With the NHL trade deadline now passed, playoff races in both conferences are ramping up and today is a jam-packed Saturday full of NHL action. A potential Eastern Conference Final preview happened earlier today when the Boston Bruins took on the New York Rangers, and multiple teams jockeying for playoff position are engaged in important games. As these games play out, teams in minor and foreign leagues are making tweaks to their rosters and signing contract extensions. We’ll keep track of those moves here.
- 2014 Toronto Maple Leafs fourth-round pick and 2021-22 EIHL Player of the Year J.J. Piccinich has signed a two-year contract extension with his current club, Norway’s Stjernen Hockey. Piccinich, a former captain of the OHL’s London Knights, torched the United Kingdom’s top league last season to the tune of 80 points in 52 games for the Belfast Giants. He left Northern Ireland for Norway this season and has fit exceptionally well, scoring 65 points in 45 games. Piccinich has won quite a bit in his career and is a Hockey East, OHL, Memorial Cup, ECHL, and EIHL Champion, and he’ll now have two more seasons after this one to win a title in Norway.
- 27-year-old Zac Masson will get his first chance to show what he can do at the ECHL level. The former University of Alaska-Anchorage forward was signed out of the SPHL’s Birmingham Bulls by the ECHL’s Atlanta Gladiators today, giving him his first opportunity at North American hockey’s third tier of the pro game. Masson has had to work his way up to this level, as he spent his first season as a professional playing for Bisons de Neuilly-sur-Marne in the second tier of pro hockey in France. This year, he’s scored 11 goals and 21 points in 40 games for the Bulls, and will now get a chance to impress at a more difficult level of hockey with the Gladiators.
- Roberts Mamcics, a 27-year-old Latvian winger who represented his home country at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, has signed a one-year contract extension with his current team, Slovakia’s HC Nove Zamsky. With just seven points in 33 games this year, Mamcics hasn’t scored a ton, but he’s helped Nove Zamsky reach the playoffs this season. This has been Mamcics’ first season in Slovakia, with much of his prior professional experience coming in the KHL with Dinamo Riga before he split last season between four teams: Riga, Latvia’s HK Zemgale, the SHL’s HC Linkoping, and Czechia’s Berani Zlin.