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Danil Gushchin, Albin Grewe Sign In OHL

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Two notable NHL prospects and recent CHL Import Draft selections have joined the ranks of the OHL. 2020 draft eligible forward Danil Gushchin, the No. 4 overall pick in the 2020 Import Draft, has signed with the Niagara Ice Dogs, while forward Albin Grewe, a 2019 third-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings, has signed with the Saginaw Spirit.

Gushchin’s move signals a shift in his developmental path. A consensus second-round pick in the coming NHL Entry Draft, Gushchin is a very talented forward with great speed and stick skills. The one glaring concern about his game is his size: Gushchin stands just 5’8” and weighs in at around 160 lbs. For this reason, it seemed the Russian winger was favoring the collegiate development path, which can often be better for undersized players. The No. 7 overall pick in the CHL Import Draft last year, Gushchin instead opted to play another season in the USHL with the Muskegon Lumberjacks, preserving his NCAA eligibility. However, with questions about the likelihood of a college hockey season, Gushchin may have decided that the best choice for his development was to improve his level of play next season and the OHL was his safest bet. The question now, and one that NHL scouting staffs will have to decide, is whether the size and skill that made him a point-per-game player in the USHL will translate to the OHL and eventually to the pros.

As for Grewe, the move to the OHL is not unexpected following a disappointing 2019-20 campaign. A skilled and pesky two-way winger out of Sweden, Grewe was considered a great value for the Red Wings at No. 66 overall last year. He was expected to play a larger role with the SHL’s Djurgardens IF this year after getting into 15 games last season but failing to record a point. Instead, he was limited to just 19 games and managed just one point, while his production fell off considerably in the junior SuperElit as well. In fact, the only real statistical growth this year for Grewe was in penalty minutes. Grewe needs to work more on his offensive game and skill development and has a better chance of doing that playing meaningful minutes against his peers at the junior level rather than bouncing back and forth from a pro team where he was clearly not ready to compete. Although Saginaw waited to select Grewe until the second round of the Import Draft, both sides were happy to sign on for next year. Now Detroit fans just have to hope that the talented forward can get back on track with his new team and league.

Steven Kampfer Opts Out Of Postseason

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Slipping through the cracks of a refreshingly busy weekend for NHL roster news of many varieties was the announcement that Boston Bruins defenseman Steven Kampfer has joined the list of those players who have opted out of participation in the upcoming postseason. Kampfer took to Twitter to state that he has made the difficult decision not to return to the Bruins for their upcoming postseason run. The veteran revealed that his wife and son suffer from a congenital heart defect that can be complicated by the effects of COVID-19. For that reason, he made a decision that no one can fault him for to put his family’s health and safety first.

Kampfer, 31, is a veteran of 211 NHL games, including ten this season with Boston. While he had not played a major role this season with the Bruins, the team valued his presence last season as they dealt with consistent injury issues on the back end. Kampfer was one of a dozen defensemen to suit up for the Bruins in the 2018-19 season, playing in 35 regular season games as well as three playoff games. His experience and intelligent puck-moving came in handy in tough spots for the Bruins last year and the team rewarded him with a two-year extension last summer. They undoubtedly would like to have him this postseason in case the going gets tough again. Instead, they will have to make do without him for now and hopefully welcome him back next season.

However, the Bruins are in good shape on the blue line, especially given the time off to enter the playoffs fully  healthy for the first time in several years. While the team will be missing Kampfer and Kevan Miller, out all season due to injury, Boston’s training camp roster features ten defensemen with NHL experience. This includes their regular top five of Charlie McAvoy, Zdeno Chara, Torey Krug, Brandon Carlo, and Matt Grzelcyk, a trio of dependable options to fill out the starting lineup in John Moore, Jeremy Lauzon, and Connor Clifton, and top prospects Urho Vaakanainen and Jakub Zboril. 

Mikhail Grigorenko Signs With Columbus Blue Jackets

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With all of the news over the last few months, it may have been easy to forget that the Columbus Blue Jackets tried and failed to sign a former top prospect back in April. Mikhail Grigorenko signed a one-year contract with the team, but thanks to the filing window closing the deal was rejected by the league. According to his agent Dan Milstein of Gold Star Hockey, Grigorenko has now officially signed that one-year deal. The contract is for the 2020-21 season and will be worth the original $1.2MM according to Chris Johnston of Sportsnet.

Originally selected 12th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in 2012, Grigorenko was supposed to be a do-it-all power forward in the NHL. After dominating the QMJHL as a rookie he quickly made his NHL debut with the Sabres before eventually finding his way back to junior. By the end of the 2014-15 season, however, he had just 14 points in 68 NHL games and was included in a deal that saw him shipped to the Colorado Avalanche. Two relatively unproductive seasons later, Grigorenko was heading back to Russia to join CSKA Moscow where he has played the last three years.

Those years in the KHL have been good to Grigorenko, who has tallied 115 points in 147 regular season games. Even better perhaps was his performance in the 2019 playoffs, scoring 13 goals and 21 points in 20 games en route to a Gagarin Cup championship. He was also part of the Russian Olympic team (the Olympic Athletes from Russia) who took home gold in 2018.

What’s so notable about these accomplishments for Grigorenko, is that even though he has played parts of five seasons in the NHL and three in the KHL, he only turned 26 a few months ago. It’s easy to wonder whether his game has progressed to the point where he can be a positive impact player in the NHL, and for just $1.2MM the Blue Jackets intend to find out.

Vegas Golden Knights Sign Logan Thompson

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The Vegas Golden Knights have added a goaltending prospect to the organization, signing Logan Thompson to a two-year entry-level contract. The deal will presumably start with the 2020-21 season

The undrafted Thompson spent this season with the South Carolina Stingrays of the ECHL, where he posted a .929 save percentage over 32 games. The 23-year old was once a member of the Brandon Wheat Kings of the WHL, the organization that Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon owns. In fact, McCrimmon was the head coach of the club when Thompson started his career there and the two won a WHL championship in 2016 together.

Thompson will join an organization that could be losing both Robin Lehner and Garret Sparks from their goaltending depth as both players are scheduled for unrestricted free agency after the season is over. While there are several other goaltenders who will be pushing for playing time in the minor leagues, Thompson’s success in the ECHL at least gives him some experience to rely on.

Mike Kitchen Opts Out Of Return To Play

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The Florida Panthers will be without assistant coach Mike Kitchen for the return to play program, announcing today that he has opted out. Kitchen released a short statement on his decision:

It was a difficult decision to say the least, but the right decision for me and my family.

Kitchen joined the Panthers this season after spending years alongside head coach Joel Quenneville in previous stops and has the team’s full support in his decision.

A veteran of 474 regular season games as a player, Kitchen has been an NHL assistant coach for most of the last three decades. The Panthers will have to move forward without him as they prepare for their qualification series against the New York Islanders.

Metropolitan Notes: Penguins, Patrick, Gostisbehere

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The Pittsburgh Penguins have decided to sideline nine players from training camp after they were potentially exposed to an individual that has tested positive for COVID-19. The players will now go through the NHL’s protocol to be deemed safe to return before taking part in training camp. The team did not release the names of the players who have been held out because of this exposure.

These kinds of restrictions will likely happen in several camps as teams prepare for the upcoming playoff tournament. Today the league announced that 43 players have now tested positive for COVID-19, including 30 that were taking part in Phase 2 activities. Players all around the league are being deemed “unfit to participate” in camp, though that does not necessarily indicate coronavirus-induced absences. In Washington for instance, Michal Kempny, Alexander Alexeyev, and Ilya Samsonov were all absent from Capitals practice, but the team did not provide any specifics as to why.

  • For the Philadelphia Flyers, one important player will be absent from the entire training camp and playoffs, but it isn’t due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nolan Patrick was not listed on the team’s training camp roster after missing the entire season with a migraine disorder, and Flyers GM Cliff Fletcher told reporters including Sam Carchidi of the Philadelphia Inquirer that the focus for their young forward is getting healthy enough for 2020-21. Patrick, the second overall pick in 2017, has played 145 regular season games to this point in his career and has 61 points. The 21-year old will also be a restricted free agent this offseason.
  • One player that is at Philadelphia training camp is Shayne Gostisbehere, despite apparently undergoing knee surgery seven weeks ago. Gostisbehere revealed the surgery to reporters today, indicating that it was an arthroscopic procedure. That may sound familiar to Flyers fans, as the 27-year old defenseman had a similar procedure in January but while that surgery was on his left knee, this was his right. Gostisbehere’s production fell off a cliff this season as he scored just 12 points in 42 games after amassing 187 through his first four seasons in the NHL. As he hopes to be ready for the tournament, the team will have some tough decisions on who to ice on defense once they find out who they’re up against. The Flyers are one of four teams that will play a round-robin to determine seeding before matching up against one of the qualification round winners.

Mark Friedman Signs Two-Year Extension

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The Philadelphia Flyers have inked Mark Friedman to a new two-year, one-way contract extension that will keep him in the organization through the 2021-22 season. Friedman was scheduled to become a restricted free agent at the end of this season when his entry-level deal expired, but will now get some financial stability with a $725K average annual value over the next two years.

Friedman, 24, was a third-round pick of the Flyers back in 2014 and has slowly climbed up the organizational depth chart. Three seasons at Bowling Green State University led to an NHL contract and opportunity with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, where he has spent the last three seasons almost exclusively. In 186 regular season games for the Phantoms, Friedman has recorded 61 points and earned himself seven games with the NHL club. That NHL opportunity will likely only increase with the one-way contract, though Philadelphia certainly doesn’t have a lack of defensive options.

This marks the first of many contracts that will likely be signed over the next few days and weeks as front offices start to prepare for next season. Given how condensed the offseason will be after the 24-team playoffs are finished, teams may want to get a head start on negotiations during these few weeks of training camp. For the Flyers specifically, Friedman’s signing leaves seven pending restricted free agents in the organization including important names like Oskar Lindblom and Nolan Patrick.

St. Louis Blues Sign Scott Perunovich

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The St. Louis Blues have officially signed prospect Scott Perunovich to an entry-level contract, but unlike Alexander Romanov and Kirill Kaprizov, the young defenseman will not be burning a year in 2019-20. Instead, Perunovich’s two-year contract will begin in the 2020-21 season.

You can’t have a much better season than Perunovich just did. After winning the NCAA championship in 2019, the defenseman decided to head back to the University of Minnesota-Duluth where he reached a new level of dominance. Not only was he UMD’s most potent offensive weapon, but Perunovich ended up taking home the Hobey Baker award as the country’s top collegiate player, the Jim Johannson award as the USA Hockey college player of the year, a first-team All-American selection and almost countless other conference awards. After all that success there was little left for Perunovich to accomplish in college, meaning the NHL and professional hockey was the obvious step this summer.

After the decision by the league to not allow new players to compete in the playoffs, it was just down to whether Perunovich would get to burn a year of his deal or not. Unlike Romanov and Kaprizov however, there wasn’t the threat of returning to the KHL for another season.

The smooth-skating defenseman will immediately be in the Blues’ plans for next season and could potentially be a very important one given the situation the team is in. Captain Alex Pietrangelo is still unsigned and scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent, and with the salary cap staying flat next season it may be difficult to bring him back. That’s not to say the Blues won’t try, but if they for whatever reason can’t reach an agreement with Pietrangelo there will be huge minutes up for grabs in St. Louis.

While Perunovich isn’t the same type of 25-minute two-way player, he does bring huge offensive upside and could potentially slide into a powerplay unit right away. Unfortunately we won’t get to see what he can bring until December at the earliest, but that only gives him even more time to get accustomed to life in professional hockey and a new organization.

Alexander Romanov Signs With Montreal Canadiens

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The window to officially sign contracts for the 2019-20 season opens this afternoon and it seems as though at least one player will be inking a deal to burn the first year of his entry-level pact. Alexander Romanov has officially signed with the Montreal Canadiens. The deal will start in 2019-20 and though he can join the team in training camp, the young defenseman will not be permitted to suit up in the playoffs. Chris Johnston of Sportsnet reports that Romanov’s deal will also include a European out-clause in the second two seasons, allowing him to return to the KHL under certain circumstances (usually being held down in the minor leagues for a certain amount of time.)

The 20-year old Romanov arrives in Montreal with plenty of hype after his performances in the World Junior Championship. For two straight years, he has been among the best players in the tournament, taking home two medals and a tournament Best Defenseman award in the process. Add those performances to a pair of seasons playing a regular role in the KHL with the powerhouse CSKA Moscow club (as a teenager no less), and you’ve got the making of a top NHL prospect.

That’s exactly what Romanov is, despite falling all the way to 38th overall in the 2018 draft. He comes to Montreal as a potential anchor for their back end, one that has shown the ability to move the puck and shut down opposing players with ease. The fact that he’s left-handed only adds to his value for a team that already has right-handers Shea Weber and Jeff Petry locked up.

Romanov won’t be taking part in any games this summer, but you can bet he’ll be a factor for the Canadiens in 2020-21. While they lose a year of his entry-level deal, he still won’t be a restricted free agent until 2022.

Pontus Aberg Signs In KHL

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When the Toronto Maple Leafs recently released their training camp roster for the qualification round, there was a notable absence—at least in terms of depth players. Pontus Aberg, who had been one of the team’s injury recalls during the season, was not found on the list. Perhaps now we know why, as Aberg has signed a one-year contract with Traktor Chelyabinsk of the KHL. Earlier this spring there were reports that Aberg had been offered a deal, though it wasn’t clear at that point which organization was trying to bring him overseas.

Though he spent only five games in a Maple Leafs sweater this season, the 26-year old Aberg dominated at the minor league level once again. Scoring 20 goals and 44 points in 55 games for the Toronto Marlies, it was easy to expect his name as a reserve option for the upcoming tournament. Instead, the two sides will part ways for now with Aberg heading overseas to try and get his career back on track.

Originally selected 37th overall by the Nashville Predators, Aberg was once a promising young forward with oodles of offensive potential. His presence was felt in the 2016-17 playoffs when he stepped into a larger role on the injury-riddled Predators and helped them reach the Stanley Cup Finals. Unfortunately, his NHL playing time has wavered ever since, with only 132 regular season games under his belt to this point.

The Maple Leafs can retain Aberg’s rights temporarily by issuing him a qualifying offer this summer, but it’s hard to know if he will ever get another legitimate chance in the NHL.

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