The Avalanche could soon be getting a key player back in their lineup. Jesse Montano of Guerilla Sports relays (Twitter link) that winger Valeri Nichushkin was a full participant in practice today and while he won’t accompany the team on the road to play in Minnesota on Friday, he could return to the lineup Saturday versus Montreal. The 30-year-old has missed the last two weeks due to a lower-body injury. Nichushkin hadn’t been producing at quite the same rate as previous years in his first 17 outings this season but he still has five goals and seven assists to his name and should jump right back into a top-six role once he gets the green light.
Elsewhere around the hockey world:
- Bruins winger Matej Blumel will be out for a bit with a lower-body injury sustained in Wednesday’s game, head coach Marco Sturm told reporters (video link). The 25-year-old signed a one-year, $875K one-way deal with Boston this past summer as a Group Six unrestricted free agent but didn’t crack the roster out of training camp, instead starting with AHL Providence. He averaged a point per game through his first 13 games with them, earning a recall early last week. Blumel has been held off the scoresheet in four games since then and now it’ll be a little while before he has a chance to get on the board.
- As part of the 50-50 revenue sharing between players and owners, there is a mechanism that allow players to receive more than their stated contracts if revenues exceed projections and the sum of money received by players is lower than 50%. It has never happened before but in his latest mailbag for The Athletic (subscription link), Chris Johnston reported that early revenue projections for the league suggest that this could happen. While it likely wouldn’t be a big financial windfall for players, a bit more money would be a nice surprise following many years of losing money to escrow, something that has been phased out as part of the new CBA extension that kicks in next fall. If it happens, it would be a one-time occurrence for this season and wouldn’t automatically roll over moving forward.
- Veteran forward Daniel Walcott has caught on with a team as AHL Hartford announced that they’ve signed him to a PTO deal. The 31-year-old spent the last decade in Tampa Bay’s system with Syracuse but only made one NHL appearance back in 2020-21. However, despite 494 appearances with the Crunch, Walcott will technically be returning to where his professional career began as he got into one game on a tryout deal with Hartford back in 2015 before his rights were moved to the Lightning a few weeks later.