Feb 21: Jankowski has cleared and can now be returned to the minor leagues.
Feb 20: The Nashville Predators have placed Mark Jankowski on waivers, according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Jankowski cleared at the beginning of the season but would need to again before being assigned to the minor leagues.
The 28-year-old forward was scratched for yesterday’s game against the Minnesota Wild and hasn’t been in the lineup for a week now, as the team leans on younger options in the bottom six. If the club wanted to add another player to the roster, they need to send someone down, as they are currently carrying the limit of 23. Jankowski seems a reasonable bet to clear, again, given his lack of production the last several years, so he is likely headed back to the Milwaukee Admirals.
With just seven points this season, the 2012 first-round pick seems ages away from the 32-point campaign he recorded in 2018-19 with the Calgary Flames.The big-bodied forward hasn’t been able to establish himself as much of a contributor ever since, racking up just 30 total points in the four years since.
Nashville is an interesting team to watch at deadline time, given their struggles this season, aging veterans on big contracts, and limited cap space moving forward. At some point they will likely have to dismantle some of the core they have built. Whether that comes in the next two weeks, or in the summer, remains to be seen. Jankowski getting waived over some of the other waiver-exempt options might be the first sign that they are ready to transition to a younger group on a regular basis.
Yesterday’s game vs the Wild encapsulates the Preds season. Moments of joy drowned out by depression. :/
@Gbear—At least Pete’s back on the air, so slightly less depression there. Now, to trade GMDP and Hynes for THREE bags of pucks and some dirt. Maybe they can serve as European scouts in the Slobovian Elite League. All the mystery meat and two veg dinners they can handle! :)
@Mac – You really think another organization would throw in the dirt too in that deal? :D
Poile and Hynes would never cut it over in Slobovia…..they play uptempo hockey over there. ;D
@Gbear—Yes, but there’s a catch. It has to be colored like the original Noctua CPU Coolers, in monkey-puke beige and cow crap brown, complete with the Noctua badge. Or, they could really up their take by going full-on chromax-black. Stealthy always wins! Actually, that company makes products that are far beyond the pay grades of Hynes & Poile. H&P are going to set up a side business to compete with “Rothschild’s Sewage and Septic Sucking Services”, and even steal a motto- “We make sure bygones are bygones.”
JH— “How come these guys over here are so fast?”
DP— “I think they smelled us coming!”
@Mac – On second thought, can we just get the extra bag of pucks instead? :D
@Gbear—It’s a deal! And, true story here, while experimenting with the Openbox window manager, I found a theme called… Bear2! They didn’t have one for me called fatso, though. :(
@Mac – Ethan Bear is no doubt Bear1. :D
Some guy named Granlund scored a goal for the Preds tonight. Might be the same Granlund appearing on milk cartons as a missing person, not sure. :D
@Gbear—His mugshot on HockeyReference looks like he kidnapped himself, and the one on NHL.com looks like he’s giving the stink-eye to the detective across the table from him. 41.6% on the dots, the leader in the clubhouse for the green jacket at -16, and only 10 PIMs. Is he out for the old recreational skate at times? Their goal scoring is horrendous—the H-R stat sheet looks like other teams’ numbers from the 25 or 30-game mark of the season. They aren’t listening to the old adage, “You can’t pass the puck into the back of the net!”
@Mac – Yeah, but what other team can give up 3 goals in the last 1:06 of the past two games like the Preds just did? :/
Hynes has squeezed out any offensive creativity his players had. And Poile seems fine with it. :/
@Gbear—CGY & PIT, just for two. Both of those teams having drastically different HC personalities, but competing night in and night out to see who can have the better “Groundhog Day” experience. Sounds like we should add the Nashville Cats to the group. I was just stating the other night that maybe the Pens would be able to finish the game off, but the game finished them off, yet again. Darryl is Hell-bent on shot quantity, instead of quality. The Pens’ bottom six were trying to impersonate the Oilers’ bottom six to see who could be less effective on the scoreboard. Being a copycat league is supposed to mean copycatting the successful teams, right?
@Mac – It’s like that Verizon commercial “everybody bundles, maybe we should bundle too!”. :/
@Gbear – JH & GMDP are outsmarting everybody, though. They’re always first in line at the All-You-Can-Eat Liver & Onions Buffet. The rest of us prefer the All-You-Can-Eat Prime Rib place. We’ll deal with the slight discomfort later on, but with a huge smile on our faces! ;)
BLOW. IT. UP.