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Zach Parise

Snapshots: Blue Jackets, Tavares, Parise

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Aaron Portzline of The Athletic reports that the Columbus Blue Jackets management will meet in person this week with two potential candidates for their head coaching vacancy. Portzline believes that the two candidates are former Minnesota Wild bench boss Dean Evason and Jay Woodcroft, who was fired last season after the Edmonton Oilers got off to a slow start.

Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell has mentioned a third candidate in the mix, but the belief is that they are on hold for right now. Waddell has also said he doesn’t want the coaching search to drag into August, which means a decision is likely in the next couple of weeks. The sides will have to work on the specifics surrounding a contract, as well as potential coaching staff, but the process should be over soon.

In other NHL notes:

  • Frankie Corrado joined TSN SportsCenter to talk about Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares. Corrado was asked about Tavares’s next contract, and he believes the Maple Leafs should try and squeeze Tavares on an extension to get it under $6MM annually. Corrado adds that Tavares still puts up points, but he doesn’t drive the play and isn’t a player for whom Toronto can pay a premium. He also adds that Toronto hasn’t won anything with him and could try and use that fact, in combination with Toronto being Tavares’s hometown to keep him at a discount. Tavares is entering the final season of a seven-year $77MM contract and will count $11MM against the cap next season.
  • Zach Parise spoke with Kevin Karius earlier this month on The Kevin Karius Show and discussed his retirement from the NHL. The 39-year-old revealed that he hasn’t officially filed the paperwork to retire but added that he is done playing. Parise signed with the Colorado Avalanche in January and dressed in 30 games, posting five goals and five assists while playing just shy of 13 minutes a game. Parise was a key piece in the first round of the playoffs, posting two goals in five games and filling in for Jonathan Drouin on Colorado’s second line.

Central Notes: Tanev, Stastney, Avalanche

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Chris Tanev’s time in Dallas has been limited so far – just five games since being acquired – but GM Jim Nill already knows he’d like to have the veteran in the fold for the long haul.  Speaking with David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, Nill expressed a desire to re-sign the pending UFA after the season:

Whenever you make a move for somebody you like, and you’ve done your research on, and I’ve seen Chris Tanev play a lot, heard all the stories about him, and now we get to live it and stuff. And he has everything we’ve heard, living up to the billing, so we think he’s a great fit for us. Let’s get the games going, let’s get the playoffs going. And but he’s definitely a guy that if we can make it work, we’d love to bring him back here.

The 34-year-old rarely puts up points but is known as one of the better defensive blueliners in the NHL.  Accordingly, he is well-positioned to earn a raise on his current $4.5MM price tag in the summer, one that will be tricky for the Stars to afford within their salary structure.

More from the Central Division:

  • The Predators announced (Twitter link) that defenseman Spencer Stastney is out week-to-week with an upper-body injury. The 24-year-old was injured on Thursday, his first game with Nashville since mid-December.  Stastney has a goal in ten NHL contests so far this season while he has chipped in with 20 points in 44 appearances with AHL Milwaukee.  With Dante Fabbro also injured, Nashville is down to just six healthy defensemen so they may recall someone before today’s game against Seattle.
  • Avalanche winger Artturi Lehkonen is expected to return tonight versus Edmonton after missing the last two games due to illness, relays play-by-play voice Conor McGahey (Twitter link). The 28-year-old has been limited to just 30 games so far this season but has done well when he has been in the lineup, collecting 11 goals and 11 assists.  Meanwhile, McGahey adds that wingers Zach Parise and Jonathan Drouin are also expected to return tonight.  Parise has missed two straight with a lower-body injury while Drouin missed Wednesday’s contest with a lower-body injury of his own.  Parise has seven points in 15 games in his final NHL season while Drouin has done well, picking up 38 points in 64 appearances so far.
  • With those returns, the Avalanche announced (Twitter link) that they’ve returned forward Fredrik Olofsson to AHL Colorado. The 27-year-old played in two games on this recall to bring his season total to 57.  Olofsson has nine points in those appearances while averaging 9:45 per contest.

Injury Notes: Avalanche, Bruins, Marino

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The Avalanche will again be without forwards Artturi Lehkonen and Zach Parise against the Canucks on Wednesday, head coach Jared Bednar said on 92.5 FM Altitude Sports Radio (via Evan Rawal of Colorado Hockey Now). Bednar did not rule either player out for the following contest, a Saturday game in Edmonton, although he did not confirm either would be ready to return by then either.

Without two players who have spent extended time in Colorado’s top six, recent trade pickup Brandon Duhaime will continue to get a tryout on their new-look second line alongside Jonathan Drouin and Casey Mittelstadt in Vancouver. The 26-year-old grinder has averaged only 10:40 per game this season across 64 games with the Avalanche and Wild, recording four goals and nine points.

Lehkonen, 28, is listed as day to day with an illness and will miss his second straight game after sitting out Tuesday’s 6-2 drubbing of the Flames. That, plus a neck injury, has limited him to 30 games on the season, although that hasn’t stopped him from putting together another strong campaign with 22 points and a +7 rating while averaging 18:54 per game.

The 39-year-old Parise has been a solid free-agent pickup for the Avs since signing in late January. He has four goals and seven points through 15 games while logging 14:14 a night. He hasn’t played since sustaining a lower-body injury against the Red Wings a week ago and will miss his third straight game.

Other updates from around the league:

Injury Notes: Dunn, Parise, Hayton

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Earlier this morning, Scott Malone of Roots Sports reported that Seattle Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn was back on the ice for practice in a non-contact jersey. Although he will not be back in the lineup tonight against the Vegas Golden Knights, it is a positive sign for the Kraken that Dunn is progressing from his injury.

Dunn has been out of the lineup for about a week after getting hit from behind by Martin Pospisil of the Calgary Flames. Pospisil received a three-game suspension for the incident, and Seattle head coach Dave Hakstol has been tight-lipped about Dunn’s future return.

When healthy, Dunn has once again been the best defenseman on the ice for the Kraken, leading all fellow blueliners in points. Suiting up in 57 games for Seattle this year, scoring 11 goals and 45 points, with 16 of those points coming on the team’s powerplay.

Other injury notes:

  • After leaving last week’s game against the Detroit Red Wings with a lower-body injury, Zach Parise was back on the ice this morning with the Colorado Avalanche in a non-contact jersey (X Link). In his final attempt to lift the Stanley Cup, Parise has been productive for the Avalanche after signing a one-year, $825K contract with the team back in January. In 15 games for Colorado, Parise has scored four goals and seven points in total, averaging just over 14 minutes of ice time a night.
  • The Arizona Coyotes will be without center Barrett Hayton tonight, as Craig Morgan of PHNX Sports reports he is considered day-to-day with a lower-body injury. It has been a slow recovery for Hayton after coming back from an upper-body injury suffered in December, scoring one goal and six points in 17 games since the start of February.

Logan O’Connor To Undergo Hip Surgery, Out For Season

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Avalanche winger Logan O’Connor will undergo hip surgery this week and will not return this season, Ryan Boulding of NHL.com reports. O’Connor, who last played on March 4, has been dealing with the injury for most of the season, head coach Jared Bednar said.

Bednar issued multiple other injury updates Sunday, confirming that veteran winger Zach Parise is day-to-day with a lower-body injury and that Ross Colton, Jack Johnson and Artturi Lehkonen did not practice due to illness but will travel with the team on their upcoming four-game road trip. Depth center Chris Wagner, who sat out Friday’s game against the Wild with an upper-body injury, will be available on the trip if needed, Bednar said.

Before exiting the lineup last week, O’Connor missed a four-game stretch in February and a two-game stretch in November with a lower-body injury. Bednar’s comments imply that O’Connor sustained the initial injury as late as Nov. 20, the game immediately prior to his first absence of the season.

Despite the injury, O’Connor has managed the best season of his career and was a necessary stabilizing force with many Avalanche depth forwards either missing significant time or underperforming. He managed 13 goals, 12 assists and 25 points in 57 games, a career-best 0.44 points per game pace, although he’d failed to get on the scoresheet in his last seven games.

Aside from his point totals, O’Connor also recorded career-highs in ATOI (14:57) while putting up good even-strength possession stats (54.5 CF%, 54.3 xGF%) in shutdown usage. He was also a significant part of the Avs’ top-10 penalty kill, averaging 2:17 per game.

Luckily for Colorado, GM Chris MacFarland went big-game hunting at the trade deadline. Their acquisitions of Casey Mittelstadt and Sean Walker will draw the most attention, but a targeted move to snag Yakov Trenin from the Predators should help balance out O’Connor’s absence. The 27-year-old Trenin hasn’t scored at O’Connor’s rate this year, posting 14 points in 61 games, but he does have double-digit goal totals and is comfortable in defensive usage and penalty-kill scenarios. He’ll slot seamlessly into the third-line right wing O’Connor was projected to occupy behind Valeri Nichushkin and Mikko Rantanen down the stretch and in the postseason.

O’Connor is in the second season of a three-year, $3.15MM extension signed with the Avs in 2021 that began in the 2022-23 season. He costs $1.05MM against the cap, which the Avalanche could use to increase their financial flexibility down the stretch by placing him on LTIR, but are unlikely to do so with a $2.1MM cushion still remaining from Pavel Francouz’s and Gabriel Landeskog’s combined $9MM cap hits.

Snapshots: Parise, Rielly, Faulk, Perunovich

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As recently as this past offseason, veteran forward Zach Parise was undecided on his playing future, not knowing whether he would be with the New York Islanders, retire, or join a new organization entirely. Ultimately, the answer was uncovered several months later, as Parise decided to join the Colorado Avalanche by way of a one-year contract.

Now in his 19th season in the NHL, Parise has only been to the Stanley Cup Final once, coming back in 2012 with the New Jersey Devils before ultimately losing to the Los Angeles Kings. In joining the Avalanche, Parise joins one of the clear Stanley Cup contenders of the 2023-24 season and has confirmed that this will be his last attempt to win the coveted trophy.

In an article from Tom Gulitti of the NHL, Parise was quoted as saying, “Yeah, this is it. This is it”, meaning it will be Stanley Cup-or-bust for the 39-year-old veteran. As things currently stand, Colorado is well-positioned to make the playoffs, and MoneyPuck gives them the ninth-best odds of winning the Stanley Cup this year.

Other notes:

  • Yesterday, the Department of Player Safety issued a five-game suspension to Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly due to cross-checking Ottawa Senators forward Ridly Greig. Now appealing the suspension, Chris Johnston of TSN is reporting that Rielly will be offered an in-person appeal hearing in New York tomorrow. Because the suspension is not beyond five games, it will not require an independent arbitrator, meaning that Commissioner Gary Bettman will make the final decision to uphold the decision.
  • In an update today regarding two injured defensemen for the St.Louis Blues, Lou Korac of The Hockey News reports Scott Perunovich has returned to the ice for practice and is skating quite well, while Justin Faulk has not yet returned to the ice. Both players have been out since late January, with Faulk being out since January 23rd, and Perunovich being out since January 28th. In the meantime, the Blues will continue to rely on Matthew Kessel and Calle Rosen to fill in for the lost minutes.

Colorado Avalanche Sign Zach Parise

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Shortly before their game tonight against the Los Angeles Kings, the Colorado Avalanche announced they have signed veteran forward Zach Parise to a one-year contract. Frank Seravalli of the DailyFaceoff reports that the one-year contract will be worth a pro-rated $825K for the rest of the season.

Even after seeing the return of Artturi Lehkonen back into the lineup, the Avalanche are still without some of their high-level forward depth since Valeri Nichushkin left for the NHLPA Player Assistance Program. In Parise, Colorado will likely not be able to replace the production left by Nichushkin with the 39-year-old fully. Still, it should create a formidable top-nine forward unit upon his return to the organization.

Historically, the story of Parise is known well, being one of the better players in the league for the New Jersey Devils in the late-2000s and early-2010s. Scoring 410 points in 502 games for New Jersey, as well as leading them to the Stanley Cup Final in 2012, Parise famously joined the Minnesota Wild as an unrestricted free agent before the 2012-13 season, signing an identical 13-year, $98MM contract as defenseman Ryan Suter.

Much to the dismay of both player and team, some injury-riddled seasons, as well as a dire need for cap space, led the Wild General Manager, Bill Guerin, to buy out the contracts of both Parise and Suter after year nine of the 13-year agreements. It wouldn’t take long for Parise to find a new home, however, Lou Lamoriello would quickly ink him to a one-year contract with the New York Islanders, being the executive that originally drafted Parise into the NHL.

Returning to much better health with the Islanders, over two separate one-year contracts with the organization, Parise would play in all 82 games in both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 NHL seasons. Over the course of those two contracts, Parise became a quality auxiliary scorer for New York, putting up 36 goals and 69 points over 164 games, with 21 of those goals coming last season alone.

Having not played in an NHL game since late April of 2023, it will undoubtedly take some time for Parise to make his return to any NHL contest, especially with the speed at which Colorado plays the game. Nevertheless, as an effective scorer and veteran presence on a recent Stanley Cup Champion team, the marriage between Parise and the Avalanche should prove valuable to both sides.

Multiple Teams Showing Interest In Zach Parise

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When veteran free agent winger Zach Parise wasn’t signed before training camp, the belief was that if he came back for a 19th NHL season, it’d be with the Islanders based on comments from both him and GM Lou Lamoriello.  However, in a recent TSN Insider Trading segment, The Athletic’s Chris Johnston reported that some playoff-bound teams, including those with legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations, are showing interest in Parise as well.

The 39-year-old played the last two seasons for the Islanders and proved to be a pretty good bargain for New York in 2022-23.  While playing on a deal that carried a base cap hit of the league minimum (plus another $750K in undisclosed bonuses), he contributed 21 goals along with 13 assists despite primarily playing on the third line along with Simon Holmstrom and Jean-Gabriel Pageau.

In his prime, Parise was a consistent 30-goal scorer, reaching that plateau in six of his first ten NHL campaigns.  While he hasn’t gotten there since then, he has chipped in four more years of at least 20 goals, the last of which came last season.  That makes him an intriguing bottom-six addition for several teams.

Considering Parise took a minimum-salary deal with incentives last season, it stands to reason that he’d be willing to do so again.  As long as he signs a one-year contract, he’s eligible to do so; at his age, a two-year agreement seems highly unlikely.

Structuring a contract that way would allow pretty much any contending team to be able to afford him.  Even if they’re capped out, the bonuses could be rolled over and count against their 2024-25 cap sheet while a signing team would need to remove someone from their roster to add Parise; that player would make the minimum salary or more.

Earlier today, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman noted in his latest 32 Thoughts column that Parise has been skating pretty hard lately at his home in Minnesota, presumably ramping up to sign an NHL contract.  But instead of it being all but a certainty that it would be with the Islanders, it appears the veteran will have several other options to consider when the time comes to put pen to paper on a contract.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

East Notes: Parise, Tatar, Romanov, Newhook

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One player who will not be at the New York Islanders training camp this September is veteran forward, Zach Parise. In April, Parise was adamant about returning to the Islanders for his 19th season in the NHL but appeared to become more uncertain once the 2022-23 season reached its conclusion.

General Manager of the Islanders, Lou Lamoriello believes that this isn’t the end for Parise, indicating that Zach is taking a bit more time to spend with his family to cap off the summer months. In the article, Lamoriello states, “I think he made the right decision for his family, and then we’ll just keep the door open for him. And as I said to him, we’ll keep the number (No. 11) open, too“.

Including his career resurgence with the Islanders following an unceremonious end to his career with the Minnesota Wild, Parise is a veteran of 1224 NHL games, scoring 429 goals and 450 assists in an 18-year career spent with the Islanders, Wild, and New Jersey Devils. Although still an unrestricted free agent, if Parise does choose to continue playing, it is a guarantee it will be in New York, following a similar career path as his late father, J.P. Parise.

Other news from the Eastern Conference:

  • Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet is reporting that unrestricted free agent forward, Tomas Tatar, has switched agents following a tumultuous time on the open market. In the same report, Friedman also indicated that Tatar is leaning towards signing with a team from the Eastern Conference. There has been some recent indication there was mutual interest between Tatar and the Pittsburgh Penguins, but it appears the Penguins will go in a different direction. Another team in the Eastern Conference that does have a bit of cap space and an opportunity in their middle-six for more scoring would be the Ottawa Senators.
  • Another report coming out of New York is that defenseman Alexander Romanov may not be ready for training camp following an offseason shoulder surgery shortly after the Islanders playoffs came to an end in late April. The report indicates that even if he is not ready for the start of training camp, Romanov is very close to returning at the very least. Becoming another solid shut-down defenseman on the Islanders’ blue line, Romanov would score two goals and 20 assists in his first full season last year, as well as adding an incredible amount of physicality to the back end.
  • The head coach of the Montreal Canadiens, Martin St. Louis, has a lot of confidence in one of the newest members of the organization, forward Alex Newhook. Speaking to Eric Engels of Sportsnet, St. Louis indicated that he did not watch much film on Newhook, believing he did not want to judge Newhook based on his last season playing for the Colorado Avalanche (X Link). One of the most important quotes from St. Louis, which should provide a lot of confidence for Newhook heading into a new environment is when he said, “So, to me, what I’m really happy about is I feel we’ve got a hockey player, I don’t think I’m getting a kid who plays hockey, and there’s a big difference“.

Evening Notes: Gustavsson, Crammarossa, Iowa

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Joe Smith of The Athletic writes that it appears the Minnesota Wild and goaltender Filip Gustavsson will decide their contract dispute in arbitration. Smith writes that the deal will get done but will most likely be done through an arbitrator as the sides appear unlikely to reach an agreement without the intervention. The Wild and Gustavsson are set to go to arbitration on August 4th, and with Ilya Samsonov’s ruling now official and Jeremy Swayman’s case set to be heard later this week, both sides should have a clearer picture of what would be a fair contract from the club and the 25-year-old goaltender.

Gustavsson excelled in his first year in Minnesota after coming over in an off-season trade from the Ottawa Senators. It was expected that the native of Skelleftea, Sweden would backup Marc-Andre Fleury, however by the time the playoffs rolled around Gustavsson owned the Minnesota net having gone 22-9-7 with a .931 save percentage and a 2.10 goals-against average.

The Wild are dealing with a very precarious cap situation as they deal with the blowback from the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts that are eating up about $15MM of Minnesota’s cap space. However, they do still have around $5MM in cap space remaining to re-sign the young netminder.

In other evening notes:

  • Joseph Cramarossa has officially signed a contract with the Löwen Frankfurt of the DEL league. Cramarossa played in the NHL as recently as the past season as he played four games for the Minnesota Wild, scoring just a single goal. He also posted four goals and five assists in 18 games with the Iowa Wild of the AHL. Back in January of this year, Cramarossa had his contract terminated by the Wild and at that time he went overseas to play for Adlern Mannheim of the DEK. While in Germany Cramarossa posted two goals and six assists in 15 games.
  • Lastly, the Iowa Heartlanders of the ECHL have announced that they’ve come to terms with defensemen Robbie Stucker and Ben Brinkman on contracts for the 2023-24 season. The club also announced that forward Jake Durflinger has agreed to a deal as well. Brinkman and Stucker were formerly teammates at the University of Minnesota from 2018-21 while Durflinger will enter his second season with the Heartlanders having played 50 games last season posting 10 goals and 10 assists. The 25-year-old finished the season strong scoring seven of his ten goals between March 18th and April 7th.

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