NHL

With the start of the regular season now just days away, activity across the NHL picked up over the past few days.  Here’s a rundown of the biggest news of the past week.

Ducks Sign Two: There won’t be any in-season holdouts in Anaheim this year as the Ducks agreed to bridge deals with their two remaining restricted free agents.  First, they inked center Trevor Zegras to a three-year pact which carries a cap hit of $5.75MM.  He’s coming off a career-best year offensively with 65 points and is one of the young pillars up front for the Ducks.  Both sides get more time to evaluate with this deal to see if Zegras can become a top-end producer.  They took a similar approach with defenseman Jamie Drysdale, giving him a three-year deal with a $2.3MM AAV.  Drysdale missed most of last season after suffering a torn labrum but showed plenty of promise before that, making a part of their very strong young blueline corps.  Notably, the salary structure for both contracts is uniform, making it that their qualifying offers in 2026 will be the same as their cap hits.

Stepan Hangs Them Up: Veteran middleman Derek Stepan has decided to call it a career, announcing his retirement at the age of 33.  In his prime, he was a capable second center who also brought some defensive value to the table.  He had at least 44 points in each of his first eight NHL seasons, surpassing the 50-point mark in six of those.  That helped Stepan play in over NHL games between the regular season and the playoffs, the bulk of which came with the Rangers who drafted him in the second round back in 2008.

Three For Hartman: After inking Mats Zuccarello and Marcus Foligno to extensions last week, the Wild took care of their other prominent pending unrestricted free agent, signing forward Ryan Hartman to a three-year, $12MM extension.  The 29-year-old is entering his fifth season with Minnesota and has gone from more of a depth piece to a core part of their top six after putting up 65 points in 2021-22 and 37 more last year despite missing 23 games due to injuries.  Along the way, he has shown himself to be capable of playing down the middle, helping to fill a big need on the depth chart.  As long as he can produce at a second-line rate, this is a deal that should work out well for both sides.

Four For Kaliyev: Kings winger Arthur Kaliyev received a four-game suspension from the Department of Player Safety for his kneeing incident on Ducks forward Chase De Leo.  The ban covered the final two games of the preseason and the first two games of the regular season, meaning that the 22-year-old won’t be eligible to suit up for Los Angeles until October 17th.  Kaliyev was an effective secondary scorer last season, notching 28 points in 56 games.  Meanwhile, De Leo will miss roughly the next eight weeks with a knee injury and will begin the year on season-opening injured reserve.

One More Year: Still with Los Angeles, Kings head coach Todd McLellan was heading into the final year of his contract.  Teams don’t typically like to have their bench bosses in their ‘lame duck’ season so they worked out a one-year extension that keeps him under contract through 2024-25.  The veteran has been behind the bench for 290 games with Los Angeles with his team posting a 141-115-34 record.  However, the team hasn’t won a playoff series with him at the helm.  This extension allows for any possible distraction to go away but it stands to reason that with the summer they had, simply making the postseason is no longer the bare minimum so even with a new deal in hand, the pressure will be on McLellan this year.

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The preseason is underway so activity across the NHL should start to pick up in the near future.  There was some news of note before the puck dropped which is recapped in our key stories.

New Captains: Two of the eight teams that had been without a captain filled that vacancy over the past few days.  The Bruins promoted Brad Marchand to the role as expected, becoming the 27th captain in team history.  He’s set to enter his 15th season with the team and is the longest-tenured player in the organization following the retirement of Patrice Bergeron.  Meanwhile, Brayden Schenn was named the new captain in St. Louis, taking the place of Ryan O’Reilly who was traded before the deadline last season.  Schenn is heading into his seventh season with the Blues and is the 24th captain in club history.

Stamkos Not Happy: Speaking of captains, Lightning captain Steven Stamkos is entering the final year of his contract and is eligible for an extension.  However, he noted that there have yet to be discussions on that front and that he’s not particularly happy about being in this situation knowing how often Tampa Bay has extended its players early.  GM Julien BriseBois indicated he wants to see how this season plays out before deciding on Stamkos’ future with the club.  The 33-year-old has spent his entire 15-year career with the Lightning after being the first-overall pick in 2008 and he has fared quite well, notching over 500 goals in 1,003 games and has surpassed the point-per-game mark in six of the last seven seasons.

Canucks/Canadiens Swap: With Tanner Pearson being cleared to come off LTIR, Vancouver needed to trim some payroll.  They did just that, sending Pearson and a 2025 third-round pick to Montreal in exchange for goaltender Casey DeSmith.  The deal saves Vancouver $1.45MM in cap space for the upcoming season (more if you factor in the savings from their original projected backup going to the minors) while upgrading Thatcher Demko’s backup option.  Meanwhile, Montreal continues to stockpile draft picks and now has an extra selection in each of the first four rounds in 2025.  They will likely look to try to build up Pearson’s value during the season if he can stay healthy in the hope of flipping him closer to the trade deadline.

Fleury Undecided About Playing Future: Wild goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury is set to play his 20th NHL season in 2023-24.  Will it be his last year?  He hasn’t decided just yet, stating that he will play out the year and then assess his future.  The 38-year-old made 45 starts last season but is likely heading for a lighter workload with Filip Gustavsson emerging as a strong performer last year.  Fleury enters this season just 15 games shy of 1,000 for his career, a mark that only three other netminders have hit.  He’s also seven wins shy of passing Patrick Roy for second all-time in victories.  Both of those marks are definitely achievable this season and if it winds up being his final campaign, it’d be a nice way to cap his career.

Talks Not Going Well: This is the time when unsigned restricted free agents start to become more notable as most have signed by training camps.  There are four remaining league-wide, two of them in Anaheim – center Trevor Zegras and defenseman Jamie Drysdale.  It appears as if the sides are not close on new deals although it’s believed Zegras and Anaheim have settled on a three-year term, leaving just the money to haggle over.  Considering that Drysdale missed most of last season due to injury, he’s almost certainly heading for a bridge deal as well.  Cap space isn’t an issue for the Ducks as no team has more of it at the moment so that certainly isn’t a factor in talks.  There’s still time for both players to sign and be ready for the regular season which will be the next pressure point of discussions.

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With training camps now less than a week away, there was a bit of an uptick in activity around the NHL.  As always, we recap the biggest news in our key stories.

Third Time’s A Charm? Things didn’t go particularly well the first two times the NHL set up shop in Atlanta.  Despite that, the league appears to be open to the idea of giving that market another opportunity should they decide to expand beyond 32 teams.  Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly feels that the demographics in Atlanta have changed enough since the Thrashers left in 2011 and that a better-placed arena could give that market an opportunity to succeed the next time around.  Despite this, expansion isn’t believed to be at the top of the priority list for the league right now but when the time comes, it might be a familiar city that gets another chance.

Latest Round Of PTOs: As expected, there was another sizable batch of veteran players accepting training camp tryout offers in the hopes of eventually landing a guaranteed contract for the upcoming season.  Adam Erne will look to catch on with Edmonton while Zach Aston-Reese is one of many tryouts in Carolina.  The Ritchie brothers inked tryout agreements on the same day; Nick Ritchie is heading to St. Louis while Brett Ritchie will look to crack Florida’s roster.  Josh Bailey was linked to Ottawa earlier this summer and is indeed now taking part in their camp while defenseman Olli Juolevi is one of many players getting an opportunity with Arizona.  Dozens of PTOs have been signed around the league and there are still more to come.

Tatar To Colorado: It was a busy summer for Avalanche GM Chris MacFarland as he had already brought in five new forwards to his group.  Make that six now as Colorado signed winger Tomas Tatar to a one-year, $1.5MM deal.  It’s a considerable pay cut for the 32-year-old who made $4.5MM in each of the last two years and $5.3MM for the four before that.  Tatar is actually coming off a pretty good season in New Jersey, one that saw him record 20 goals and 28 assists although he struggled considerably in the playoffs, managing just a single point in 12 games.  Tatar adds to what should be an interesting battle on the left side in training camp with Gabriel Landeskog out for the regular season (but returning for the playoffs is a possibility).

Wright AHL-Eligible: It was looking like Kraken center Shane Wright was going to be facing another year of either playing in the NHL or returning to major junior.  However, that’s no longer the case as the NHL and OHL has granted Wright an exemption that allows him to suit up with AHL Coachella Valley this season if Seattle elects to send him down.  CHL players are typically ineligible to play in the minors unless they are 20 years old on or before December 31st and Wright doesn’t turn 20 until January 5th.  The other way to get out of that situation is to play four CHL seasons.  Wright wasn’t able to do so as the OHL didn’t play at all in the 2020-21 campaign.  However, they’ve basically decided that since he would have done so had the league taken to the ice, they’ll grant him the year of service time, enabling him to become AHL-eligible this season.  That’s an ideal outcome for one of Seattle’s top prospects.

Coaching Change In Columbus: Mike Babcock’s tenure as head coach in Columbus is already over before he stepped behind the bench for a single game.  Following a joint NHL/NHLPA investigation spurred by allegations that Babcock asked to view phones and/or photographs of several Blue Jackets players, it was mutually decided that Babcock would resign.  Babcock had been out of the league since 2019 and after what transpired here, it would be surprising to see him back behind an NHL bench.  Meanwhile, Columbus has looked to an internal candidate to take over, promoting associate coach Pascal Vincent to the top job while giving him a new two-year deal.  Vincent has seven years of NHL coaching experience between Columbus and Winnipeg but this will be his first time as the head coach at the top level.

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The first full week of September is in the books and with training camps fast approaching, there was some news of note around the hockey world which is recapped in our top stories.

More Tryouts: The month of September can be colloquially thought of as PTO season as unsigned players look to catch on before camps start.  Last week, several veterans inked tryout deals and several more did so over the past seven days.  Among those with recent NHL experience, Danton Heinen will look to have a second go-round with Boston while Ryan Dzingel will try to do the same with Arizona. Noah Gregor is hoping to catch on with Toronto, Saku Maenalanen is the latest to join Colorado’s camp, while Colin White will be heading to a very crowded forward battle in Pittsburgh.  Quite a few more tryouts are expected to be coming over the next week or two.

Late Moves For Tampa Bay: The Lightning thought they had filled a spot on their fourth line early in free agency when they signed winger Josh Archibald to a two-year deal.  However, after he informed the team that he no longer intends to play this season, Tampa Bay elected to terminate his contract.  They quickly found a replacement though, inking Tyler Motte to a one-year deal worth the same $800K that they were set to pay Archibald.  It could be argued that the moves work out to a net upgrade for the Lightning with Motte being a bit younger and having a slightly better track record of production.

Eight For Sanderson: The Senators haven’t shied away from extending their core players early.  They’ve elected to do so once more, signing defenseman Jake Sanderson to an eight-year, $64.4MM extension that will begin in the 2024-25 season.  The deal buys out Sanderson’s five remaining RFA years plus three seasons of UFA eligibility.  The 21-year-old had a strong rookie year last season, collecting 32 points in 77 games while logging nearly 22 minutes a night.  This deal will make Sanderson, the fifth-overall pick in 2020, Ottawa’s highest-paid defenseman as it checks in just ahead of Thomas Chabot.  Ottawa’s young core consisting of Sanderson, Chabot, Tim Stutzle, Brady Tkachuk, and Josh Norris, are all signed through at least the 2027-28 campaign.

Off-Ice Moves: After handing out extensions to Arizona’s coaching staff, it was GM Bill Armstrong’s turn to receive one as well as he inked an agreement that will keep him in charge of the Coyotes through the 2028-29 season.  Armstrong has been at the helm for four seasons now, embarking on a full-scale rebuild.  This deal means he’ll be the one to take them out of it down the road.  Meanwhile, Bruce Boudreau has a new job but not with an NHL team.  Instead, he has joined Niagara of the OHL as a Senior Advisor.  Boudreau ranks 21st all-time in NHL games coached and wins and it remains to be seen if he’ll one day get a chance to add to those numbers.  Lastly, after not being with a team last season, Doug Wilson is back in an NHL front office as he was hired by Pittsburgh as a Senior Advisor.  He spent over 25 years on San Jose’s management team and will now serve as a member of Kyle Dubas’ new-look front office.

Second Bridge For Frost: With Philadelphia’s cap situation, the only way they could afford to re-sign Morgan Frost was with another short-term bridge contract.  The two sides have now agreed on one as he signed a two-year, $4.2MM deal.  The 24-year-old had a career year last season, notching 19 goals and 27 assists in 81 games, providing quite a nice return on a one-year, $800K deal.  The move gives the Flyers a chance to evaluate if he’s indeed a long-term piece of the puzzle.  If he is, they’ll owe him a $2.4MM qualifying offer in 2025.

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