or not a Karlsson trade happens at some point, which is something that has been swirling in and out of the rumor mill. If Karlsson sticks around for the entirety of the season - and even for most of it - Dumba won’t have much room to redeem himself in a bigger role because the Penguins’ right side will be blocked with Karlsson and Letang. 

The Penguins also have an even bigger logjam on the right side, as they acquired Connor Clifton from the Buffalo Sabres on draft day this year and have younger guys like Jack St. Ivany and Harrison Brunicke in the mix during training camp, too. So it’s not just the two bigger names ahead of Dumba that he’ll have to worry about. In fact, with Karlsson in the picture, he'll likely find himself jockeying for playing time.

But even when considering his competition on the right side, his numbers - comparatively - don’t look all that terrible. For example - according to 2024-25 data from Natural Stat Trick - Dumba’s Corsi (51.44 percent), expected goals share (49.24 percent), and high-danger chances share (52.86 percent) were all higher than those of Letang’s (49.11, 46.87, and 48.29 percent, respectively). 

Granted, Dumba played against lesser competition on a better, deeper team, which certainly counts for something. But his metrics are close to pretty much every other Penguins’ defenseman but Karlsson, who has skewed-positive offensive metrics.

What Will Kris Letang’s Role Be In 2025-26?Pittsburgh Penguins’ defenseman Kris Letang has enjoyed a Hall of Fame-worthy career up to this point, and it’s no secret that his time in the National Hockey League has been met with his fair share of challenges.

Finally, there’s the coaching aspect. The Penguins have an overwhelmingly new coaching staff heading into 2025-26, and some of them - including new head coach Dan Muse and defensive coach Mike Stothers - specialize on the defensive side of the puck. 

Although it remains to be seen how much the new staff will change the team’s current system, perhaps the Penguins’ coaches will be able to get more out of Dumba this season or, at least, identify and target some problem areas of his game. The same can be said for the entirety of the Penguins’ defensive corps, which can benefit from a new set of eyes.

At the end of the day, the Dumba trade was mostly about Pittsburgh taking on his salary for one season in order to receive a 2028 second-round draft pick in return. But, if he gets the right opportunity and finds some version of his older self, he can be a decent short-term addition to their right side - and a potential deadline trade chip - this season.

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The London Knights arguably are the most coveted and highly sought-after organization in not just the OHL but the entire CHL. Young players hope to hear their name called every draft by the organization that has recently won back-to-back OHL Championships and the 2025 Memorial Cup. And now with the new NCAA rules in play, Americans are beginning to flock to the London powerhouse. 

The Knights’ training camp is officially underway, and there are a ton of new faces. The new members aren’t just the young buds from the 2025 draft class, like first-rounder Alex Campeau. The Hunter brothers have been active in recruiting players who bring experience playing at the junior level. They are successfully leveraging their organization's reputation as one of the best teams for player development in junior hockey.

London has made four notable signings of late, which include a couple of towering Russians and two older American forwards. 

Colorado Avalanche Prospect Signs With London KnightsThe retooling of the London Knights roster has been in full throttle throughout August. GM Mark Hunter has been actively signing free agents with valuable junior-level experience. Additionally, through the import draft, the team has acquired a large right-shot defenseman who was selected by the Colorado Avalanche in this past June's draft.

As camp opened up, the Knights organization announced the signing of American forward Braiden Clark to an OHL Scholarship and Development Agreement. He is another overage free agent signing, just like Kaeden Hawkins was. They both played and developed in the USHL, but one difference between the two, Clark is coming from the NCAA. 

We've signed Braiden Clark to an OHL Scholarship & Development Agreement.

DETAILS: https://t.co/ZrPTzbjOuApic.twitter.com/JQzhQJMohz

— London Knights (@LondonKnights) August 25, 2025

Clark, 20, played at Providence College last season. It wasn’t the freshman campaign he would’ve hoped for, playing only 16 games and registering three points (1 goal, 2 assists). The forward from Ohio was slated to return to Providence, but has made the tough decision to leave the NCAA in hopes that playing as an overage forward in London will be more beneficial for his development. 

London’s overage core for the 2025-26 season now consists of three forwards: Braiden Clark, Kaeden Hawkins, and returnee Noah Aboflan. 

The additional American free agent signing came just under a week ago. The Knights recruited forward Ben Wilmott away from the USHL’s Sioux Falls Stampede to join their brigade for the upcoming season before he leaves for Ohio State University. 

We've signed free agent Ben Wilmott to an OHL Scholarship & Development Agreement.

DETAILS: https://t.co/amWLcdM1Bjpic.twitter.com/SnmL9Hajz8

— London Knights (@LondonKnights) August 19, 2025

Wilmott, 18, is one year younger than Clark and brings 101 games of USHL experience. He started with the Chicago Steel organization in the 2023-24 season and was traded to the Stampede at the onset of last year. In Sioux Falls, he recorded 33 points (16 goals, 17 assists) in 50 games during the 2024-25 season.   

It was reported earlier in the month by Puck Preps writer Ryan Sikes that Wilmott was expected to sign with London. The depth the Knights have brought in to their forward corps will mask a bit of the blow of losing their all-stars — Easton Cowan, Denver Barkey, and Kasper Halttunen — from the past two seasons. 

Fun fact, Wilmott and Knights defenseman Henry Brzustewicz were minor hockey teammates with the North Jersey Avalanche. 

London Knights Bolster Lineup With Latest Two SigningsThere’s one thing that the London Knights don’t do: rebuild. Fresh off back-to-back OHL Championships, and several of their star players leaving the team due to graduating to the professional level or aging out of the league, don’t expect the Hunter brothers to stay quiet.

Another massive, pun intended, signing the Knights recently made was of 6-foot-8 defenseman Maksim Sokolovskii. The Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, native signed his OHL Scholarship and Development Agreement back on Aug. 20. He is committed to the University of Maine. 

We've signed Maksim Sokolovskii to an OHL Scholarship & Development Agreement.

DETAILS: https://t.co/nlEJNpnMSspic.twitter.com/t9gypTFGFH

— London Knights (@LondonKnights) August 20, 2025

Sokolovskii, 17, was drafted 119th overall in the second round of the 2025 CHL import Draft. He came over from Russia last season to play for the Atlantic Coast Academy 16U AAA team, where he excelled, scoring 84 points (34 goals, 50 assists) in 65 games. The towering blueliner led all defensemen in points in the entire 16U AAA circuit in the USA.

Several other top European performers from that circuit have also signed with OHL clubs this summer: Andrei Gudin (Barrie), Vladimir Provorov (Sudbury), and Beksultan Makysh (Windsor). 

Sokolovskii is eligible for the 2026 NHL Draft, and seeing the trend of how NHL teams are coveting size on the blueline again, scouts will be following the mammoth rearguard, whether he suits up primarily in London for the 2025-26 season or not. 

London Knights Rene Van Bommel Commits To NCAA Lake Superior State University London Knights forward Rene Van Bommel has committed to Lake Superior State University in the NCAA, where he will report following the completion of his junior career in the OHL. 

Lastly, the Knights organization signed Russian forward Mikhail Zakharov to an OHL Scholarship and Development Agreement. The Tomsk, Russia, native grew up playing minor hockey in Russia, but has been playing hockey in Ontario since the 2023-24 season, when he suited up for the Toronto Red Wings U18 AAA team. 

We've signed Mike Zakharov to an OHL Scholarship & Development Agreement.

DETAILS: https://t.co/tNk7J9y4zypic.twitter.com/0pl4g5QfKv

— London Knights (@LondonKnights) August 21, 2025

Zakharov, 18, is another player who brings size to the lineup. Standing at 6-foot-4 and 176 pounds, his presence down the middle of the ice provides London depth that they need. He played in the OJHL for the King Rebellion last season, recording 38 points (12 goals, 26 assists), and added five points (1 goal, 4 assists) in five playoff games. 

Although he was just recently drafted 103rd overall in the fifth round of the 2025 OHL Priority Selection, Zakharov is two years older than the majority of his 2009-born class. 

London understands they have an advantage in player recruitment, being who they are. Specifically, with the Americans they have signed this summer, an easy pitch is this: you will have more NHL scouts' eyes on you playing for our organization than you would anywhere else, even in the NCAA for a school like Providence. 

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