There will be teams that need to clear salary before the regular season gets underway next month. There aren’t many squads that have enough room to take on a contract but the Blackhawks have made it known that they are open to discussing such a move, relays Ben Pope of the Chicago-Sun Times. While Chicago clearly isn’t looking to win now, their impetus for doing such a move would be to pick up some other future assets along with the contract of the veteran player they’d be acquiring. Per CapFriendly, the team has roughly $7.5MM in cap room right now and while they’ll want to leave some wiggle room for injury recalls, they certainly will have enough flexibility left to make this type of trade.
More from the Central where St. Louis and Arizona will play the first-ever NHL game in Kansas tonight:
- The bad news for the Wild is that they’ll be without both defenseman Jon Merrill and winger Jordan Greenway when the regular season gets underway. However, as Michael Russo of The Athletic notes (subscription link), both players are expected back within the first five to ten games of the season. Merrill was injured in the opening game at the World Championship back in the spring while Greenway underwent offseason shoulder surgery with Russo noting that he recently had another procedure done as well. Neither player will be out long enough to be LTIR-eligible but Minnesota has enough cap space to not need the LTIR relief anyway.
- The Jets appear likely to carry eight defensemen on their roster to start the season, suggests Jeff Hamilton of the Winnipeg Free Press. With their six returning regulars from 2021-22, that leaves a couple of roster spots open. Ville Heinola and Dylan Samberg would appear to be the favorites for the final two slots but only if they’re going to be in the top six. That could have newcomer Kyle Capobianco and younger Leon Gawanke (who is now waiver-eligible) on the outside looking in, making them a pair of possible claim candidates in the coming weeks.