Author: Brian La Rose

Topics in this edition of the PHR Mailbag include a look around the Atlantic Division, the potential for the Flames to trade Nazem Kadri, and more.  If your question doesn’t appear here, check back in last weekend’s column while we’ll have one more mailbag from our last call for questions as well.

PyramidHeadcrab: Let’s do a mini Atlantic lightning round:

1. Buffalo is floundering at the bottom of the East again, and bafflingly looking at offloading another top pick. How short of a leash does Kevyn Adams and the rest of the front office have at this point?
2. Toronto sans Marner has been a clown show. How much of this is thanks to Stolarz regressing, and how much is due to broader roster management?
3. Who’s on the rise and who’s declining in Montreal?
4. Does Ottawa find the next gear and lock in a playoff spot?
5. What’s the timeline on Barkov and Tkachuk returning in Florida? And if they recover in time, do we see another Cup Final run despite the below-average season thus far?
6. Anyone else surprised at how Tampa continues to be competitive so consistently?
7. When does Boston “blow up the team”?
8. Detroit has fallen off a cliff in recent weeks–do they recover and push for a playoff spot, or extend the drought?

Let’s get right into it with some rapid-fire answers.

1) It looks like a pretty short leash with open speculation that the team is starting to talk about a potential change.  Whether that’s just promoting Jarmo Kekalainen when he’s able to return from a personal leave or going external needs to be seen.  But if ownership has decided that it’s time to make a change, they’re better off making it instead of dragging this out any longer.

2) It seems pretty clear to me that Anthony Stolarz was trying to play through something and the fact his return timeline keeps getting pushed back tells me it was something pretty significant.  But yes, poor goaltending at the start of the season hurt them.  But quietly, they’re scoring at a slightly higher rate than last year (3.3 goals per game versus 3.26 last season) and Joseph Woll – when healthy – gave them good enough goaltending to get back into the mix.  Some of their moves this summer haven’t panned out which isn’t great but they’re in better shape than it might seem at first glance.

3) I’ve been really impressed by Oliver Kapanen this season.  On the bubble to make the roster out of training camp, he has come in and exceeded expectations to the point of being tied for the lead in rookie goals.  That hasn’t solved the second-line center problem but it’s bought them time.  He and Ivan Demidov have shown some promising chemistry early on.  On the decline is their goaltending.  A decent tandem last season, Sam Montembeault and Jakub Dobes (despite a 6-0 start) have fallen off the proverbial cliff.  It’s impressive that the Canadiens are still right in the thick of it in spite of their goaltending.

4) It’s surprising that Ottawa hasn’t picked it up since Brady Tkachuk’s return although they’re still a good week away from probably being in a Wild Card spot.  I had them as a playoff team going into the season and I still think they do get there.  Linus Ullmark has been a little better lately but if he can even get close to the form he’s capable of being, they should be fine.

5) Aleksander Barkov is done for the regular season with the team eventually needing to make a call on if he could be ready late in the playoffs or if he lands on season-ending LTIR.  Matthew Tkachuk has been skating for a couple of weeks now but there’s no firm timeline for a return beyond that he should be good to go in the Olympics.  I don’t want to write them off entirely but with the injuries they have and the fatigue of two long playoff runs, them getting back there again this season would surprise me.

6) The fact that Tampa Bay is consistently strong isn’t too shocking given their core talent and coach (more on him shortly).  That they’re this good this year with a long list of injuries is particularly impressive though.

7) Considering the Bruins are exceeding expectations, I don’t think they’d be looking at blowing things up.  If anything, it wouldn’t surprise me if GM Don Sweeney sees this as evidence that his approach to the summer was correct and they’re on the right track.  That isn’t to say that pending UFAs like Viktor Arvidsson and Andrew Peeke won’t be moved if they’re out of contention in early March but any subtraction would be more limited compared to last season.

8) I think the drought gets extended (and I say this as they’re in a playoff spot).  I liked the John Gibson pickup but he hasn’t panned out as planned as goaltending remains a big sore spot.  The offense has been improved so far but it wouldn’t shock me to see that regress as the season goes on.  I could easily be wrong with how tight the division is but I don’t think this group is quite good enough to really make a run.

Schwa: NYR plans with the Fox injury? How would you play rank the following scenarios in terms of likeliness…

– Let Morrow take the PP1 and hope internal options will get by.

– Drury gets aggressive and mortgages the future to try and save another season stuck in the middle.

– Long-term focused move – maybe something like trading for Mintyukov. Could you see the Ducks being interested in Othmann plus a piece?

Also, a long-term focused idea… could you see Drury trying to move Panarin early – either for someone more long-term focused or for picks and see what Perreault can do?

We know the Rangers are looking to see if there are any affordable options to bolster their firepower on the back end.  Of course, with them not having much in the way of non-LTIR cap room available (when everyone is healthy), their options are pretty limited so I’m not sure they’ll have a ton of success there.  They’ve tried option one a bit already without a lot of success.  I think option three (long-term focused) is the likelier of the remaining two as with the struggles they’ve had at times, it’s hard to see GM Chris Drury think that this is the time to push in some trade chips.

With Pavel Mintyukov’s situation, I think back to a former Ranger in Nils Lundkvist.  A youngster with some perceived potential that consistently seems to be on the borderline on the depth chart although Mintyukov has still been in the lineup more regularly than Lundkvist was in New York.  The return for Lundkvist was a first-round pick and a fourth-round selection.  Yes, Brennan Othmann was a first-round pick but I don’t think he holds that type of value now.  He’d be more of the secondary inclusion at this point and that’s a price the Rangers don’t need to be paying.

As for the potential of moving Artemi Panarin early, it depends on the standings.  If New York is in the thick of the playoff hunt, it’s harder to see them moving him and punting on the season.  But if they slide a little further in the standings and the best-case scenario becomes squeaking into a Wild Card spot, then yes, I do think Drury will at least investigate the options.  If Panarin isn’t willing to take a team-friendly extension (which appears to be what the Rangers are offering), then it would make sense to move him earlier with retention and maximize a trade return with a future asset (either a top pick or strong prospect) coming their way.  It’s too early to make that call but if they keep underachieving, I do think that will be on the table.

@RobG64: Will Kadri get traded?

I know the question doesn’t say should but I’m going to comment on that first.  He should be moved.  The worst thing that happened to Calgary last season was Dustin Wolf dragging them so close to a playoff spot that the Flames think they’re close.  I know they’ve been a bit better as of late but they’re not close to a playoff spot and further away from contending.  Nazem Kadri is 35 years old and isn’t going to be part of the core group (or at least as impactful) by the time they get to that next level.  So, from a logic standpoint, he absolutely should be moved.

But you asked will he be moved.  That, I’m not so sure about.  As long as management in Calgary believes that a playoff berth is reasonably within reach, they’re probably going to want to keep him as making the postseason would be easier with him than without.  On the other hand, their hand is going to get forced sooner or later with pending UFA defenseman Rasmus Andersson as they won’t want to risk losing him for nothing on the open market.  (Or at least they shouldn’t want that.)  So maybe when Andersson goes, they reassess on Kadri.

If I’m handicapping it, I wouldn’t go higher than a 60% chance that Kadri gets moved.  The Flames should get several substantial offers for his services in a market that doesn’t have many sellers and has a lot of buyers looking for centers.  The situation is there for them to get a premium return but I don’t sense their willingness to take it is as it as it probably should be.

FeeltheThunder: Do you think Jon Cooper should be a major contender for the Jack Adams Award this season? Why he hasn’t won it in the past is borderline asinine. He’s taken a Tampa team that surprisingly stumbled out of the gate in early October to start the season and was at the bottom of the Eastern Conference and then by late October changed gears. They go on a win streak and continued it through the majority of November going 11-3 and that is in spite of countless injuries to key players during it. Much more, Tampa’s depth has proven to be significant as this looks like the deepest they’ve been in a few years. What do you think of Cooper’s chances?

While the Lightning have been perhaps a bit streakier than they’d like this season, on the whole, it’s hard not to be impressed.  Despite a litany of injuries (many of which have been to their top players), they have been at or near the top of the Atlantic Division.  If you’d have said to me that they’d be there despite having six of their top seven scorers missing time along with Andrei Vasilevskiy, I’d have had a hard time believing that.  Should he be a contender as things stand?  Absolutely.

Will he be one?  I’m not as confident in saying that.  A lot of years, voters have leaned toward the coach of a team that has taken a big jump in the standings and really exceeded expectations.  That’s not Tampa Bay.  They’re a steady contender which is a big compliment to Cooper and the job he’s done but doesn’t necessarily earn him much support in a one-year award.

Off-hand, there are a couple of teams that fit the usual criteria of being a big improver and surprising in the standings.  One is in the division in Boston’s Marco Sturm.  Few had them as a playoff team and they’re right up there with the Lightning.  Meanwhile, there was an expectation that Anaheim would be better but they’ve been atop the Pacific a lot early on this season which should push some support to Joel Quenneville.  There’s lots of time for the potential contenders to change but as of today, Cooper’s streak likely continues.

vincent k. mcmahon: Does Jordan Binnington eventually get moved to the Oilers (with all the rumors surrounding a potential trade) or barring a huge turnaround he doesn’t get moved?

Assuming he were to be traded, would the return be S. Skinner and picks to St. Louis?

One of the great things with the mailbags is that we get enough questions to break them into multiple columns.  The challenge is picking which ones are safe to push back.  It often works out well but sometimes, well, this happens and kills the question before I have a chance to really answer it.

Clearly, the answer is now a trade to Edmonton isn’t happening.  Honestly, I don’t think it would have anyway, just because of Binnington’s $6MM AAV.  Yes, it’s only $625K higher than Tristan Jarry’s but the hoops the Oilers are jumping through money-wise to stay cap-compliant are significant as it is with three players on LTIR.  That small difference in cap charge might have been enough for them to need to move another player or two out to create the savings to absorb Binnington’s extra cost.

I don’t get the sense that there’s a great trade market out there for Binnington at the moment.  Yes, there are teams looking for goaltending help but right now, how much of a help would he be?  With a save percentage of just .869, he’s already near the bottom of the league so teams aren’t looking at him and thinking he’s a sure-fire upgrade.  They can hope he could be but fitting that money in plus whatever the acquisition cost is likely going to be too much grief for another team to justify right now.

Photo courtesy of David Gonzales-USA TODAY Sports.