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Archives for July 2021

Montreal Canadiens Hire Jean-Francois Houle

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The Montreal Canadiens have hired Jean-Francois Houle as the next head coach of their AHL affiliate. Houle served as an assistant coach with the Bakersfield Condors the last six seasons, but will now join the Laval Rocket in the head coach spot that was vacated recently by Joel Bouchard. Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin released a statement on the hire:

The Montreal Canadiens organization proudly welcomes Jean-François Houle as head coach of the Laval Rocket. After meeting with him, we quickly concluded that his philosophy and values aligned with ours. His dedication, passion for hockey, attention to detail, and leadership ability are among his top qualities. Jean-François’ many years of experience, along with his knowledge of the American Hockey League and the Quebec market, made him the perfect candidate for the position. He has proven himself at all levels and has a great reputation. His expertise will be a key element in the development of our organization’s young players.

Houle, 46, has a long coaching history that also includes several years as the head coach of the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada of the QMJHL and as an assistant with Clarkson University. It is something of a family homecoming, as he is the son of Rejean Houle, the long-time Montreal player who won five Stanley Cup championships with the team in the 70s and even served as general manager a decade after his retirement.

Jean-Francois Houle meanwhile never did play in the NHL, but had a short successful minor league career before joining the coaching ranks in 2003. He has progressed quickly through various levels and is on a path that will eventually lead him to an NHL job, should his success continue. The next step is taking over in Laval, where he’ll be tasked with a combination of winning and development.

Logan Mailloux Renounces Himself From 2021 NHL Draft

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Any team that was struggling with the decision of whether or not to select Logan Mailloux in the upcoming draft has now been taken off the hook. The top prospect has renounced himself from the 2021 NHL Draft, asking teams not to select him.

Mailloux, 18, according to reports in The Athletic and Daily Faceoff, was charged in Sweden with taking and distributing an offensive photo without consent during a consensual sexual encounter last year. According to Katie Strang and Corey Pronman of The Athletic, at least nine teams had already completely dropped Mailloux off their draft list because of the incident. Now, the prospect is asking for the entire league to pass on him. In a Twitter post today, Mailloux wrote:

Being drafted into the NHL is an honour and a privilege that no one takes lightly. The NHL Draft should be one of the most exciting landmark moments in a player’s career, and given the circumstances I don’t feel I have demonstrated strong enough maturity or character to earn that privilege in the 2021 Draft. If I were to ever have the honour of being selected I would want a fanbase to be proud to welcome me to their organization. I know it will take time for society to build back the trust I have lost, and that is why I think it is best that I renounce myself from the 2021 NHL Draft and ask that no one select me this upcoming weekend. I feel that this would allow me the opportunity to demonstrate an adequate level of maturity and character next season with the London Knights in the OHL and provide all the NHL teams the opportunity to reassess my character towards the 2022 NHL Draft.

Should he go undrafted, Mailloux could return to the London Knights and continue his hockey career. When asked for comment by Strang, the Knights released a statement indicating that they would continue to work with the young defenseman to “help him better understand his actions, the ramifications of his actions and [ensure] that this does not happen again.” If undrafted, he would be eligible for the 2022 draft. Mailloux was ranked 23rd among North American skaters by NHL Central Scouting.

Poll: Where Will Carey Price Play In 2021-22?

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Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price has had one of the most unique and hectic months for an individual player in recent memory.

After guiding the Canadiens to one of the more unexpected Stanley Cup Final appearances in recent memory, many justifiably assumed that Price’s future in Montreal was as secure as ever. It quickly turned out to be that wasn’t the case.

Price waived his no-movement clause for the purposes of the Seattle Expansion Draft and was left exposed when the protection lists were announced Sunday morning, an absolutely shocking move. Many assumed that Montreal had a side deal in place so that they could retain both Price and Jake Allen, but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t the path general manager Marc Bergevin had chosen.

Then came the injury news. Later yesterday, there were multiple reports of varying injuries that Price may miss significant time for. Reports from both Frank Seravalli and Pierre LeBrun stated that Price is dealing with problems in his hip and knee and will see a specialist this week. But with Seattle taking a long and hard look at Price’s current medical records, the injuries may not be enough to sway the Kraken away from taking Price.

However, it can’t be ignored that Price is coming off a pair of subpar regular seasons and is still under contract for five more seasons with a $10.5MM cap hit. It’s a hefty pill to swallow for the Kraken if Price can’t return to elite form, something that unfortunately seems like a possibility.

So, PHR readers, we ask you – where do you think Carey Price will play this season? Will Seattle salivate over the opportunity to pick up a potential elite franchise goalie? Or will his age and health concerns let him pass through unselected? Vote below:

Where will Carey Price play next season?
Montreal Canadiens 62.10% (2,335 votes)
Seattle Kraken 29.49% (1,109 votes)
Other 8.40% (316 votes)
Total Votes: 3,760

[Mobile users, click here to vote]

Latest On Vladimir Tarasenko

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UPDATE: Bally Sports Midwest’s Andy Strickland reports that if the Seattle Kraken do select Tarasenko, he won’t be on the team for opening night. They’ll be trading him to a different team.

So you want Vladimir Tarasenko but can’t afford his entire cap hit. The St. Louis Blues won’t agree to a retained salary deal (at least not for a reasonable price). How do you get him? The answer may be the Seattle Kraken. According to David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, teams have reached out to Seattle in hopes that they would select Tarasenko in the expansion draft only to retain salary and trade him afterward. The Kraken are apparently open to eating a portion of the contract for the right deal.

The 29-year-old winger was one of the key names left unprotected for this week’s draft, after his relationship with the Blues deteriorated over the last year. Tarasenko is coming off multiple shoulder surgeries and has lost trust in the Blues medical staff, according to several reports. Since the start of the 2019-20 season, he has played in just 34 regular season games, scoring seven goals and 24 points. Whether he’s healthy enough to contribute at a high-level next season is still completely unclear, though he did play in all four Blues playoffs games against the Colorado Avalanche–even scoring two goals in the deciding game four.

Of course, a deal like this would also come with an opportunity cost for the Blues. By selecting Tarasenko, they would be passing on the other options from the Blues roster. That includes 24-year-old defenseman Vince Dunn, who was also left unprotected despite registering 32 goals and 102 points in the first four seasons of his career. Dunn’s tenure in St. Louis has been rocky, with several healthy scratches, but he is also a young, offensive weapon that teams often covet.

That means whatever you’re offering for Tarasenko better be worth it, as the Kraken would be eating a portion of his $7.5MM cap hit, giving up a high-end (albeit risky) sniper, and missing the chance to select a young defenseman.

While Pagnotta doesn’t list the teams that would be interested, it’s easy to imagine several of the league’s top contenders would want to take the risk of a half-off Tarasenko. When healthy, he was one of the league’s most dominant goal scorers, putting up five consecutive seasons of at least 33 goals. If Seattle was willing to retain half of his cap hit, for instance, and Tarasenko proves healthy enough to get back to his previous totals, it would be quite a bargain for $3.75MM.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Nikita Nesterov Returns To Russia

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Calgary Flames defenseman Nikita Nesterov has officially elected to return to Russia and sign a one-year contract with CSKA Moscow, the team announced today.

This will mark the second time that Nesterov has left an NHL team to return overseas. After being drafted 148th overall in 2011 by the Tampa Bay Lightning, Nesterov played just two more seasons in Russia before electing to try his luck in North America. Joining Tampa’s AHL affiliate in Syracuse, the defensive defenseman had a respectable 16 points in 54 AHL games in 2013-14. Nesterov was called up to the NHL the following season and became a full-time player by 2015-16. However, his first NHL stint only lasted three seasons. In the midst of a career-best 2016-17, Nesterov was dealt to the Montreal Canadiens as Tampa dealt with overpopulation on their defense. After that season, Nesterov was not qualified by Montreal and signed in Russia with CSKA Moscow.

Three more seasons in Russia gave Nesterov the confidence to come over and try his luck again, this time with the Calgary Flames. But Nesterov was never able to lock down a solid spot in the lineup, playing just 38 games and averaging 15:52 a night. Totaling just four points, Nesterov didn’t provide much offensively or defensively this season, leading Calgary to decide that he wasn’t a part of their future plans.

It seems unlikely at this juncture that Nesterov would attempt a return to North America in the future after two failed attempts. If it’s the end of the NHL road for Nikita, he finished his career with nine goals, 28 assists, and 37 points in 170 regular-season contests.

Snapshots: Power, Olympics, Orlando

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The past few days have been quite the event in NHL news, leading up to the Seattle Expansion Draft on Wednesday and the NHL Entry Draft on Friday. But while the majority of news and notes have had to do with the Kraken, including their reported signing of goalie Chris Driedger earlier today, the Entry Draft hasn’t been lost in the shuffle. TSN’s Bob McKenzie, in his final draft piece before the event on Friday, states that in his polling of NHL scouts, University of Michigan defenseman Owen Power has pulled away from the rest of the field and is the consensus No. 1 overall choice ahead of the draft. This comes after reports that the Buffalo Sabres, who hold the first pick, had yet to interview Power and had significant interest in Swedish forward William Eklund instead. But based on McKenzie’s polling, it seems as though Buffalo will still be selecting Power with that first choice. What remains to be seen is if the Sabres acquire an additional top-10 draft choice ahead of Friday, allowing them to potentially select both Power and Eklund. What’s for sure is that neither will join the team next season, as both Power and Eklund have expressed their desire to return to their respective teams for at least one more season.

  • ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski notes that despite the NHL expected to leave an Olympic break in their 2021-22 schedule, their participation in the event is not yet confirmed. This builds on earlier reporting that the NHL had until July 23rd to find a resolution for the situation. However, that was based on the fact that the schedule would be final and without modification. The expectation here is that with an Olympic break built into the schedule, the NHL won’t need to add any time to the season if they are able to send their players to China in 2022. If not, the schedule can be adjusted without extending the season.
  • The Tampa Bay Lightning announced in a press release today that they’ve extended their ECHL affiliation with the Orlando Solar Bears for two years. The agreement takes the two teams through the 2022-23 season and ensures a pipeline of Orlando in the ECHL and Syracuse in the AHL remains constant for the next two seasons. Orlando, previously the ECHL affiliate of the Toronto Maple Leafs, has seen success in recent years after matching with the Lightning organization. The team likely appreciates having a relatively local minor league affiliate and had no desire to move elsewhere.

Philadelphia Flyers Hire Darryl Williams As Assistant

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Per NHL.com’s Adam Kimelman, the Philadelphia Flyers have brought on Darryl Williams as an assistant coach for the 2021-22 season.

For Williams, it’s his first coaching job since 2019-20, where he served as an assistant coach for the ECHL’s Newfoundland Growlers. Overall, Williams has more than two decades of experience as a head, assistant, and video coach across multiple leagues. This isn’t the first time that Williams will be working under Alain Vigneault as the head coach. Williams served as both a video and assistant coach at various points with the Vancouver Canucks and New York Rangers while Vigneault was in charge.

Now 53, the Newfoundland native has settled into quite the coaching career after a long playing career as well. Spending the vast majority in the minor leagues, Williams did get into two NHL games, both with the Los Angeles Kings in 1992-93.

Williams fills the position vacated by Ian Laperriere, who was sent to Philadelphia’s AHL affiliate in Lehigh Valley to be the team’s head coach. Williams will serve on Philadelphia’s assistant staff with Michel Therrien and Mike Yeo, both former head coaches in the NHL.

Manitoba Moose Hire Mark Morrison

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After Pascal Vincent left the Manitoba Moose for the Columbus Blue Jackets the team, and their NHL affiliate the Winnipeg Jets, were on the lookout for a replacement. They’ve found it in Mark Morrison, who will become the next head coach of the Moose after several seasons with the Anaheim Ducks.

Morrison is a familiar face, having served as an assistant with the Jets affiliate when it was in St. John’s and then in Manitoba for two years. His last head coaching job was for the Victoria Salmon Kings, which at the time was the organization’s ECHL affiliate. Though he has spent the last four years as an assistant with the Ducks, there are long ties to Canada for Morrison, who twice represented the country at the World Juniors as a player and suited up many other times for his country internationally.

His time in the NHL spanned all of ten games, but Morrison had a long, successful playing career that included more than a decade with the Fife Flyers, serving as a player-coach up until his retirement in 2005. He’s now back with the Jets, where he’ll be tasked with developing the next wave of talent in the AHL.

Winnipeg had some outstanding young players at the AHL level this season, headlined by top prospect Cole Perfetti. The 19-year-old forward, selected 10th overall in 2020, put up 26 points in 32 games at the minor league level despite being too young to normally even qualify. With the OHL not playing, Perfetti took his opportunity to play with the Moose and ran with it. Unfortunately, unless the league issues exemptions, Perfetti won’t have that same opportunity in 2021-22. Still too young, he’ll either have to make the NHL squad or return to the Saginaw Spirit of the OHL at the start of the season.

The Moose went 18-13-5 this season, meaning there is lots of room for improvement by Morrison. The team will start off the 2021-22 season on October 15.

San Jose Not Expected To Make Side-Deal With Kraken

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The San Jose Sharks took advantage of the expansion draft frenzy by acquiring Adin Hill from the Arizona Coyotes just before the roster freeze went into effect. The Coyotes were at risk of losing Hill for nothing in the draft, so turned him into a goaltending prospect and second-round pick before Seattle had the chance to claim him. The Sharks won’t be under the same pressure and Kevin Kurz of The Athletic tweets that they are not expected to make any side-deals with the Kraken before Wednesday’s draft.

As the draft approached, it seemed more likely that the Sharks would make a deal with Seattle to take one of the team’s high-priced assets than to protect an extra player or two. Instead, they decided (or were forced) to protect all of the aging stars, not leaving much for the Kraken to choose from. If the expansion club takes someone like Dylan Gambrell, who recently re-signed with the team, it certainly wouldn’t be too painful given they were willing to trade him just a few days ago. A side-deal certainly isn’t necessary to protect any of those that are currently exposed.

One has to wonder if this is an opportunity missed, even if it would have cost the Sharks a hefty price. While Erik Karlsson and Marc-Edouard Vlasic would have been the top candidates for a side-deal trade where Seattle received something to take on their contracts, both have no-movement clauses that they would have had to agree to waive. It’s Brent Burns then that is the real discussion piece since he has no such protection. The Sharks could have left the 36-year-old defenseman available and worked on a deal for Seattle to assume the $8MM cap hit. That price would have been substantial, but given the team doesn’t have a ton of other prime targets, perhaps a trade could have been achieved.

Instead, the Sharks protected Burns and will seemingly go into another season with $26.5MM tied up in three aging defensemen. His deal, which runs through 2024-25, will actually expire first among the three. Karlsson is signed at $11.5MM through 2026-27 and Vlasic at $7MM through 2025-26. It’s going to be difficult for the Sharks to put together a contending team with that kind of money tied up. Though it would have been painful, a side deal may have been the best option.

Of course, the recent history of trading with an expansion team may be weighing heavily on the minds of many general managers around the league. In 2017, quite a few teams worked out deals with the Vegas Golden Knights to direct their expansion selections, and almost none of them paid off. In fact, many became abject failures that set up the Golden Knights for success while stripping multiple valuable assets out of the original organization. There is a chance, at least, that Burns lives up to his hefty contract for the next four seasons or that the entire group experiences a bounce-back campaign, meaning a trade would have been a huge mistake. There’s also the potential that San Jose GM Doug Wilson did try to work out something like a Burns-trade, only to be rebuffed by Kraken GM Ron Francis completely. Seattle has full say over how they construct their team and whether they want to take on any bad money at an early stage.

Five Key Stories: 7/12/21 – 7/18/21

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After a quiet first full week of July, it was anything but over the past seven days with a flurry of expansion-related moves being made and plenty of other notable offseason notes which are highlighted in our key stories of the week.

Rinne Retires: Veteran goaltender Pekka Rinne decided that it was time to call it a career as he announced his retirement at the age of 38.  He spent his entire NHL career spanning parts of 15 seasons with the Predators who drafted him in the eighth round back in 2004.  In his prime, Rinne was a Vezina-caliber netminder, being a finalist for the award four times and winning it once while holding franchise records in games played (683), wins (369), goals against average (2.43), and shutouts (60).  Nashville will now likely look to free agency to find a new backup for Juuse Saros (who narrowly holds the franchise record for save percentage).

Big Money For Heiskanen: Miro Heiskanen has wasted little time becoming a star defenseman for Dallas and he was rewarded for his efforts with a record-setting contract.  The 22-year-old signed an eight-year, $67.6MM deal, the highest ever for a defenseman coming off of his entry-level pact.  Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar are two other high-end blueliners whose first contracts are set to expire and they will undoubtedly be using this deal as a comparable.  In the meantime, the Stars have their franchise blueliner in place for basically the rest of the decade.

Minnesota Buyouts: Zach Parise and Ryan Suter came to Minnesota as a package deal back in the summer of 2012 as they signed identical 13-year, $98MM contracts that are now illegal in the NHL.  They’ll now leave the Wild as a package deal after the Wild bought both players out of the final four years of their deals.  Parise saw his role decrease considerably this past season and wasn’t likely to get more playing time moving forward while Suter’s came as a bit more of a surprise with him still logging over 22 minutes a game on the back end.  Minnesota will get a big boost in cap space for 2021-22 before the dead cap charges nearly match what their original cap hits were.  That could result in them chasing down some one-year deals this summer.  Meanwhile, Parise and Suter won’t be able to sign with new teams until the free agent market opens up on the 28th.

Expansion Lists: After months of speculation as to who Seattle could be picking to start their franchise, we now know who will be available as the protection lists were officially revealed on Sunday.  A summary of the protected players and notables left exposed can be found here.  There were some prominent players left available and while some of them were expected, others were quite surprising.  Among the notables that the Kraken can choose from are Montreal goaltender Carey Price, St. Louis winger Vladimir Tarasenko, Flames defenseman Mark Giordano as well as all but three pending unrestricted free agents.  Seattle now has exclusive negotiating rights to those free agents through the transactions freeze which is lifted on Thursday and could opt to sign and select some of those players on Wednesday.

Trade Deadline: A trade deadline in the middle of July is something that hasn’t happened before.  But with Saturday being the start of the transactions freeze, it spurred a mini trade frenzy with eight swaps being made, some having direct implications on protection lists.  The biggest one was a three-team trade between the Predators, Flyers, and Golden Knights.  Philadelphia made a big addition to their back end, acquiring Ryan Ellis from Nashville in exchange for Philippe Myers and Nolan Patrick; the Preds then flipped Patrick to Vegas for Cody Glass.  Ellis had been a fixture on Nashville’s blueline for a decade but GM David Poile is clearly shaking up the core and in Glass, he gets a once highly-touted center to try to develop and a capable second pairing piece in Myers.  As for the Golden Knights, Patrick was the second-overall pick in 2017 (Glass was sixth) and a change of scenery could do him some good as they try to rebuild his value.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

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