The Seattle Kraken are “open for business” in regards to being a third-party broker for trade deadline deals or even a parachute for bad contracts, according to general manager Ron Francis. Francis spoke with Ryan S. Clark of The Athletic and was quite clear that he has already told every other GM in the league that they are willing to spend cap space and money to acquire other assets.
Interestingly enough, he also explained, among other things, that the team is planning on being aggressive again in free agency this summer. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet happened to include a note in today’s 32 Thoughts column that he sees John Klingberg as a good fit for Seattle in the offseason when the veteran defenseman hits unrestricted free agency.
- If there is a theme to the changes on Frank Seravalli’s trade targets list for Daily Faceoff, it’s young forwards. Filip Zadina, Alexandre Texier, and Kasperi Kapanen all find themselves among the additions, with various reasons for their inclusion. Zadina especially is an interesting one, as he jumps directly to No. 12 on the list of the most likely pieces dealt, despite being on a team that would traditionally be holding onto young assets. The 22-year-old simply hasn’t been successful enough at the NHL level to this point, scoring just 22 goals and 54 points in 138 career games.
- The Ottawa Senators have opened extension talks with Nick Paul, but David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period tweets that those discussions haven’t progressed very far. The Paul situation is an odd one, given the fact that an extension with Ottawa shouldn’t be that complicated for a player with a career-high of 20 points, and will certainly conjure memories for Senators fans of the situations Mark Stone, Kyle Turris, and Erik Karlsson faced before ultimately being traded out of town.
Another 2nd pair defenseman for what is going to be too much money for too many years
Not that this is super comment-worthy, but what seems to be not discussed by the “Insiders” is that for the Nick Paul situation, they keep insisting that this shouldn’t be a hard solve for GMDP and Mean Gene. After all, they have cap space-a-plenty, so what could be the holdup? There is a chance that Nick doesn’t want to stay there, that’s why. It’s one thing for a top-flight player to play hard-ball with an organization for what he and his agent feel should be a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. (F. Forsberg comes to mind, currently). But, maybe Nick would rather be somewhere else, and just not drag the dirty laundry out in public. It’s a possibility…
Frank Seravalli was outright refuted by CBJs about Texier last week, so it’s good to see him doubling down on the wrong side this week. Texier is going nowhere.