Atlantic Notes: Pinto, Keefe, Thompson

With training camps now less than two weeks away from beginning, Senators center Shane Pinto is one of the nine remaining restricted free agents across the league.  However, Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch relays that while the sides are hopeful that a deal can be reached by the start of camp, they are not particularly close to an agreement.  The 22-year-old is coming off his first full NHL campaign and it was a productive one as he posted 20 goals and 15 assists in 82 games while logging nearly 16 minutes a night in ice time.  It’s worth noting that Ottawa’s cap situation is particularly tight as CapFriendly puts them with less than $900K in room.  Even on a one-year agreement to keep the AAV as low as possible, Pinto should be earning a fair bit more than that.  Once a deal eventually gets reached, GM Pierre Dorion will have some work to do to open up some cap space.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic:

• While a two-year extension for a head coach is usually a vote of confidence, Daily Faceoff’s Mike McKenna argues that isn’t really the case for the Maple Leafs and Sheldon Keefe. Instead, he feels the move was made primarily to avoid the possible distraction of having Keefe behind the bench in the final year of his contract.  Toronto has played to a 166-71-30 record during the regular season under Keefe but just a 13-17 postseason record.  Keefe will coach on the final year of his previous two-year extension this season with the new deal kicking in for the 2024-25 campaign.
• Just over a year ago, the Sabres inked Tage Thompson to a seven-year, $50MM extension. The move came on the heels of a breakout campaign that saw him score 38 goals after having just 35 points in 145 career games heading into that year.  There was some risk involved with the short track record but Lance Lysowski of The Buffalo News examines some of the contracts signed since then, providing a barometer of how much more it would have cost to sign him this summer had they waited.  The 25-year-old had 47 goals and 47 assists last season, making his new $7.143MM AAV look like a bargain already if he can even produce close to that rate moving forward.