Maple Leafs Reassign Henry Thrun, Dakota Mermis; Recall Marshall Rifai
The Toronto Maple Leafs are making a few changes to the bottom of their defensive core ahead of a four-game roadtrip through the Pacific Division. According to a team announcement, the Maple Leafs have reassigned Henry Thrun and Dakota Mermis to the AHL’s Toronto Marlies and recalled Marshall Rifai to the NHL club.
Thrun, 24, was on his second recall of the year. In his first season with the Maple Leafs organization, he has served exclusively as an injury replacement. Throughout his two recalls, Thrun has gone scoreless in four games with Toronto, averaging 14:52 of ice time per game.
He’s understandably been more productive with AHL Toronto. In his first significant playing time in the AHL since the start of the 2023-24 season, Thrun has scored three goals and 14 points in 28 games with the Marlies, with a -2 rating. That’s good for second on the team in scoring among defensemen.
Expectedly, Mermis heads to the AHL after being placed on waivers yesterday. He has played more NHL games this year than Thrun, scoring one goal in 11 appearances and averaging 13:02 of ice time per game. Unfortunately for Mermis, he has been out of action since early December as he suffered a long-term lower-body injury. Assuming his current demotion goes well, it’s likely that he’ll return to the active roster relatively soon.
Meanwhile, Rifai will join the Maple Leafs for the second time this season. The 27-year-old began the year on Toronto’s long-term injured reserve as he recovered from a wrist injury. Since the beginning of the 2024-25 campaign, Rifai has appeared only for the Marlies, scoring three goals and 17 points in 75 games with a +15 rating. In his only NHL action back in the 2023-24 campaign, he went scoreless in two games.
Canucks Notes: Kane, Buium, Hoglander
It’s already known that winger Evander Kane won’t finish the year with the Vancouver Canucks since the team allowed his agent to negotiate a trade to another organization. Still, Kane has yet to be moved.
Most of the interest in Kane is coming from the Western Conference, where he may prefer to remain. The Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars have already been linked, with beat writer Robert Tiffin confirming the latter team’s interest earlier today. Additionally, Dennis Bernstein of The Fourth Period reported today that the Los Angeles Kings have entered the mix for Kane’s services.
Multiple outlets have claimed that the Canucks were willing to retain some salary on the remainder of Kane’s contract and are only looking for a prospect or draft capital in return. Throughout his career, Kane has achieved at least a 20-goal campaign more often than not, though he has struggled to put the puck in the net this year, with nine goals in 52 games. Still, interested teams have likely placed more value on his playoff performance the past two years, scoring 10 goals and 20 points in 41 games, with 159 hits, helping the Edmonton Oilers reach back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals.
Additional notes from the Vancouver Canucks:
- After losing netminder Thatcher Demko for the remainder of the season, Vancouver may also be without one of their top young blue-liners for the foreseeable future. Passing along a note from head coach Adam Foote, Sportsnet’s Iain MacIntyre reported that defenseman Zeev Buium has a broken cheekbone and that surgery has not been ruled out. The Canucks are wholly expecting him to remain out through the upcoming Olympic break. Buium has scored two goals and six points in 20 games, while averaging 20:25 of ice time per night, since being acquired from the Minnesota Wild in mid-December.
- The injury concern doesn’t end there for the Canucks. According to Sportsnet’s Randip Janda, forward Nils Höglander is being evaluated for a lower-body injury from yesterday’s game against the San Jose Sharks. It’s not the first time Höglander has dealt with injury concerns this year, missing the first two months of the season due to a separate lower-body ailment. He has registered only two assists in 18 games since returning.
The Trade-And-Extend Move Is Becoming A Gamble
Stars forward Jason Robertson is having another terrific season at just the right time. He’s set to become an RFA this summer and should be handsomely rewarded on his next contract.
One wrinkle with his next contract is that it could come with a team other than Dallas, given that they already have so much big money committed to members of their core (just $16.4MM in cap space available next year, per PuckPedia). If Robertson is moved, it would likely be via trade to a team hoping to sign him to a long-term deal. But given that many of these types of transactions have failed in the past, should teams be doing it?
The trade-then-sign isn’t an official title for a series of moves in which a team trades for a player and then locks them up shortly after the trade, but that’s effectively what it is. A few recent examples include the Senators trading for Linus Ullmark and then signing him shortly after, or the Flames and Panthers linking up on the infamous Jonathan Huberdeau-for-Matthew Tkachuk trade that launched Florida on a potential dynasty while effectively slamming the door on Calgary’s contention window.
Therin lies the risk with these kinds of moves. Trading for a player and then signing them immediately to an extension leaves you open to the possibility that they aren’t a good fit, and you end up with a Huberdeau situation instead of a Tkachuk one.
The Flames and Senators are hardly the only teams to fall victim to this kind of thing. In fact, the Senators have dealt with it before with Bobby Ryan. Ottawa traded for Ryan in 2013, a move in response to Daniel Alfredsson leaving the franchise to sign with Detroit. The trade effectively boxed the Senators into signing Ryan to a long-term contract, which they did, resulting in an albatross contract that was eventually bought out.
Vancouver is learning a similar lesson with defenseman Marcus Pettersson, who was a top-pairing defenseman in Pittsburgh but was dealt to the Canucks last year, before the trade deadline, and has never been a fit. Vancouver was quick to ink Pettersson to a six-year deal last year, shortly after acquiring him, and, like Ullmark, Huberdeau and Ryan, he has not worked out as planned.
The list could go on and on. Timo Meier in New Jersey, Seth Jones in Chicago, Matt Murray in Ottawa, and Pierre-Luc Dubois in Los Angeles. All of these moves had a few things in common. The teams signed the players to extensions before the fit was ever stress-tested.
Take Huberdeau, who was acquired in late July 2022. Within two weeks, he signed an eight-year, $84MM extension to remain with the Flames. Pettersson had a similar trajectory in Vancouver, as he was acquired in early February 2025 and signed his six-year extension less than a week later. The same story with Murray and the Ottawa Senators, as he was acquired in early October 2020 and re-upped within two days, having never played a game in Canada’s capital city.
Again, the examples are endless, and the failures in these situations appear to share several common traits. In the three examples of Huberdeau, Pettersson, and Murray, they had essentially never played for the teams they were signing with, meaning no one knew whether they would work out with their new teams, making it a gamble for the acquiring team. But the trades themselves, and the players’ contractual status, essentially forced the team that gave up the assets in the trade to lock up the player or risk “losing the asset for nothing.”
It’s something that happens in every sport, where teams acquire pending UFAs. For whatever reason, some teams have felt compelled to extend the player before they even have a look at how the player will work out with their new team. And make no mistake, most of the teams that have extended the player right away probably regret their decision. There is no way Ottawa was happy with the Murray era, and Calgary has another five years of headaches with the Huberdeau deal.
Often, a player’s signing is a move to protect a GM’s short-term reputation rather than to focus on long-term projections. In fact, most of the time, the GM never lasts the length of the deal he is handing out, as was the case with Brad Treliving in Calgary and Pierre Dorion in Ottawa.
The thing about rushing to sign a player you really don’t know, beyond scouting their on-ice performance, is that once you ink the deal, there is no easy escape, or do-overs. You are locked into a player you don’t really know, and outside of asking mutual friends, acquaintances, or previous employers, you don’t have first-hand experience with the person in most cases. It would be like running a business and then hiring an employee you’ve seen on television but never spoken to.
But in hockey, as in all sports, market and ownership pressures, egos, and reputations can all play a role in transactions, contracts, and player management. As much as it probably stings for GMs to ink a bad contract with a player, they would probably all do it again if given another opportunity.
The truth is that trading for a player is always risky, while trading for a player and immediately extending them is often how NHL GMs try to save their jobs. Usually, it’s the move that leads them to the unemployment line.
Blue Jackets Reassign Zach Aston-Reese, Brendan Gaunce
Jan. 28: Both cleared waivers and are headed to Cleveland, per Friedman.
Jan 27.: The Blue Jackets have placed forwards Zach Aston-Reese and Brendan Gaunce on waivers, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. The open roster spots will allow Columbus to activate defenseman Denton Mateychuk from injured reserve before tomorrow’s game, as expected. Forward Miles Wood will also be coming off IR, Aaron Portzline of The Athletic reports.
Aston-Reese, 31, is in his ninth NHL season. He’s become a bit of a journeyman as of late after breaking into the league with the Penguins, also making stops in Anaheim, Toronto, and Detroit since 2022. With 102 career points and a +17 rating in 415 games, he was once regarded as one of the league’s top low-usage defensive forwards in Pittsburgh, but has since been mired in year-to-year inconsistency. He spent most of 2023-24 in the minors with the Red Wings before breaking back into a regular role with Columbus last year.
After appearing in 76 games for the Jackets last year and earning a one-year, league minimum extension, playing time has been tougher to come by for Aston-Reese in 2025-26. He’s played in just over half of Columbus’ games this season and has now been a healthy scratch in six of eight. He’s scored a goal and five points in 26 outings, recording a career-low 0.65 shots on goal per game (aside from his three-game sample size in Detroit). He’s still blocking shots and hitting with aplomb, but with ice average ice time now back under 10 minutes per game and his possession impacts dwindling, he hasn’t been much more than a 13th forward – especially with offseason signing Isac Lundeström taking some of Aston-Reese’s penalty-kill minutes.
Unlike Aston-Reese, Gaunce didn’t start the year on the active roster, but has logged roughly the same amount of playing time anyway. He cleared waivers in camp and headed to Cleveland, but has been up with the Jackets since November. In 25 showings, the 31-year-old has been moderately more productive with two goals and six points. He’s been especially valuable on draws, where he’s winning a team-high 56.9% of faceoffs. Nonetheless, with Lundeström back after missing a few weeks, he’s been in the press box for the last two games.
For now, Danton Heinen has earned the honor of serving as the Jackets’ 13th forward while Aston-Reese and Gaunce head back to Cleveland or get claimed by another squad. Since being acquired from the Penguins in the Egor Chinakhov deal last month, he’s put up two points in 11 games with a -1 rating and 21 hits.
Wood, 30, has been out of action since New Year’s Eve because of a leg injury. Between that and some previous ailments, he’s missed 19 of the Jackets’ 51 games but has still churned out an 8-4–12 scoring line in 32 outings. That’s twice as many goals as the speedy winger had last year in a similar number of games for the Avalanche, and with Charlie Coyle now up to 33 points in 51 games on the year, it’s safe to say Columbus is happy with the investment they made when bringing them both in via trade from Colorado.
Hurricanes Place Noah Philp On Waivers
The Hurricanes have placed center Noah Philp on waivers, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. He had been on injured reserve with a concussion; now that he’s healthy, he won’t be back with Carolina. He’ll either be headed to AHL Chicago or another NHL club if he’s claimed off the wire.
Philp, 27, was claimed off waivers from the Oilers just last month. If Edmonton submits a claim for him and is the only team to do so, they could send him directly to their AHL affiliate in Bakersfield without having to waive him again.
The Alberta-born pivot sustained the concussion in just his second appearance for Carolina on Jan. 6 against the Stars. He logged just 18:26 of total ice time across the pair of contests in a Canes sweater, notching two shots on goal and six hits while going 11-for-21 (52.4%) on draws. Including a 15-game run with the Oilers earlier in the year, he has a 2-1–3 scoring line with a -7 rating in 17 showings in his second NHL season.
There are red flags in Philp’s possession game. Even accounting for his deployment as a shutdown center at even strength, his 41.6 CF% at 5-on-5 is ghastly for a center who played in two extremely favorable possession environments in Carolina and Edmonton. He had a 54.8 CF% in 15 games with the Oilers last year, but in far more sheltered usage. There’s been some intrigue in the 6’3″, 200-lb frame he brings to the table, but it will be hard to continue justifying deploying him in a grinder role at the bottom of the lineup if he continues to be a significant drag on his team’s ability to control play.
Signed as an undrafted free agent out of the University of Alberta in 2022, Philp does have a nice 38-34–72 scoring line with a +13 rating in 130 career AHL games, all with Bakersfield. That includes a 35-point effort in only 55 games last year after he took a leave of absence for the entire 2023-24 campaign. The Oilers are likely hoping they’re the lone interested party in retaining him, either for familiar fourth-line depth or an AHL needle-mover.
Red Wings Sign Ben Chiarot To Three-Year Extension
12:45 p.m.: Chiarot will earn a flat $3.85MM salary each season of the deal, PuckPedia reports. The contract includes a full no-trade clause from 2026-27 until 28 days prior to the 2028 trade deadline, when it converts to a 10-team no-trade list. That 10-team no-trade list remains through 2028-29, the final season of the deal.
8:06 a.m.: The Red Wings announced they’ve signed defenseman Ben Chiarot to a three-year extension worth $3.85MM per season. That’s a total value of $11.55MM for Chiarot, who was set to be an unrestricted free agent this summer.
Chiarot could have tested the market as one of the top left-shot defensemen available in what looks to be a paper-thin class. It would have been his third trip through unrestricted free agency, previously landing a three-year, $10.5MM commitment from the Canadiens in 2019 and then his current four-year, $19MM contract with Detroit in 2022. He’s one of the last few Thrashers draft picks sticking around the league, selected in the fourth round by Atlanta in 2009 before eventually breaking into the league with the Jets after they relocated to Winnipeg.
While the Thrashers didn’t reap the rewards, it’s safe to say they’ve gotten great value out of a mid-round pick. He’s been a lineup staple for Winnipeg, Montreal, Florida, and Detroit since first emerging as a full-time option in the 2014-15 season, often serving as the complementary defensive-minded piece on a pairing with Dustin Byfuglien.
It wasn’t until signing in Montreal that he began to be viewed as a bona fide top-pair piece, though. He quickly averaged over 23 minutes per night for the Habs as his all-around usage expanded, and he ended up playing a significant role in their underdog run to the 2021 Stanley Cup Final. His surface numbers that season were uninspiring – just nine points and a -22 rating in 63 combined regular-season and playoff games – but the fact that he averaged over 25 minutes per game in the postseason and his physical brand of play ended up boosting his stock significantly around the league. He was valued highly enough to net Montreal a first-round pick when they flipped him to the Panthers as a rental at the following season’s trade deadline.
Since signing in Detroit, though, the shine has largely worn off. What were once passable, if not downright promising, under-the-hood numbers have faded. Chiarot has long struggled to produce good two-way results in what’s been a difficult possession environment in Detroit, controlling under 45% of shot attempts at even strength through the first three seasons of the deal. He quickly lost out on a top-pairing job alongside Moritz Seider to Jake Walman and, now, Simon Edvinsson, although he’s temporarily back up in top-pairing deployment with Edvinsson hurt.
Chiarot’s game has recovered to some degree this year. With a +1 rating and 11 points in 54 games, his on-ice results are the best they’ve been since signing with the Wings. That’s with him averaging 21:07 per game, third on the team behind Seider and Edvinsson, and he ranks second on the Wings in both blocks (113) and hits (109).
His possession numbers still leave much to be desired, though, and they can’t be explained by aggressive defensive zone deployment at even strength. In fact, Chiarot’s 51.9 dZS% is the second-most favorable number among Detroit defensemen behind rookie Axel Sandin Pellikka. Those two have formed Detroit’s second pairing for much of the year, controlling 45.9% of expected goals but still managing to outscore opponents 24-22, per MoneyPuck.
All that suggests Chiarot’s brief resurgence could be more mirage than longer-term promise. With that in mind, a three-year commitment seems aggressive to retain the 34-year-old. The dearth of potential UFA replacements, though, didn’t leave the Wings with many other options. Most of their defensemen in the pipeline with legitimate promise have already graduated to NHL roles, and the ones that haven’t wouldn’t be ready to succeed Chiarot in top-four duties next season. Save for a trade pickup, retaining him at a reasonable cap hit – even if the multi-year term will raise some eyebrows – was the easy move to make.
The Wings are still in a great spot, cap-wise, for next season. They have $38.8MM in space with 15 roster spots already accounted for, per PuckPedia. A good chunk of that money will need to be earmarked for Edvinsson, a pending RFA, but that’s still plenty of spending money.
Image courtesy of Brian Bradshaw Sevald-Imagn Images.
Flyers Activate Daniel Vladar
Flyers goaltender Daniel Vladař will start tonight against the Blue Jackets, head coach Rick Tocchet told reporters (including Jackie Spiegel of the Philadelphia Inquirer). He’ll need to come off injured reserve, and Philly will need to make a corresponding transaction, although the latter part will be as simple as returning waiver-exempt third-stringer Aleksei Kolosov to AHL Lehigh Valley.
Vladař will get his breakout campaign back underway tonight after a six-game absence. He left a Jan. 14 start against the Sabres late in the first period with an undisclosed injury and landed on IR a few days later. He returned to practice at the beginning of the week, so he’s had a few days of skating under him.
For a Flyers team that’s 2-6-2 in its last 10 and has now fallen four points back of the Islanders for a playoff spot, the importance of his return can’t be overstated. Signed to a two-year, $6.7MM contract in free agency last summer, he’s been one of the 2025 offseason’s shrewdest signings so far. The career backup has given the Flyers true starting-caliber netminding for the first time in a few years, logging a .905 SV% and 2.46 GAA through 28 starts with a 16-7-4 record.
The question would always be how the 28-year-old holds up down the stretch. He’s already just one game short of his career-high in starts. With 8.5 goals saved above expected, he’s been a legitimate top-20 goalie in the league this season, but he’d cooled off somewhat with 1.9 GSAx in his last 10, per MoneyPuck. Still, considering backup Samuel Ersson‘s .860 SV% and Kolosov’s .830 mark, it’s hard to call anyone other than Vladař this year’s MVP (or at least MIP) in Philadelphia.
Canadiens Fire Goalie Coach Eric Raymond
The Canadiens announced that they’ve relieved goaltending coach Eric Raymond of his duties. They’ve promoted AHL Laval goalie coach Marco Marciano to the big club for the remainder of the season in an interim capacity.
After receiving spectacular goaltending on their way to a surprise playoff berth last year, Montreal’s crease has been in disarray for much of the season. Sam Montembeault rode a breakout season in 2024-25 to a spot on Team Canada at the 4 Nations Face-Off, and deservedly so. He was one of the most-used goalies in the league at 60 starts and two relief appearances, and he backed that up with a 31-24-7 record, .901 SV%, 2.82 GAA, and a spectacular 24.6 goals saved above expected, per MoneyPuck. He finished eighth in Vezina Trophy voting and looked to be a surefire starting option heading into this year.
Instead, the 29-year-old has played poorly enough to surrender the lion’s share of starts to 24-year-old Jakub Dobes, who’s still been below-average in his own right. Montembeault has a porous .869 SV% in 20 starts while Dobes, who’s ridden some strong goal support to a 16-5-3 record in 24 outings, has a .890 mark with a 2.96 GAA. Together, they’ve combined to allow 9.2 goals above expected, with Montembeault accounting for 7.9 of them, per MoneyPuck.
Regardless of whether Raymond is the one taking the brunt of the blame for that regression, the Habs clearly feel a change is needed. Raymond, a Montreal native, had been with the club since the 2021-22 season and was in his fifth year in the role. It was his first stop as an NHL goalie coach, but he’d spent time in the Rangers organization as their AHL goalie coach and had extensive experience in the role in the QMJHL.
They’ll now turn to Marciano, who got his start in the organization way back in 2013 as the video coach for their AHL affiliate, then the Hamilton Bulldogs. When the team relocated to St. John’s in 2015, he was promoted to assistant goalie coach and again to goalie coach for Laval after another relocation in 2017. This year, he’s overseen an exceptional transition to pro hockey for top prospect Jacob Fowler, who’s posted a .912 SV% and 2.35 GAA in 19 showings with a 12-7-0 record and three shutouts. The 21-year-old also spent some time up with the Habs in December and January and outperformed both Montembeault and Dobes, logging a .902 SV% in 10 outings with 1.8 GSAx.
Mammoth Recall Dmitri Simashev
Before last night’s win over the Panthers, the Mammoth announced they’ve recalled defenseman Dmitriy Simashev from AHL Tucson. He takes the roster spot of center Cameron Hebig, who’s on his way back down to Tucson in the corresponding move.
Simashev, who turns 21 next week, will get his second crack at NHL ice time in his rookie season. The sixth overall pick in the 2023 draft cracked Utah’s opening night roster and spent the first couple of months in a rather expanded role, riding shotgun with countryman Mikhail Sergachev on the Mammoth’s top pairing while Sean Durzi dealt with an upper-body injury.
The experiment didn’t go all too well. Drafted as a smooth-skating shutdown piece, Simashev had one assist and a -9 rating in 24 outings while averaging 15:28 of ice time per game. Despite owning a 6’4″, 200-lb frame, the lefty didn’t leverage it often and only recorded eight hits.
Sergachev ended up faring much better with Durzi than he did in several weeks of play with Simashev. The Sergachev-Durzi pairing has controlled 54.0% of expected goals at 5-on-5, while the Sergachev-Simashev unit posted a 48.3 xGF%, per MoneyPuck.
As such, Simashev was sent down to Tucson in early December. Since going down, he’s been nothing short of dominant. Most expected his lack of offense in Russia’s top league to be a concern, but he’s rattled off a point per game in 20 appearances with a +3 rating. He’s more than earned a second look and will get one now, likely competing with Nick DeSimone and Olli Määttä to take on a third-pairing job with fellow lefty Ian Cole.
As for Hebig, he’d been up as an extra forward for the last week after Utah sent veteran Kevin Rooney down. The 29-year-old didn’t end up playing and is thus still awaiting his NHL debut. The 5’10” pivot has enjoyed a career-best campaign in Tucson, where he ranks second on the team in scoring with 33 points (15 goals, 18 assists) in 35 games.
The NHL Is Ripe For A Big Change Of Scenery Trade
The classic change-of-scenery move was once standard in the NHL. Still, with the emergence of the salary cap, analytics, and entire departments dedicated to player projections, the number of big-name change-of-scenery trades has declined.
These deals were often made in hopes of inspiring two struggling players to return to their career averages or better. The most recent example of this kind of deal is the goalie trade between the Penguins and Oilers earlier this year, which involved Tristan Jarry and Stuart Skinner.
Another recent example came at last year’s trade deadline, when the Sabres sent Dylan Cozens and a draft pick to the Senators for Josh Norris and Jacob Bernard-Docker. This season, there are multiple change-of-scenery trade candidates, with the biggest names being forward Elias Pettersson of the Canucks and Andrei Svechnikov of the Hurricanes.
Don’t get it wrong. There are still plenty of change-of-scenery trades in the NHL involving fringe and depth players, and some don’t work out, but some do in a big way. Egor Chinakhov of the Penguins is a glaring example of a change-of-scenery move that has worked out thus far, as he is playing with more confidence and fire than he has in years.
In addition to the Chinakhov and Skinner moves, the Penguins have made several low-end versions of these trades this season, most recently this week’s deal with the Avalanche, which sent forward Valtteri Puustinen to the Avalanche in exchange for defenseman Ilya Solovyov. The trade barely made waves around the NHL, but it does provide an example of two players who need fresh starts being swapped by teams in the hope of reigniting their play.
Outside of the aforementioned Pettersson and Svechnikov, who are some other big-name players who could use a change of scenery? The big name has to be defenseman Dougie Hamilton of the Devils, who was a healthy scratch last week and hasn’t produced nearly the way you would hope from a $9MM offensive defenseman.
Hamilton has dealt with a couple of injury-riddled seasons and has just five goals and 12 assists in 46 games this year. While Hamilton’s play hasn’t been great this season, that hasn’t stopped the Devils from upping his usage from 19:51 a game last year to 21:33 this season.
Hamilton is still a good player and would be a likely candidate to bounce back in a new environment. But would any team want to take a gamble like that on a 32-year-old making $9MM annually over the next two and a half years?
There is interest, and why wouldn’t there be? Hamilton is a talented player who could very well thrive on a new team, but the Devils aren’t going to just give him a way or retain half his salary in exchange for peanuts. The best course of action for New Jersey might be to try to find a hockey deal for another player in need of a change.
Pivoting to the Western Conference, the Blues look to be going nowhere fast and have a few players who could use a fresh start, including forward Jordan Kyrou and defenseman Colton Parayko. Kyrou is probably the most intriguing name on this list, a 27-year-old with a healthy track record of success.
His decline this season (11 goals and 13 assists in 42 games) isn’t overly complicated. His shooting percentage has dropped almost a full six points from last year, and with it, so has his goal-scoring production. Kyrou has another five years on his contract after this season at an AAV of $8.13MM, and he could be a bargain depending on how motivated St. Louis is to shake things up.
The Blues are in no rush, though, and might hold firm on their asking price if they don’t get reasonable offers. From Kyrou’s perspective, this year has been one to forget offensively. However, many of his underlying numbers remain strong, and he should still be productive for the majority of his contract. The Blues have been a bad team this year, and without much support, Kyrou hasn’t been as effective as he was in years past, when he was a consistent 70-point threat.
Another Blues player who could use a new look is Parayko, who has been a mess this season after a good year last year. Parayko has never been an analytics darling, but some of his underlying numbers are ugly this season. Now, in fairness to the 32-year-old, he is being asked to shoulder a very heavy defensive load on a bad team that is going nowhere. It can’t be easy for the veteran to go in night after night knowing he’ll spend most of the game working in his own zone, but that is his reality in St. Louis. A fresh start in a less stressful role could be precisely what Parayko needs at this stage of his career, but he won’t come cheap, as St. Louis likely still views him as a premium asset.
Moving back east, the Devils paid a premium three years ago to acquire Timo Meier from the San Jose Sharks and hoped he would become a force in their top six as they entered their window of contention. Meier quickly signed a pricey extension with the Devils worth $8.8MM annually (on an eight-year deal), and it looked as though it was an excellent match for both sides.
Since joining New Jersey, Meier hasn’t been the same offensive contributor he was in San Jose, and some of his underlying numbers have taken a hit as well. Offensively, he is still a 50+ point player, but that likely isn’t what the Devils had hoped for when they made the moves to bring him in long-term. Meier just ended a six-game pointless drought the other night and has been dealing with personal matters on the side, taking a leave of absence last month to attend to a family health matter.
It’s hard to say whether he would welcome a move or not, but it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing for the 29-year-old or the team. Once again, the Devils aren’t going to give Meier away, as he remains an effective player, but given how rough the last 18 months have been for the team, it might not be the worst thing to shake up the roster by moving on from Meier, Hamilton, or perhaps both players.