PHR’s Josh Erickson held his weekly live chat today at 2:00 pm Central. You can use this link to view the transcript.
Rangers Expected To Sign Madison Bowey To PTO
Rick Dhaliwal of The Athletic reports the New York Rangers have signed defenseman Madison Bowey to a professional tryout agreement. However, no confirmation has come from the team at the time of writing.
Bowey spent the first eight years of his professional career in North America before heading for the Kontinental Hockey League last season. He was drafted with the 53rd overall pick of the 2013 NHL Draft by the Washington Capitals and joined their AHL affiliate, the Hershey Bears, three years later.
He quickly demonstrated his talents as a two-way defenseman in the NHL as he posted four goals and 29 points in 70 games during his rookie season with a +22 rating. He went on to tally six assists through 21 postseason games that year as he helped the Bears to the Calder Cup finals before losing to the Lake Erie Monsters in a sweep. Bowey quickly became the top defensive prospect in the Capitals’ pipeline and was projected to become a top-four fixture on the blue line.
Injuries limited his availability the following season as he only appeared in 34 games for Hershey. He did not make Washington’s opening night roster the following season but was recalled rather quickly when defenseman Matt Niskanen went down with an injury early in the season. Bowey suited up in 51 games for the Capitals in the 2017-18 scoring 12 assists in total. The 2018-19 season did not do much to inspire Washington any further after Bowey scored one goal and six points in 33 games to start the year and the team included him in a trade package to the Detroit Red Wings for Nick Jensen.
The most successful season of his career came in Detroit during the 2019-20 NHL season as he scored three goals and 17 points in 53 games which was good for second on the team in scoring amongst a weak Red Wings’ blue line. Detroit decided not to extend a qualifying offer to Bowey that summer and he surprisingly went unsigned throughout the summer which led to a PTO with the AHL’s San Diego Gulls.
Bowey spent the next three years bouncing from the Chicago Blackhawks, Vancouver Canucks, and Montreal Canadiens organization before eventually trying his luck overseas. His lone KHL season was split between three organizations with Bowey scoring four goals and 14 points collectively.
He has an outside chance of cracking New York’s opening roster, to say the least, with other players already firmly cemented on the blue line. There may be an opening on the bottom-pairing but the Rangers will likely look to one of their prospects to fill the void rather than Bowey. Even if he does perform well at camp his ceiling will be landing a two-way contract and should see most of his playing time at the AHL level.
2024-25 Season Key Dates
September 18
Opening day of training camps
September 21
First day of preseason play
October 1
NHL Board of Governors meeting
October 4 – October 5
2024 NHL Global Series: Sabres vs. Devils (O2 Arena, Prague, Czechia) – first regular season contests
October 5
Last day of preseason play
October 7
Deadline for teams to submit opening-day rosters (4 p.m. CT)
October 8
Opening night of regular season
November 1 – November 2
2024 NHL Global Series: Stars vs. Panthers (Nokia Arena, Tampere, Finland)
December 1
Signing deadline for restricted free agents (4 p.m. CT)
December 9 – December 10
NHL Board of Governors Meeting
December 20 – December 27
Holiday roster freeze in effect.
“For all players on an NHL active roster, injured reserve, or with non-roster and injured non-roster status as of 11:59 p.m. (local time) Dec. 19, a roster freeze shall apply through 12:01 a.m. (local time) Dec. 28, with respect to waivers, trades and loans, subject to the exceptions provided for in CBA Article 16.5 (d).”
December 24 – December 26
Holiday break (no scheduled practices – dressing rooms closed)
December 31
NHL Winter Classic: Blues at Blackhawks (Wrigley Field, Chicago)
February 10 – February 21
Season pauses for NHL 4 Nations Face-Off. The tournament runs from Feb. 12 through Feb. 20.
March 7
2025 NHL Trade Deadline (2 p.m. CT)
April 17
Last day of regular season
April 19
Stanley Cup Playoffs begin
June 23
Last possible day of Stanley Cup Final
James Van Riemsdyk Expected To Settle For PTO
With just one week to go until most teams open their training camps, veteran James van Riemsdyk is expected to settle for a professional tryout before attempting to land a guaranteed contract for 2024-25, Chris Johnston of The Athletic and TSN reports.
JVR may not have cracked our list of Top 50 Unrestricted Free Agents this offseason, but he is the cream of the crop still left without a contract. The 35-year-old led all unsigned UFAs in points per game last season with 0.54, posting 11 goals and 38 points in 71 games during his lone year as a Bruin.
He averaged a relatively meager 13:30 per game, and expecting him to repeat that level of production in a middle-six role is a relatively safe bet. He shot 7.7% last year, over four points under his career average, and regression back to the mean there should help negate any age-related decline that may be in store.
Multiple teams are still showing interest in van Riemsdyk’s services, per Johnston, but it appears all of them want to see how JVR does on a camp tryout before offering him a one-way deal. The New Jersey native is entering his 16th NHL season, amassing 311 goals, 318 assists and 629 points in 1,011 career games with the Bruins, Flyers, and Maple Leafs.
He’s hit the 20-goal mark seven times in his career, although he’s done so just once since 2020. He’s stayed relatively healthy, only missing 11 games last season and playing in all 82 three years ago with Philadelphia.
Avalanche Sign Pierre-Édouard Bellemare To PTO
3:51 PM: The Avalanche have confirmed the professional tryout agreement with Bellemare per a team announcement.
10:21 AM: The Avalanche and center Pierre-Édouard Bellemare are in agreement on a professional tryout, per Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. The French veteran will try to land a guaranteed deal during training camp for his second stint in Colorado.
Bellemare told French media last month that he intended to continue his NHL career this season and was training with Skellefteå AIK of the Swedish Hockey League while waiting for an offer to come to fruition. The 39-year-old has served as a capable bottom-six defensive pivot in the NHL for a decade but is coming off a difficult 2023-24 season that saw him fall out of an everyday role.
A UFA last summer after two seasons in Tampa Bay, Bellemare signed a league minimum one-way pact with the Kraken roughly a week into free agency. But a leg injury cost him over a month and a half from late December to mid-February.
Even when healthy, he was a healthy scratch for over a quarter of the season and only got into 40 games on the year. His offense was roughly in line with his limited career averages, posting four goals and seven points, but he averaged a career-low 9:50 of ice time per game.
He won 53.5% of his draws, though, and did have a positive possession impact in his limited role with a 54.9 CF% and 57.4 xGF% while having 60.3% of his even-strength zone starts come in the defensive end.
Bellemare’s defensive impact is more cerebral than physical, especially in recent seasons – he had only 20 hits and 22 blocks for Seattle last year, both career-lows. But he has been extremely solid in the faceoff dot after a rough few years in that regard to begin his NHL career with the Flyers. Even though he’ll be 40 by season’s end, he’s still a perfectly capable fourth-line center, even if his limited offense means he may not be an 82-game option in an increasingly scoring-oriented league.
The Avs will hope he can prove that in camp. They’re familiar with his game – he scored 18 goals, 15 assists and 33 points with a +8 rating in 122 games there across the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons while averaging 12:31 per contest.
If his PTO turns into a contract, he’d be competing for a fourth-line center role in Colorado that’s up for grabs. Chris Wagner is currently projected to fill the role after getting limited reps near the end of last season, playing double-digit games in an NHL campaign for the first time since 2020-21. 22-year-old Jean-Luc Foudy could also make an outside run for the role after playing 13 games for the Avs over the last two seasons, and there could be some other roster shuffling if 2023 first-round pick Calum Ritchie lands a spot on the opening night roster.
But Bellemare has far more experience in that role than any of them, with exactly 700 NHL games under his belt. Even if he ends up splitting time in the role with Foudy, Wagner, or others, he projects as a well-rounded upgrade in limited usage.
Utah Signs Kailer Yamamoto To PTO
Kailer Yamamoto has found a home, at least for training camp. The unrestricted free-agent winger has inked a professional tryout with Utah, the team announced today.
Yamamoto, 26 later this month, was drafted 22nd overall by the Oilers in 2017. The 5’8″, 152-lb forward played spot duty in Edmonton in his first two post-draft seasons, mainly sticking in juniors with the Western Hockey League’s Spokane Chiefs and in the minors with the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors.
He cemented himself as a full-time NHLer after a mid-season recall in 2019-20, closing the COVID-truncated season with 26 points (11 G, 15 A) in 27 games while fitting in on a line with star forwards Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. But during the rest of his time in Edmonton, he couldn’t sniff the near point-per-game rate he flashed in his first real NHL chance.
Yamamoto hit 20 goals once, adding 21 assists for 41 points in 81 games during a career-best showing in 2021-22, but otherwise was a perfectly average middle-six scoring presence with average possession numbers. That career-best year landed him a two-year, $6.2MM contract in restricted free agency the following summer, but he regressed to 25 points (10 G, 15 A) in 58 games the following season.
The Oilers had seen enough, trading him to the Red Wings the following summer. Detroit promptly bought out the last year of his $3.1MM cap hit deal, making him an unrestricted free agent.
Yamamoto took the opportunity to return to his native Washington, inking a one-year, $1.5MM pact with the Kraken for last season. Unfortunately for both sides, it was a failed reclamation project.
The Spokane-born winger slipped to a fourth-line role, posting just eight goals and eight assists for 16 points in 59 contests with a -9 rating and averaging a career-low 11:59 per contest. A frequent healthy scratch, he was non-tendered in June and became a UFA for the second straight summer.
Without any guaranteed offers, he’ll look to land his next NHL contract in Utah. The club has plenty of cap space to sign him to a deal – $9.92MM, per PuckPedia.
But they have a full roster, especially on offense. With 14 forward spots accounted for, competition will be stiff for Yamamoto to land a one-way deal or a spot on the opening night roster. He’d need to unseat someone like Michael Carcone, who was one of the best depth shooters in the league last season with 21 goals in 74 games while averaging 11:16 per night, or 22-year-old winger Josh Doan, who finished last year with nine points in 11 games in his first NHL shot with the Coyotes.
That makes a two-way deal most likely for Yamamoto if he sticks within the Utah organization following his PTO. He’d need to clear waivers to be assigned to their AHL affiliate, the Tucson Roadrunners. In that case, it would be Yamamoto’s first minor-league action in five years.
Maple Leafs Sign Max Pacioretty To PTO
The Maple Leafs have signed unrestricted free agent winger Max Pacioretty to a professional tryout, the team announced Wednesday.
It’s far from unexpected. David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reported the Leafs were in discussions to sign Pacioretty late last month, and Darren Dreger of TSN said yesterday that coming to an agreement with Pacioretty was one of Toronto’s top priorities after resolving a stalemate with restricted free agent forward Nicholas Robertson.
Most expected Pacioretty’s eventual agreement with the Leafs to be a guaranteed contract instead of a PTO, but with Toronto tight to the salary cap, it’ll take some time to work out – likely into training camp. Pacioretty inking a PTO likely indicates he has a deal in place that will be signed once the Maple Leafs have the financial flexibility to do, a sentiment echoed by Chris Johnston of The Athletic and TSN. His agent, Octagon’s Allan Walsh, confirms this.
Pacioretty, 36 in November, will compete to land a job in the Leafs’ top nine as a depth scorer with loads of NHL experience – 902 games, to be exact. After recovering from a pair of Achilles tendon tears, Pacioretty struggled to reclaim his pre-injury form with just four goals in 47 games after working his way back to a regular NHL role with the Capitals last season.
But the 2007 first-round pick of the Canadiens is no stranger to bouncing back from serious injuries. Pacioretty won the Masterton Trophy in 2012 with Montreal, emerging as a top-line scoring threat that year after a C4 vertebrae fracture and Grade 2 concussion sustained on a hit from then-Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chára the year prior nearly ended his career.
Even as the dreaded aging curve declines his overall effectiveness, there’s a reasonable expectation for him to return to at least being a double-digit goal contributor in Toronto if he stays healthy. The Connecticut native shot just 4.2% last season, the second-worst in the league among forwards with at least 90 shots on goal. That’s an incredulous stat from a six-time 30-goal scorer with a career average shooting percentage north of 11%.
Given his age, Pacioretty is eligible to sign a bonus-laden 35+ contract. That will allow the Maple Leafs to keep his initial cap hit low, likely the league minimum $775K, while allowing him to earn more cash if he stays healthy and becomes a regular contributor. Any performance bonuses he earns that Toronto can’t fit under the cap will be applied to next season’s books as a bonus overage penalty.
Pacioretty is likely set to fill the role that Robertson did last season. After inking a one-year, $875K deal yesterday, Robertson is still on the trade block following his late June request. If the Leafs find a trade partner before opening night, Pacioretty and Bobby McMann will likely compete for left-wing duties on the second line with John Tavares and William Nylander, with the other dropping to third-line minutes.
Pacioretty has 330 goals and 668 points over his 16-year career, averaging 30 goals and 61 points per 82 games. Those are high benchmarks for an aging veteran who’s played just 91 games over the past three seasons, but a healthy season could at least result in ’Patches’ hovering around the 15-goal, 30-point territory.
League Notes: Deferred Compensation, Expansion, LTIR, Neck Guards, And More
NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly sat with reporters yesterday as part of the NHL’s ongoing media tour in Vegas, including Michael Russo of The Athletic, answering various administrative-type questions.
Given its usage in a pair of max-term extensions handed out by the Hurricanes this summer, deferred compensation was a popular topic of discussion. It’s likely to be a topic of discussion during upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement talks due to a “long-term big-picture fear” of teams being able to use deferred compensation for cap circumvention purposes, Daly said. But in the interim, it’s not a notable concern because of specific interpretations of the CBA the league shared with the Hurricanes and the NHLPA earlier this summer, ones he thinks “will continue to be binding until we renegotiate over it.”
Daly admitted deferred compensation, in general, isn’t something the league is in favor of, saying, “It throws out of whack some of the other checks and balances we have in the CBA, which forces interpretations in terms of how we allow it and what’s permissible and what’s not permissible.” He continued, saying, “The original deferred-comp rules were developed in a non-cap world as opposed to in the cap world, so they kind of were inherited, and so they probably need adjustment on some basis going forward.”
There’s plenty more from Daly and Russo:
- When asked about expansion, Daly continued the NHL’s recent public position that the expansion process isn’t active. He did, however, hint that expansion south of the border will be a priority when talks do start up again in earnest. “We’re at 22 U.S. markets when the other professional sports leagues are basically at 30, 31 markets,” Daly said. “So that means there’s market availability, which I think helps.” Daly also said the league doesn’t have an “imminent” concern about talent dilution with a growing base of teams.
- Daly said that most of the league’s general managers want the league to consider making “some kind of adjustment” to teams utilizing long-term injured reserve to carry playoff rosters that come in well above the regular-season salary cap. “Some of the [ways to address it] that have been kind of thrown around in the media wouldn’t necessarily be fair or the best way to approach it, I think, because of the way we do accrual accounting. So you can pick up an expensive contract at the end of its term and your cap only gets charged a certain amount. But all of a sudden if that $1MM, say, you assume becomes $5MM on Game 1 of the playoffs and you can’t play that player as a result, I’m not sure that’s a fair result because teams complied within the rules.“
- Daly also hopes that neck guards will become mandatory in the NHL “on some basis” soon, following the lead of other North American junior and minor leagues in the wake of former NHLer Adam Johnson’s death from a skate laceration to the neck while playing in England last year. He said the league had already proposed a mandatory rule not approved by the NHLPA. Still, he added the league “clearly understand[s] where the union is coming from and some of the difficulties they have with their constituents.”
- The league has yet to sign off on the final documents confirming their players’ participation in the 2026 Winter Olympics but expects to do so during the Global Series games between the Devils and the Sabres in Czechia next month. “Certainly, from the NHL’s perspective, I don’t see any real gating issues from finalizing those documents,” Daly said.
Flames Promote Kerry Huffman To Director Of Hockey Strategy
The Calgary Flames are still making the final tweaks to their staff, including promoting NHL veteran Kerry Huffman to the position of Director Of Hockey Strategy, per Tony Androckitis of TheAHL.com. Androckitis adds that Huffman will also continue as a pro scout for Calgary – a role he took on last season.
Huffman has deep roots in North American pros, leading a career that’s taken him through a playing career, coaching career, and now a scouting career. It all kicked off when Huffman was selected 20th-overall in the 1986 NHL Draft by the Philadelphia Flyers, following a stout season with the OHL’s Guelph Storm. He’d make his AHL and NHL debuts in the following season, though 1987-88 marked his formal rookie season, with Huffman managing 23 points in 52 games. That performance was enough to settle Huffman into a second-pairing role that he’d continue in through 1992. He built a strong reputation as a stout, two-way defender, capable of joining the offense or throwing around the body – factors that made him a core piece of the infamous trade that sent Eric Lindros to Philadelphia, and Huffman, Peter Forsberg, Mike Ricci, Ron Hextall, and more to the Quebec Nordiques.
Huffman’s reliability continued through two seasons in Quebec, though he’d go on to play parts of three seasons with the Ottawa Senators – and make a four-game reunion in Philadelphia – before finishing his career with three seasons in the IHL. In total, he played through 10 NHL seasons and 401 games, recording 145 points and 361 penalty minutes.
Huffman retired in 1999, marking an end to his formal hockey involvement until he began working as an NHLPA certified player agent in 2012, and coaching AAA youth hockey in 2014. That quickly evolved. He was named an assistant coach and Director of Hockey Operations for the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Knights in 2015, and made a move to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms’ bench in 2016. He supported the Phantoms through five fruitful years- including multiple 100-point seasons – before making yet another career change in 2021, when he joined the Pittsburgh Penguins as a pro scout. He was promoted to Pittsburgh’s Director Of Professional Scouting in 2022, and moved to Calgary in 2023 – where he’ll now continue to take on new roles.
As pointed out by Androckitis, Huffman has been heavily involved in his team’s scouting and analytical departments, continuing to build on the stout hockey knowledge he flexed as a player. He’ll now get a chance to flex that knowledge, as Calgary becomes the fourth team to employ a Director Of Hockey Strategy – joining the Dallas Stars (Steve Greeley), Buffalo Sabres (Sam Ventura), and Seattle Kraken (Alexandra Mandrycky).
International Notes: Nogier, Masin, Kallionkieli
After some notable international signings earlier today, there’s more to cover. One is former Jets defenseman Nelson Nogier, who’s sticking in Europe for the third straight season after signing a one-year deal with Germany’s Straubing Tigers yesterday.
Nogier, 28, was a fourth-round pick of Winnipeg in 2014. He logged brief action with the Jets in the 2016-17 and 2018-19 campaigns, amounting to 11 total games of NHL experience with no points, a -1 rating and 5 PIMs. The 6’3″, 207-lb right-shot defenseman spent most of his time with the AHL’s Manitoba Moose, where he posted 41 points in 242 games across six seasons with the organization.
After being traded to the Kings in a minor swap late in 2021-22, Nogier posted four points in 13 games for their AHL affiliate, the Ontario Reign, before reaching unrestricted free agency that summer. He immediately headed overseas, heading to Kazakhstan with Barys Astana of the Kontinental Hockey League. That’s where he spent the last two seasons, amassing 20 points and a -14 rating in 117 appearances. Late in the European transfer period, with regular seasons about to get underway, he’ll look to make an impact in Straubing alongside former NHLers Justin Braun, Taylor Leier, and others.
Some more overseas moves:
- Former Lightning second-round pick Dominik Masin has signed in his native Czechia for the first time in his professional career, inking a three-year deal with HC Sparta Prague. Masin, now 28, logged 58 points in 273 appearances from the blue line for the Lightning’s AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch, from 2016 to 2020. He never received a call-up, though, and headed overseas upon becoming a restricted free agent during the pandemic. The Lightning still held his signing rights up until February of last year. Masin spent parts of the last three years playing for Ilves in Finland, helping them to a third-place finish in Liiga in 2022.
- Former Golden Knights prospect Marcus Kallionkieli is returning to Poland, inking a one-year deal with GKS Katowice. The 23-year-old winger has had quite the peculiar ride, plagued by injuries for much of his time under contract with Vegas. Last year, the final one of his entry-level contract, the organization loaned him to Poland’s STS Sanok before reassigning him to Finland’s Kiekko-Espoo and then placing him on unconditional waivers for mutual contract termination in February. A fifth-round pick in 2019, the Finnish-Brazilian national had two goals in six games with their AHL affiliate in Henderson in 2020-21 and one goal in five games with the ECHL’s Savannah Ghost Pirates during an injury-truncated 2022-23 campaign.