While at the moment there are 10-12 teams interested in the services of free agent blueliner Will Butcher, the Canadiens are not among them, his agent Brian Bartlett told TVA Sports’ Louis-Andre Lariviere. After turning over their top three defenders on the left side this summer, Montreal had previously been speculated on as a potential landing place.
Bartlett indicated that the plan is to whittle the list down to a shortlist of three or four teams and then Butcher will visit those cities. He hopes to have a contract in place for the Hobey Baker Award winner by the end of next week.
The Blue Jackets, Devils, Golden Knights, Penguins, and Sabres are among the teams that are known to have shown interest while the Blackhawks, Maple Leafs, Flyers, Red Wings, and Sharks are ones that at least previously have yet to get involved in discussions. Bartlett added that there are a few Canadian-based teams that have expressed an interest in Butcher although he declined to specify which ones.
Other notes from the Atlantic:
- Although part of the reason that the Senators were entertaining offers for blueliner Dion Phaneuf prior to expansion was so that they could protect Marc Methot, Ottawa is still open to dealing the veteran defender, Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch noted in a radio interview with TSN 1200. Phaneuf still has four years left on his contract with a $7MM cap hit with a no-move clause and Garrioch adds that he doesn’t expect a trade to happen. The Kings had some interest in the 32-year-old earlier in the summer but were asking Ottawa to take an onerous contract (believed to be winger Marian Gaborik) in return.
- The Bruins would like to scale back the workload for goaltender Tuukka Rask this season, GM Don Sweeney admitted to Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe. Rask has played at least 64 games in each of the past three seasons and has shown signs of being banged up at the end of those. Sweeney would like to see Boston’s backup play somewhere around 25 games in a perfect world but backup Anton Khudobin and prospect Zane McIntyre both struggled with their consistency in 2016-17 and if that carries over into this coming season, it may be difficult to give Rask the type of rest they’d like.
Yea I’d love to see Rask get more rest too but unless McIntyre figures it out at the NHL level or they just start out scoring opponents I can’t see how they can sit him too often. Khudobin just is pretty much an automatic loss waiting to happen.