NHL

Topics in this edition of the PHR Mailbag include which of Seattle’s pending UFAs could be on the move, if some Chicago prospects could join the team this season, and more.  If your question doesn’t appear here, check back in our last two mailbag columns.

yeasties: The Kraken appear to be positioned well to be a deadline seller. Assuming they sputter out and become sellers, which of their pending UFAs do you think will be dealt and who will be kept and extended?

For those who aren’t too familiar with Seattle’s pending UFA list, it’s quite a big one, even after they moved Mason Marchment to Columbus on Friday before the roster freeze.  Up front, they have Jaden Schwartz, Jordan Eberle, and Eeli Tolvanen all set to hit the market in July.  They also have Jamie Oleksiak on the back end and since goaltender Matt Murray has been in the NHL all season, I’ll give him a mention here as well although I wouldn’t be shocked if he doesn’t get re-signed or traded by the early-March trade deadline.

Oleksiak is the one I’m most confident in saying will be moved.  His role on the depth chart has been reduced and it’s hard to imagine they’ll want to sign him to another multi-year deal around this price point.  On the other hand, teams want big defensemen with some snarl at the deadline and Oleksiak provides that.  Despite being in the midst of a down year, I expect they’ll get a strong market for his services.

Up front, I’d put Schwartz as the most likely to be dealt.  He has had some good moments when healthy (including this season) but he can’t stay healthy.  However, with salary retention, some contender will want him as a middle-six upgrade to bolster their offensive depth and maybe play on the power play.  On the flip side, I think Eberle stays.  Yes, he could go be a middle-six player somewhere but I think they’ll want to keep him around, assuming a reasonable extension could be worked out.

I could see Seattle taking a run at re-signing Tolvanen.  He isn’t having a great year so maybe they look to try to get him at a lower-market rate.  Failing that, he still has enough of a track record that there should be some teams that like him as more of a depth addition.

frozenaquatic: I hear a lot about prospect development with how bad the team I root for (the Rangers) is at it. I had heard that Tanner Glass and Jed Ortmeyer, two plugs, were in charge of “player development,” but saw some folks talking about how that just meant they were in charge of making sure prospects had proper housing and resources to financial management and things like that, and that they weren’t really coaches. I always hear the refrain that the “NHL isn’t a development league” in the sense that coaches aren’t expected to coddle young players (unless they’re in a full rebuild).

My question is: if a team has “bad player development,” is that more on the Department of Player Development, the scouts, the AHL coaches? Maybe even the skills coach? Let’s say, for instance, the Rangers wanted to get better at “player development” overall. Would that be an overhaul of the scouting department to look for different baseline skills in players? Or something else? I’m thinking of how Laf, Kakko, Kravtsov, Andersson, etc all panned out–is that just horrible scouting, terrible luck, or the mysterious player development?

In recent years, it feels like a lot of teams are adding Player Development coaches.  But most of the time, those are recently retired players.  It feels like these positions are created to give them a chance to see if a coaching position is something they might be interested in.  Meanwhile, they get to relay some pointers to the prospects and help them along.  From a starting point, that’s not a bad thing to have and it does allow those former players to slowly improve those coaching skills.  Ideally, you might want to have someone (or more) who can work on more specialized training for each player to maximize those efforts but Glass and Ortmeyer can certainly be part of a quality department.

As for where the blame might lie when it comes to a lack of proper player development, there’s plenty to go around.  The scouts may have misread the projectability of certain skills although I won’t critique them for the first two on that list as they were largely consensus picks at where they were selected.  Did the Player Development department work enough with the players?  I’d lump the skills coaches into that area in terms of coming up with the proper training regimens.  Then you have the coaching staffs at both the AHL and NHL levels.  Yes, the NHL is not a development league in theory but the reality is, a lot of development does happen at the top level.  Some of it also has to fall on the players.  Some train better than others over the offseason, some are more dedicated to the finer points of development.  I’m speaking generally here, not talking specifically about any of the players you listed.

There’s no simple fix or overhaul here.  Scouts can be evaluated based on their reports; did those players progress over time?  Keep the best ones and if there are some who haven’t been as strong, then you could look to make a change.  The same goes in the development department (more teams seem to be drifting toward adding more people rather than changing some) and with the coaching staffs although they have to balance winning and development at the same time.  In a perfect world, it’s probably a slow build over making a bunch of changes all at once.

Unclemike1526: Do you know when the KHL and SHL seasons end? Frondell will definitely be here after that and depending on whether the Hawks still have a shot at the Playoffs and could play more than 10 games and burn his 1st year of his ELC. Kantserov is not eligible for an ELC but hopefully comes over here and could help also. I doubt the Hawks will let Frondell play more than 10 games if they’re out of it entirely. They could use his size either on the wing or even at C. What do you think?

The KHL regular season ends on March 20th while the SHL ends on March 14th.  Also worth noting, last year, the KHL playoffs ended on May 21st and the SHL ended on May 1st.

Chicago has fallen off a bit since the callout for questions and are now hovering near the bottom of the league and don’t have Connor Bedard.  As things stand, I don’t think the playoffs are a realistic possibility.  However, there’s an outside shot that Anton Frondell could get in a game or two depending on how Djurgardens fares in the playoffs.  There probably won’t be more than ten games left by then so they’re not at risk of burning a year of his entry-level deal.

Roman Kantersov is actually eligible for an entry-level contract as he’s only 21.  It will just be a two-year pact instead of three.  But it might not matter anyway as Magnitogorsk is the top team in the league and likely heading for a long playoff run.  If they went out early enough, it’s possible they’d sign him and burn a year now.  They wouldn’t want to do that but that might be needed to convince him to sign, knowing he could exit the entry-level restrictions a year earlier.  I wouldn’t expect that to come into play but we’ll see what happens in the playoffs.

tucsontoro: Brian – we’re already hearing lots of chatter on who might be on the move. What do you consider the worst contracts in the league right now?

I don’t think the players on the worst contracts in the league are probably going to be on the move but let’s go over some of the bad ones.

Jonathan Huberdeau’s contract with Calgary has to be here.  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate the trade for the Flames at the time it was made.  Getting what we thought was still a top-line winger and a strong defenseman wasn’t a bad return for Matthew Tkachuk.  Of course, Huberdeau is being paid like his best year with Florida while producing about half of the points, making it a well-above-market deal.  There’s a temptation to put Elias Pettersson here on the first year of his new contract but let’s let the season play out and see how he fares as the undisputed top player in Vancouver now.

On the back end, Darnell Nurse is being paid as an elite two-way defender.  He hasn’t been that.  Offensively, he’s more of a third option with them needing to pay to bring in Jake Walman to pick up some of the secondary slack since Nurse wasn’t producing.  Defensively, elite is not the word I would use.  He’s a serviceable top-four defender, sure, but not a number one like he’s being paid as.  On the lower end of the scale, Ryan Graves started the season in the minors after clearing waivers and is now a sixth or seventh option on most nights.  He still has three years left at $4.5MM and even if the Penguins retained the maximum 50%, there still wouldn’t be a trade market for him.

Now, since you referenced this question after mentioning chatter about players who could be on the move, I wanted to think of some bad contracts that could be dealt.  One that comes to mind is Barclay Goodrow.  He’s on an expiring deal at $3.64MM and is a fourth liner.  However, he’s the type of gritty role player some teams will covet and if there’s one with a lot of cap space, I could see him moving.  I’m also wondering about Patrik Laine ($8.7MM, pending UFA) in Montreal.  Since they’ve gone and added Alexandre Texier and Phillip Danault, is there a spot for him when the team is fully healthy?  If not, it wouldn’t shock me to see them try to move him with half retention to give him a chance to play down the stretch and help his case in free agency.  The return would be minimal but after blowing through their remaining room to add Danault, clearing half of Laine’s deal would give them some extra flexibility.

Emoney123: What’s the next move for Danny Briere? Seems Martone, Nesbitt, Luchanko, Bump, Barkey, and Bjarnason are a few years away and with only their own #1 pick this year, how does Briere keep the Flyers in the playoff hunt? Seen this before with big crash and burn late in the second half of the season. Rick Tocchet for Coach of the Year if the Flyers make playoffs?

Right now, the next move is likely patience.  At the moment, Philadelphia is right in the thick of the playoff race, one that no one seems to be making a push to run away with.  It’s great that they’re in it right now but will they still be in the hunt at the Olympic break?  I think that’s going to be the decision point for a lot of teams as to whether to buy, sell, or largely stand pat and the Flyers should be one of those.

If I’m being honest, I’m not sold on them being a viable playoff threat.  A bunch of overtime games have kept them in the mix which is fine but not necessarily sustainable over the course of a full season.  Accordingly, my inclination is that they largely hold or sell a bit, depending on if they can get Christian Dvorak signed to a contract extension or not in the new year.

That said, you asked me about a playoff scenario so there are two buying scenarios I can think of.  One I’ve written about in an older mailbag column and that’s one that sees them buying low on someone who could be around beyond the season.  In other words, another Trevor Zegras type of move where you’re hoping a change of scenery gets them going while knowing that a futures payment is justifiable given that the player isn’t a rental.  That’s still on the table.

The other one is where they’re a soft buyer and basically tell teams that they’ll take a contract off their hands.  With double retention off the table now, other buyers will need to move some bodies out to make the money work for other trades.  This is a good spot for GM Daniel Briere to tell teams that they can facilitate one of those moves by taking an expiring contract back.  Ideally, the player is a forward with a bit of offensive upside.  Frankly, the Laine scenario I mentioned above feels like something worthwhile doing in this instance, flipping a minor leaguer or futures in return.  It’s something that doesn’t jeopardize the future and sends a message to the players that they’re not giving up.  It’s not the route I’d probably go but if they’re buying, I think it’s going to be low-cost acquisitions that don’t jeopardize the future.

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