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Archives for July 2020

Brett Kulak, Jayce Hawryluk Confirm Positive COVID-19 Tests

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While the NHL hasn’t been making announcements on which players have tested positive for COVID-19, a handful of players have acknowledged that they have had the virus.  Two more have done so recently in Canadiens defenseman Brett Kulak and Senators center Jayce Hawryluk.

Following practice today, Kulak confirmed to reporters, including Sportsnet’s Eric Engels (Twitter links) that he was dealing with symptoms for a little more than a week after initially testing negative just prior to the start of camp.  Two positive tests quickly followed and he was only recently cleared to rejoin the team.  The 26-year-old is in the mix for a spot on Montreal’s third pairing for their series against Pittsburgh but after missing so much of camp, he might be on the outside looking in for next weekend’s start.

Meanwhile, Hawryluk was among those that tested positive back in March when the pandemic was just beginning.  He discussed what happened with Thomas Drance of The Athletic (subscription required) and wonders if he played through their last game (one in which he scored) with the virus.  Of the five Senators to test positive, the pending restricted free agent is the only one to publicly confirm his positive test.

Pacific Notes: Kraken Coach, Lennstrom, Hall, Chayka

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With Seattle revealing their team name on Thursday, the next big decision they have will be who becomes their inaugural head coach.  According to TSN’s Darren Dreger on the latest Insider Trading, the Kraken aren’t close to making a choice on that front and will wait until the conclusion of the upcoming playoffs at a minimum before doing so.  That will allow them to get a sense for any other candidates that may become available depending on how things go.  In the meantime, they have several veterans that they can do their due diligence on.  Dreger singled out Gerard Gallant who would be a logical choice given how he performed in a similar situation with Vegas in their inaugural season.  He mentions that Gallant is in the mix but considering how early in the process they still are, he’s far from an early contender.

More from the Pacific Division:

  • Earlier this week, the Oilers loaned defenseman Theodor Lennstrom to Frolunda but there was no word on whether or not it would be a full-season loan of a short-term one. GM Ken Holland confirmed to Postmedia’s Jim Matheson that it is indeed the latter and that the Swedish team is aware that Edmonton will want the 25-year-old back when the 2020-21 season is set to get underway.  Lennstrom is likely AHL-bound to start the season to get acclimated to the smaller North American rinks but could be a recall option at some point.
  • The recent meeting between Coyotes CEO Xavier Gutierrez and pending UFA winger Taylor Hall raised some eyebrows considering GM John Chayka wasn’t present. However, Kent Somers and Richard Morin of The Arizona Republic note that a low-ball offer was tendered to Hall at the meeting, suggesting that Gutierrez is running point on any negotiations at this juncture.  That would be an odd approach to take given that the GM has had little trouble getting their core players to agree to long-term extensions throughout his tenure in Arizona.
  • Even odder is that there are questions as to whether or not Chayka will be a part of Arizona’s 52-person roster in the bubble, reports Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman (Twitter link). While it’s ultimately expected he will be, the fact that it’s uncertain plus him being taken out of talks with Hall for the time being is something to certainly keep an eye on.

Brent Seabrook Won’t Return This Season

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The Blackhawks will be down at least one veteran defenseman for their Qualifying Round series against Edmonton as Brent Seabrook told reporters today, including Charlie Roumeliotis of NBC Sports Chicago (Twitter link) that he will not be part of the roster that reports to the bubble later this weekend.

The veteran has had a rough year, to put it lightly.  He struggled considerably to start the season as his playing time dipped to 18:09 per game, a career low while his offensive output plummeted to just three goals and an assist in 32 contests.  At that time, he was shut down for the rest of the season due to injury.  Since then, Seabrook has had surgery on both hips and his right shoulder.

He resumed skating recently in the hopes of being available for their series against the Oilers but there would have been some risk in asking him to come back quicker than originally anticipated.  Instead, Seabrook will use the rest of this offseason to get ready for the 2020-21 campaign.  With training camps for that being roughly three months away as things stand, he should be ready to go.  Considering he still has four years left on his contract after this season with a $6.875MM cap hit, Chicago will certainly be hoping that with the extended recovery time, Seabrook will be able to provide more than third pairing minutes moving forward.

Lias Andersson To Remain In SHL For The 2020-21 Season

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The Lias Andersson saga continues.  The Rangers youngster, who walked out on their farm team midseason to return to Sweden while demanding a trade, declined an invitation to rejoin the team for their Qualifying Round series.  It seemed like the invitation alone as an olive branch was a small step in the right direction in terms of trying to get him to return to North America but that doesn’t appear to be the case.  Instead, Andersson announced in a video on HV71’s Twitter page that he will remain there for the 2020-21 season.

It has been a rough couple of years for the seventh pick of the 2017 draft.  After holding his own with the Rangers and AHL Hartford as an 18-year-old, it looked as if he’d be an important part of their future.  However, his development has stagnated since then and he had a minor role with New York to start the year, averaging just 9:33 per night in 17 games before being sent to the Wolf Pack.  Things didn’t go much better there as he had just four goals and an assist in 13 games before leaving the team to go home in the hopes of getting a fresh start somewhere else.

He didn’t get the trade he was seeking though and instead, the two sides eventually settled on a loan agreement where he’d join HV71 to finish out the season.  He was much more productive there, collecting a dozen points in 15 games while seeing his playing time jump to 15:45 per night.  Understandably, both the SHL squad and Andersson were happy with that which prompted him to ask to be loaned out again, a request that New York has evidently granted.

While Andersson may be happy with this outcome, it certainly doesn’t help his chances of getting dealt in the NHL.  He’s under contract for next season already (the final year of his entry-level deal) which means he’ll count against the 50-contract limit and now that he has committed to staying there longer, the chances of the Rangers getting full value for his services certainly has dipped as a result.  At 21, Andersson still has some upside but he’ll be showcasing himself to other NHL teams overseas for a little while yet.

Minnesota Makes Three Roster Cuts

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With teams heading into the bubble this weekend, final cuts to get to the 31-player maximum will soon be on the horizon.  The Wild decided not to wait until the last minute to make their roster trims as they announced (Twitter link) that wingers Sam Anas and J.T. Brown plus defenseman Calen Addison are no longer participating in camp and their roster now sits at 31 players.

Brown is the most recognizable player on the list as he has 365 games of NHL experience over parts of seven seasons although this season was the first one since 2012-13 that he didn’t see any action at the top level.  Instead, the veteran played exclusively with AHL Iowa, collecting nine goals and 13 assists in 62 games.

Anas, meanwhile, was much more productive with Iowa.  He had 20 goals and 50 assists in 63 games which made him the team leader in scoring but also the AHL’s leader in assists and points.  Despite that, the 27-year-old didn’t get an opportunity with Minnesota during the regular season and won’t get a chance to boost his stock heading into October’s free agent market.

As for Addison, he was part of the midseason trade that saw Jason Zucker head to Pittsburgh.  The 20-year-old spent this season in junior with WHL Lethbridge, averaging just over a point per game in the process.  He was more of a longshot to see action this postseason but this camp gave him a chance work with the Wild’s coaching staff for the first time which should help his development.

Offseason Keys: Los Angeles Kings

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The offseason has arrived for at least seven teams that were not invited to take part in the Qualifying Round that’s slated to begin in early August.  With that in mind, our Offseason Keys series is underway for the teams that are on the outside looking in.  Next up is a look at Los Angeles.

Things didn’t go well for the Kings in 2018-19 so they made another coaching change before the start of this past season as they brought in veteran Todd McLellan to try to steer them in the right direction.  It didn’t happen.  While they managed to avoid finishing last (by a single point), they still had significant scoring problems and there are plenty of areas to try to improve on this offseason.  Here is an overview of what GM Rob Blake should be looking to accomplish.

Add Scoring Help

Given that they finished 30th in the league in scoring for the second straight season, this seems like a good place to start.  Los Angeles was hoping for their high-priced veterans to carry the load but it didn’t happen.  Anze Kopitar barely broke 20 goals, Dustin Brown’s output dipped for the second straight season following his career year in 2017-18, and Jeff Carter has tailed off considerably in recent years.  Ilya Kovalchuk was supposed to help in that regard but he didn’t even make it to midseason before his contract was terminated outright, leaving a $6.25MM dead cap charge on the books for next year.  Tyler Toffoli had a bit of a rebound season before being traded to Vancouver near the trade deadline.

Of their full-timers, their lone pleasant surprise up front was Alex Iafallo who built off of his sophomore campaign to post career numbers.  However, he also averaged nearly 19 minutes a night but in a perfect world, he’s more of a secondary option over a top liner.  His playing time was a microcosm of their situation up from though – there just weren’t really any other options for that spot.

That’s something that needs to change.  Yes, there are some promising prospects in the system and they’ll wind up with another one with the number two pick in October’s draft but none of their youngsters are ready for top six duty right away.  By the time they are, Kopitar will need a lighter workload.  Accordingly, they need to add a player or two that’s capable of helping out not only in the short term but a few years down the road as well.  Whether that comes via free agency or trade, that’s something Blake should be looking to bring in, even if he feels they’re not quite ready to push for a playoff spot right away.

Rebuild The Back End

It was only the 2017-18 season when the Kings were the stingiest team in hockey.  The goaltending was sharp and it had the benefit of playing in front of a deep defensive corps.  Today, only one player from their top four that season remains and that’s Drew Doughty.  Meanwhile, Jake Muzzin, Alec Martinez, and Derek Forbort have all been moved in trades for prospects and draft picks.

Not surprisingly, the defense corps that finished the season isn’t the most recognizable.  Joakim Ryan, Sean Walker, Matt Roy, Ben Hutton, and Kurtis MacDermid were the other blueliners to play at least 10 games for Los Angeles this year and while they all have shown enough to warrant a spot on other back ends around the league, they’re all suited for roles that are lower on the depth chart, not one that sees one of them partnering with Doughty on the top pairing.

The good news is that there is some help in the system – Tobias Bjornfot, Kale Clague, and Michael Anderson have all shown some promise in their limited NHL action this season.  Eventually, the Kings should get some help from that group.  The bad news is that they’re still a little while away from being NHL-ready.  There is a distinct need to add a capable veteran (if not more than one) to allow the youngsters to avoid being thrown to the wolves and to help stabilize the back end.  The emphasis should be adding someone on the left side, in particular.  Rebuilding or not, that’s still a need that should be filled.

Utilize Cap Room

Even with Kovalchuk’s dead money on the books, the Kings have a fair bit of money to work with as they sit nearly $21MM under next year’s cap with 16 players already under contracts.  There are no major players in need of a new contract so Los Angeles has some cap space to use.  Of course, they have several notable holes to fill with that money.

The cap space should have them in the mix for players like Taylor Hall, Alex Pietrangelo, or Torey Krug if they make it to the open market although with many teams likely looking to shed payroll over the coming months, Blake could opt to try to go that route as well.  Adding more quality prospects and draft picks is never a bad thing for a rebuilding team while the veterans they bring in would likely still represent an upgrade.  Better still, any player brought in via that route would basically be a bridge player to allow some of their prospects to stay in the minors and develop a little while longer (assuming there is hockey at the lower levels next season).

Cap space is going to be more valuable than ever this offseason (and likely for a year or two beyond as well).  Los Angeles has plenty of it which puts them in a good spot to take advantage of the more restricted market.  With several holes to fill on their roster, the timing couldn’t be much better.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Snapshots: Martinook, Toews, Tortorella, Khudobin

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The Carolina Hurricanes really don’t like the NHL’s Return to Play plan. After Jordan Martinook and the ‘Canes were one of just two teams to vote against the initial postseason format last month, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports that Martinook was also one of the two NHLPA representatives who voted against ratifying the Return to Play plan and CBA extension. Martinook has previously stated that he and his teammates felt that the expanded playoff structure was a disadvantage to teams who were safely in the postseason picture, but not within the top four in their conference. It is a fair opinion for Carolina to have; the team has the second-best record of qualifying round contenders and almost certainly would have made the playoffs. Their reward for those regular season efforts? A five-game series match-up with a New York Rangers team that was playing their best hockey down the stretch and has been a tough match-up for the Hurricanes all season. As a result, Martinook tried not once but twice to change the league’s plan, but to no avail. They will face the Rangers in just over a week’s time with a playoff berth on the line.

The other “no” vote against the Return to Play plan was reported to belong to Chicago Blackhawks representative Jonathan Toews. However, Toews has come out today and refuted that report. There is no doubt that Toews asked hard questions about health and safety protocols and gameplay logistics and made the case for why his peers should consider voting against the plan, but he tells Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun Times that at the end of the day he voted “yes”. In fact, he said that he always planned to vote yes but wanted to make sure that there was a thorough conversation before a decision was made. There is no word on who the mystery second “no” vote came from, but it was not the Blackhawks captain.

  • Columbus Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella might be re-thinking his teams approval of the expanded postseason plan. While a standard 16-team format would have excluded his team, which was in ninth in the Eastern Conference at the time of the league’s pause, their preparation for the knockout round is not going according to plan. Tortorella told NHL.com’s Craig Merz outright that he does not like what he has seen from his best players. “My concern is some of the people that we are going to need to make a difference for us to win a series, I don’t think they’re ready right now,” the Jack Adams finalist stated. “I don’t think they’re doing the things they need to do right now to get ready for that series… This isn’t getting ready for the regular season and then trying to find your game in 15 games during the regular season. This is a sprint… I don’t want us to fall into this trap of wading in. We need to be ready to go.”
  • Anton Khudobin and the Dallas Stars have some extra time to get ready for the postseason as they are one of the four top seeds in the West and will have four round robin games ahead of them before the real competition begins. Although Khudobin may only see action in the round robin and not in the Stars’ postseason series, as starter Ben Bishop will get the nod unless his play warrants a change, Khudobin’s value to Dallas cannot be understated. One of the best backups in the NHL, Khudobin recorded a .930 save percentage and 2.22 GAA in 30 games this season. While these numbers are outstanding, even better than Bishop’s, it doesn’t appear that Khudobin is looking to move on from Dallas to a greater role. He tells Matthew DeFranks of The Dallas Morning News that his preference is to remain with the Stars for a while longer. However, the impending UFA admits that he will let his agent work out the details and find the best opportunity. Khudobin is certainly comfortable and thriving in Texas, but the Stars’ limited cap space and the presences of Bishop and top prospect Jake Oettinger may mean that his current team cannot offer him top dollar. On the other hand, a potentially strong goalie market and Khudobin’s age, not to mention a flat salary cap, may mean that there won’t be the demand on the open market that Khudobin’s performance would normally command. This seems to be the case with another elite backup, Boston’s Jaroslav Halak, who recently signed a one-year extension for less guaranteed money despite another stellar season as the Bruins’ backup after replacing Khudobin himself. Perhaps Khudobin will have to settle for the same fate, especially if he wants to remain in Dallas.

Minor Transactions: 07/23/20

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As the NHL gets ready for their upcoming postseason, minor league clubs are preparing for next season. When some minor signings come in we’ll keep track of them right here.

  • Nick Boka and Luke Boka have signed with the Fort Wayne Komets for the 2020-21 season, getting a chance to show what they can do when on the same ice. The Michigan brothers took very different paths to professional hockey, with Nick attending the University of Michigan after being drafted by the Minnesota Wild in 2015 and Luke playing five seasons for the Windsor Spitfires of the OHL, captaining them the last two.
  • Steven Ruggiero has signed with the Adirondack Thunder, after spending last season in the Anaheim Ducks organization. The 23-year old defenseman was a sixth-round pick in 2015 but never signed with the Ducks after his college career ended, meaning that even though he was in their system on an AHL deal he was technically an unrestricted free agent. Ruggiero had nine points in 57 games for the Tulsa Oilers of the ECHL last season.
  • Those Oilers have grabbed a pair of players from Adrian College, signing Dean Balsamo and Joey Colatarci for the upcoming season. It’s not every day that a pair of teammates from Division III schools get a chance to play professional hockey, but these two each earned DIII All-American honors for 2019-20.
  • The Kalamazoo Wings have signed Raymond Brice out of Michigan Tech, where he served as captain during the 2019-20 season. Brice never could get his offense to translate to the college level, meaning professional hockey may serve as an even greater challenge.

Ivan Lodnia Loaned To KHL

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The Minnesota Wild have decided to loan prospect Ivan Lodnia to the KHL for the 2020-21 season, according to his agent Dan Milstein of Gold Star Hockey. Michael Russo of The Athletic confirms that Lodnia will play the entire season in the KHL with Dinamo Minsk, instead of returning to North America when the 2020-21 NHL training camps open.

Selected 85th overall in 2017, Lodnia has spent the years since playing in the OHL where he was the leading scorer for the Niagara IceDogs in 2019-20. The two-way winger scored 62 points in 41 games and will now have to try and take his game to the professional ranks. During a six-game try-out with the Iowa Wild in 2018 he failed to record a single point and now he’ll have to wait an entire season to get another chance in the AHL.

Lodnia, 20, signed his entry-level deal with Minnesota back in 2017 and saw it kick in for the 2019-20 season. He’ll burn the second year playing in the KHL, though technically the team could recall him at some point if they felt it necessary. If not, that means he’ll have just one year of North American pro hockey under his belt when he goes into negotiations as a restricted free agent in the summer of 2022, not exactly a position of leverage for the young forward.

Metropolitan Notes: Murray, Samsonov, Hamilton

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The Pittsburgh Penguins have a choice to make in net when they head into the 24-team playoff, deciding whether to use Matt Murray or Tristan Jarry as their starter. Though he admits it is the coach’s decision, Penguins GM Jim Rutherford told Josh Yohe of The Athletic that he believes Murray will be the choice after seeing how well the more experienced netminder performed in this week’s practices.

Murray, 26, is only a year older than Jarry but has the added benefit of two Stanley Cups and 48 playoff games under his belt. The 6’4″ netminder struggled mightily this season, however, posting an .899 save percentage. Jarry meanwhile put up a .921 and was selected to the All-Star game, but has never appeared in the postseason. The Penguins will start things off with a qualification round against the Montreal Canadiens.

  • There is another interesting goaltending situation to keep an eye on in the Metropolitan Division, and that’s what is happening in Washington. The Capitals still haven’t gotten a single practice out of young star netminder Ilya Samsonov, who has been “unfit to play” for the entire training camp so far. When asked, head coach Todd Reirden wouldn’t comment on whether Samsonov will be traveling with the team to Toronto in a few days as the Capitals enter the “bubble.” For now, Braden Holtby remains the default choice as starter for Washington despite his own struggles—to the tune of an .897 save percentage—this season.
  • After leaving practice yesterday, Dougie Hamilton was absent again for the Carolina Hurricanes this morning. The defenseman was in “visible discomfort” when leaving yesterday according to team reporter Michael Smith, who also notes that the Hurricanes are already missing Brett Pesce thanks to his shoulder surgery in March. While Pesce hasn’t been ruled out completely from participating in the playoffs, Hamilton was expected to be back to full strength after missing the last two months of the regular season. Given the league’s policy on not giving out injury information, there’s no way of telling what exactly happened to Hamilton or how long he’ll be out.

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