Even as we reached the midway point of the season, several of the biggest stories from the past seven days pertain to things for the offseason and beyond.
Draft Notes: The league has proposed some changes to the draft lottery rules. If ratified by the Board of Governors, teams will only be allowed to pick first overall two times in a five-year span and teams will only be able to move up a maximum of ten spots (down from the current 13). Those changes wouldn’t come into effect until 2022 while the change that sees only two spots drawn in the lottery instead of three would occur for this year. Meanwhile, while several teams were hoping for some sort of delay to the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, that does not appear to be happening with the current expectation now being that it will occur in July as scheduled. With the trade deadline approaching, a formal ruling on this has been anticipated for a while.
Panarin Returns: Rangers winger Artemi Panarin has returned to the team after missing several weeks on a leave of absence following allegations that surfaced back home in Russia. The 2020 Hart Trophy finalist is a welcome addition to a New York team that currently sits sixth in the East Division and is in the bottom ten in goals scored. He made an immediate impact upon returning, picking up an assist against Boston on Saturday.
Binnington Extension: Arguably the top UFA goaltender is off the market before even getting there as the Blues and Jordan Binnington agreed to a six-year, $36MM contract extension. The deal contains a full no-trade clause in the first three seasons before dropping down as low as ten teams in the final season. The 27-year-old is still relatively untested at the NHL level with just 100 career regular season starts under his belt. However, he was dominant in his rookie season where he helped lead St. Louis to the Stanley Cup in 2018-19 and established himself as the full-time starter last year. Suffice it to say, it is quite the turn of events for a goaltender that was loaned to Boston’s AHL team back in 2017-18 after declining an ECHL assignment and now he has a $36MM contract under his belt.
Latest On Kane: As part of Evander Kane’s bankruptcy proceedings, he and the team filed a joint motion in California court indicating that a contract termination is a possibility which would certainly drastically affect his list of assets moving forward. It’s only one possible outcome and some rulings will need to be made before then (including whether this should be a Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 case) but this is a situation that isn’t going to be resolved quickly. The case has been delayed until early June which still leaves some time before the free agent market opens up but this is certainly something that we haven’t seen the end of just yet.
Back With ESPN: The NHL has decided to split its rights package in two and the first of those will be with ESPN as the two sides announced a seven-year agreement. The exact financial terms weren’t formally disclosed but the belief is the deal more than doubles the $200MM average that the league was receiving from NBC while the league still has the second package to sell with NBC joining CBS and FOX in those discussions. ESPN will get four of seven Stanley Cup Finals in that span along with comprehensive streaming rights.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
My understanding is that the deal with ESPN means that anyone with Hulu or ESPN+ get the equivalent of NHL dot TV with it.
If so, that’s a big win for fans and the league.
ESPN has confirmed their old NHL theme song will return. Now, just hire Gary Thorne.
Need Barry melrose back on ESPN too
Is Barry Melrose no longer on ESPN?
The first thing I said when I read about this last week was “Now I hope that Gary Thorne will do games again.”
The first thing I said when I read about this last week was “Now I hope that Gary Thorne will do games again.”