Headlines

Go To MLB Trade Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Archives for March 2017

Vegas Allowed To Not Disclose Expansion Side Deals

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

Cue the rampant speculation. When the Vegas Golden Knights were announced as an official NHL team on Wednesday, many expressed a belief that they already had several side deals completed. However, we may not know until after the Expansion Draft on June 21st.

In issuing the rules regarding transactions for the NHL’s newest squad, the league made note that Vegas and the teams with which they are doing business are not required to publicly disclose any moves. The Knights are free to agree to “bona fide transactions” with other clubs regarding compensation for selecting or not selecting players in the Expansion Draft. They’re welcome to make agreements to acquire picks, prospects, or players for their actions on June 21st. As always, they must report such transactions to the league, but they don’t owe the same information to the fans, the media, and most importantly, other teams. Vegas and it’s trade partners will be allowed to keep these deals private and reveal any information at their discretion.

No trades with the Knights can be official any time soon, since the team cannot acquire players until the end of their 2016-17 season, whether that be the end of the regular season or when their current team is eliminated from the playoffs. However, that won’t stop GM George McPhee from striking deals with several teams well before that point. By not having to disclose these moves, McPhee and the Knights’ front office will hold all of the cards. The team can make agreements with teams not to select players that they may have no intention of taking. They can negotiate with impending free agents with the knowledge that they’ve already agreed to acquire a different player from that team. There is a multitude of advantages to being able to keep their moves private, yet another loophole that the NHL has provided to it’s newest venture.

What it means for fans is that expansion news may not be as free-flowing as expected. While information leaks are still sure to occur, don’t expect many major press releases during April and May announcing agreements with Vegas. This is likely to make the Expansion Draft a much more exciting event, but it also means that a lot of guesswork and speculation is coming down the pipeline. Stay tuned for our coverage of the Expansion Draft process and previews of team protection plans coming soon.

Red Wings Assign Jimmy Howard On Conditioning Stint

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

The Detroit Red Wings have assigned goaltender Jimmy Howard to their AHL affiliate in Grand Rapids for a conditioning stint, the team announced on Saturday.

It’s been a tough stretch for Howard, who hasn’t played in the NHL since December 20, 2016. He left that game midway after a pileup in his crease. Howard missed several weeks before returning. He appeared in two conditioning games with Grand Rapids, but was injured in the second game and has been out since. He’s eligible to spend two weeks with the Griffins.

Detroit could definitely use Howard back in their lineup. He leads the NHL with a 0.934 SV% and is second with a 1.96 GAA. It’s been a bounce-back year for Howard; this is the first time his numbers have been above league average since 2012-13. That season earned him his current contract, which pays him $5.29MM for two more seasons.

Howard subsequently lost the starters job to Petr Mrazek until this season. Mrazek has struggled with a 0.903 SV% and 2.95 GAA in 39 games. Third-stringer Jared Coreau hasn’t been great either, playing in 13 games with an 0.893 SV% and 3.27 GAA.

The playoffs are out of reach for the Red Wings, but Howard’s return to form could inspire the Vegas Golden Knights to select him in the expansion draft, clearing valuable cap space for the Red Wings to rebuild with. Despite his poor numbers this season, Mrazek is just 24-years-old compared to Howard, who’s 32. Detroit would likely prefer to keep Mrazek and hope he returns to his prior form.

Snapshots: Konecny, Duclair, Oilers-Red Wings

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

After missing nine games with an injured knee and ankle, Philadelphia Flyers rookie Travis Konecny will return to the lineup on Saturday night. That’s according to Tim Panaccio of CSN Philly.

It’s an early-than-expected return for Konecny, who was expected to miss 4-6 weeks when he was placed on IR three weeks ago. The rookie has seven goals and 22 points in 51 games so far this season, while averaging almost 15 minutes per night with solid possession numbers. His 22 points were good for fourteenth in rookie scoring when he was injured back in February. He’s now dropped to twentieth, having been passed by fellow Flyers rookie Ivan Provorov among others.

It’s not yet known who Konecny will line up with in Washington this evening. Forward Jordan Weal was called up to replace Konecny, and though he has just one goal in six games, he’s been lining up on the Flyers’ top line with Claude Giroux and Wayne Simmonds. The Flyers also added center Valtteri Filppula at the trade deadline, so the forward core looks slightly different than the one Konecny left last month.

  • Much-maligned sophomore Anthony Duclair played his first NHL game in six weeks last night. He had been sent to the AHL in mid-January to find his scoring touch, which had been missing all season. Duclair scored 20 goals and 44 points in his rookie year, but has just three goals and nine points in 42 games this season. The main culprit appears to be his shooting percentage, which has gone from 19% down to 5.2%. It’s not as if Duclair lit up the AHL either, with just one goal and eight points in 16 games. However, it appears he’s back with the NHL club for the rest of the season. Sarah McLellan of AZ Central quoted Coyotes bench boss Dave Tippett as saying the rest of this season is Duclair’s chance to “re-establish himself as an NHL player.” The Coyotes clearly want to take a closer look at Duclair before making a decision on him this summer when he’s an RFA.
  • It will be a tale of two teams heading in completely different directions when the Detroit Red Wings visit the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday night. The Oilers are comfortably in a playoff spot for the first time in a very long time, and the Red Wings are about to miss the playoffs for the first time since 1989-90. The last time the Oilers finished ahead of the Red Wings was the following year; twelve members of tonight’s Oilers were not yet born. In addition, this will be David Desharnais’ first appearance in blue and orange since being acquired before the trade deadline, and he’ll line up Anton Slepyshev and Zack Kassian.

Okposo Out 7 – 10 Days WIth Upper-Body Injury

at CDT | by 3 Comments

Buffalo’s dwindling postseason chances have taken yet another hit with news that top-six forward Kyle Okposo would miss seven-to-10 days with a rib injury, as Sabres head coach Dan Bylsma told a pool of reporters covering the team this morning. Joe Yerdon of NHL.com adds that Bylsma compared Okposo’s injury to the one teammate Evander Kane suffered earlier this season.

Okposo, in the first season of a seven-year, $42MM contract he inked with the Sabres this past summer, leads Buffalo in scoring with 43 points. His 19 goals rank second on the squad.

Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News joined Yerdon among the reporters this morning in attendance for Bylsma’s statement and adds that in Okposo’s place, Nicolas Deslauriers draws into the lineup. As Harrington notes in his tweet, the Sabres have already utilized two of the four minor league recalls the team is allowed to make after the trade deadline and that for the time being the club has elected not to spend another. Recalls are allowed on an emergency basis when a team either doesn’t have enough healthy skaters to ice a full lineup or need a second netminder for a short stretch. Those recalls do not count against the limit of four.

The loss of Okposo, even if just for a week, dampens Buffalo’s already long odds of making the playoffs. Currently the team is five points out of the final wild card spot in the East and with Jack Eichel healthy and contributing at a high level, the Sabres could still make a late charge but the task is more difficult with Okposo sidelined.

 

Stars Notes: Roussel, Elie, Hemsky

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

Injuries, a significant factor in the Dallas Stars disappointing season, continue to haunt the club as according to Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News, Antoine Roussel is now expected to miss essentially the rest of the season with a hand injury. The physical winger, who leads the NHL in PIM’s with 115, is in the midst of a career offensive campaign with 12 goals and 27 points in 60 appearances. Given that pace, Roussel would have finished with roughly 16 goals and 37 points had he completed the campaign healthy. Instead it appears as if the Stars will be without another of their key contributors for a lengthy stretch.

The bright side, if it can really be called that, is the Stars now have the opportunity to see what some of their AHL talent can do at the NHL level. First up will be Remi Elie, the team’s second-round draft choice in 2013 who has 25 points in 50 games with the AHL’s Texas Stars. Elie was called up last week but didn’t get into a game. Now it appears he will make his NHL debut after the team recalled him from Texas on an emergency basis.

Heika also reports that forward Adam Cracknell, out since February 18th with a lower-body injury, may be ready to return to the lineup as early as Monday when the Stars travel to Washington to face the Capitals. Cracknell, a veteran of seven NHL campaigns, is having a solid season with a career-high seven goals in 52 games while registering a +10 plus/minus rating.

The news of Roussel’s injury comes on the heels of the long-awaited return of scoring forward Ales Hemsky, who made just his second appearance of the season following surgery to repair a groin injury suffered during the World Cup. In a separate piece for the Dallas Morning News, Heika writes that Hemsky “hopes to make a statement” down the stretch in order to prove that he is once again fully healthy and able to contribute secondary scoring to teams who may be in that market this summer. Hemsky, in the final year of a three-year deal with the Stars, is poised to hit free agency and a strong performance in the season’s final leg would likely position the 33-year-old winger to earn an NHL contract next year despite missing much of the current campaign.

For his part, the veteran of 14 NHL seasons would like to return to Dallas and rekindle the chemistry he shared with Radek Faksa and Roussel in 2015-16. According to Heika, that trio was at times the Stars’ best line for a three-month stretch last year and given the likelihood the team will fancy itself a potential contender next season, bringing back a healthy and productive Hemsky on a short-term deal could prove to be a wise and relatively inexpensive move.

Metro Division Notes: Shattenkirk, Rangers, Schultz

at CDT | by 1 Comment

Since deciding they would need to deal veteran defenseman Kevin Shattnkirk rather than risk losing him for nothing as a free agent, the St. Louis Blues worked hard to find a team with whom the blue liner would agree to a long term extension and thus be able to extract top value from their asset via trade. Deals evidently fell through with Edmonton and Tampa Bay, however, due to Shattenkirk’s preference to test unrestricted free agency. Ultimately the Blues caved and marketed Shattenkirk as a rental, agreeing to send him to Washington for a fair return, though likely not as high a price as they originally hoped to secure.

But according to Isabelle Khurshudyan of The Washington Post, the idea of Shattenkirk representing only a rental may be a bit premature. The scribe notes that both sides would be open to the blue liner remaining with the Capitals beyond the 2016-17 postseason. However, as Khurshudyan also points out, the team has several other potential free agents that would likely take priority over re-signing Shattenkirk, who may be more of a luxury to the Caps than a vital cog. With $51MM already committed to the 2017-18 salary cap, it’s far more likely the team will focus their limited resources on bringing back potential UFA’s T.J. Oshie and Karl Alzner, while also working out an long-term extension with talented center Evgeny Kuznetsov. Those deals would easily eat up most of the Capitals available space, leaving it nearly impossible for them to also fit Shattenkirk in under the cap barring a surprising trade to clear salary elsewhere.

More from the Metro:

  • The New York Rangers, another team believed to have been interested in the aforementioned Shattenkirk, instead opted to shop in the second tier market, coming away with the solid, if unspectacular Brendan Smith at the deadline. It’s unclear whether the Blueshirts have enough talent to seriously contend for a Stanley Cup in a conference that includes the Capitals, Penguins and Blue Jackets, any one of whom has a decent shot to come out of the East. But one prominent former player thinks the team’s speed, skill and depth is enough to launch the Rangers into Stanley Cup contention. Justin Terranova of the New York Post spoke with former Blueshirts team captain Dave Maloney, and the MSG analyst contends the team is a far cry better than the one that flamed out in round one of last season’s playoffs and is good enough to win it all in 2017. He cites the changes made in how the team plays in their own end as a major difference between this year’s Rangers and last season’s edition. Maloney also adds that bringing in Smith addressed a team need and that while the blue liner hasn’t lived up to his billing as a former first-round pick, his size, mobility and familiarity with Ryan McDonagh and Derek Stepan, former teammates of his at the University of Wisconsin, make him a strong fit on the team’s back end. It remains to be seen whether the Rangers defense corps is good enough to slow down teams like Washington and Pittsburgh come playoff time, even after the addition of Smith.
  • While deadline day disappointed many given the lack of high profile deals, anyone who needs a refresher that often times less significant swaps turn out to ultimately have more impact than the blockbusters need look no further than Pittsburgh’s Justin Schultz. The defenseman entered the league with high expectations after a stellar college career, but Schultz struggled in three-plus seasons with Edmonton before a deadline deal to Pittsburgh just one year ago helped resurrect his career. Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that the 26-year-old blue liner last night broke the 40-point plateau for the first time and may now be well on his way to scoring a lucrative multiyear extension as a restricted free agent this summer. Twelve months ago, in search of some skill and depth on the blue line, the Penguins shipped a third-round pick to Edmonton for Schultz and the former Wisconsin Badger ended up playing a significant role in the team’s run to the Stanley Cup championship. Now with 10 goals and 41 points on the season, he is among the league’s top offensive threats from the back end and may be in line for a huge raise over the $1.4MM salary he currently makes. Not bad for a relatively inconsequential trade deadline acquisition one year ago.

Central Notes: Duchene, Sharp, Bouwmeester

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

It wasn’t too much of a surprise that Colorado center/left winger Matt Duchene wasn’t dealt by Wednesday’s trade deadline.  Bigger trades involving players on longer-term contracts typically are now moved in the offseason.  Duchene himself is certainly aware of that and told Terry Frei of the Denver Post that he thinks there’s a good chance that he’ll be moved in the offseason:

“There’s probably a good chance something will happen this summer, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But, for now, it’s nice to be a member of this team for the rest of the year. Yeah, it sucks where we’re at, but I love all my teammates and it will be good to finish the year with them.”

The 26 year old has two years left on his contract after this season at a cap hit of $6MM.  With several teams being right up against the salary cap at the deadline, it’s likely that there will be more teams who can afford to bring Duchene in during the summer.

More notes from the Central:

  • The nagging injury that Stars winger Patrick Sharp has been playing through will require surgery but he’s hoping to continue to try to play through it, reports Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News. Sharp was a strong candidate to be moved by the deadline but this lingering issue was enough to scare any potential suitors off.  The pending unrestricted free agent has had a rough walk year as he has just 16 points (7-9-16) in 38 games while dealing with concussion problems on top of this current issue, which Sharp declined to get into specifics about.
  • In a reader chat, Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discusses if defenseman Jay Bouwmeester might be a fit for the Golden Knights in the expansion draft. The veteran doesn’t have a no-move clause and while his offensive numbers have tailed off in recent years, he can still log a lot of minutes which would certainly be enticing to the expansion team.  It’s far from a guarantee that the Blues would leave him unprotected but with a cap charge of $5.4MM for two years after this season, exposing him could free up a good chunk of cap space heading into the summer.

Latest On Coyotes Arena Search

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

The seemingly never ending arena saga for the Arizona Coyotes continues as they look for another spot within the area to move to after their deal in Tempe with a partnership with Arizona State University fell through earlier this month.  Their search has taken them to the City of Mesa where ownership has met with city representatives about a possible arena site, reports Jessica Boehm of The Arizona Republic.

In particular, the team is eyeing an area in Sloan Park which also hosts the spring training facility for the MLB’s Chicago Cubs.  Mesa Mayor John Giles acknowledged that there have been talks with the Coyotes but that it would be premature to call them serious at this time.

As things stand, the Coyotes are obligated to stay in their current home in Glendale through 2017-18.  At the time that the Tempe deal was agreed upon, it was reported then that they were likely to negotiate a short-term extension to stay there while their new arena was being built.  Presumably, that will be the case whenever they reach a new deal, whether it’s in Mesa or elsewhere.

While their original plan fell through, the team got some potentially good news earlier this month from proposed legislation that calls for public financing to cover 57% of the cost of a new arena – $170MM through sales taxes while the host city would kick in an additional $55M.  Previously, the Coyotes were set to cover half of the cost of any new facility.  That bill still has to get through a Senate vote to become official, however.

While some are hoping that the team will eventually wind up moving, that still does not appear to be a viable option for a while yet until all of these other local alternatives are exhausted.

Pacific Notes: Shore, Nolan, Dell, Marchant

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

After leaving Thursday’s game against Toronto due to an upper body injury, Kings center Nick Shore is listed as day-to-day for the time being but was seen with his arm in a sling today, reports Jon Rosen of LA Kings Insider.  He will be evaluated further on Saturday.  Shore is in his second full season at the NHL level and recently passed his career high in points last week; he has 12 on the year in 63 games.

Still with the Kings, left winger Jordan Nolan didn’t skate with the team at practice today and he is also listed as day-to-day.  The 27 year old has missed the last three games with a leg injury and the fact he didn’t skate today would put his status for tomorrow’s game against Vancouver in serious doubt.

Elsewhere in the Pacific Division:

  • The Sharks are planning to play backup goaltender Aaron Dell more often down the stretch, notes CSN Bay Area’s Kevin Kurz. Dell has made just 11 starts through 63 games this season and as a result, starter Martin Jones is on pace to play in nearly 70 games which many believe is too high of a workload.  To his credit, Dell has been more than solid in his limited body of work this year, posting a 1.88 GAA and a .935 SV% when he does get to play.  San Jose has five back-to-back games in March (the first set coming this weekend) so there’s a good chance Dell will get to play more regularly in the weeks ahead.
  • The Ducks recently added former NHL center Todd Marchant to serve as an assistant coach for the remainder of the season although he will remain their Director of Player Development. Eric Stephens of the Orange County Register outlines his role with the team, which will involve serving as an ‘eye in the sky’ during games while working with the team on faceoffs and the penalty kill.  That role should come as no surprise as Marchant was a strong penalty killer for much of his 17 year NHL career.

Snapshots: MacEwen, Tynan, Vermette

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

The Vancouver Canucks have dipped their toes into the 20-year old free agent waters, signing undrafted center Zack MacEwen to a three-year entry-level contract. MacEwen is playing for the Gatineau Olympiques of the QMJHL where he often skates with Blue Jackets’ third-round pick Vitaly Abramov, one of the league’s top scorers.

Elliotte Friedman reports that both Ottawa and Tampa Bay had been in on MacEwen recently, before the Canucks eventually signed him. MacEwen is a point-per-game player for the first time in his junior career, scoring 62 in 59 games this season. He’ll join Matthew Highmore and many others as teams around the league start snapping up any talent that has slipped through the cracks.

Pro Hockey Rumors is not affiliated with National Hockey League, NHL or NHL.com

scroll to top