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East Notes: Laine, Jarry, Zub

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Blue Jackets forward Patrik Laine has skated over the past couple of days as he works his way back from an upper-body injury, notes Brian Hedger of the Columbus Dispatch (Twitter link).  The 25-year-old got off to a quiet start to his year with a goal and an assist in his first four games while also making the adjustment to playing down the middle on a regular basis.  Head coach Pascal Vincent noted that Laine responded well after today’s skate which could be a sign that he could be back sooner than later.  When that happens, Hedger notes that the team hasn’t decided if they will move Adam Fantilli back to the wing or if they’ll leave him in his natural center role and put Laine back in his natural wing position.

Elsewhere in the Eastern Conference:

  • It appears as if the Penguins will avoid being without their starting goalie for long. Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette relays that Tristan Jarry is currently listed as day-to-day after leaving yesterday’s game early against Anaheim.  As of yet, it’s worth noting that Pittsburgh hasn’t brought up one of their other AHL goaltenders, a sign that Jarry could be available to at least dress as the backup against Los Angeles.  The 28-year-old has a 2.51 GAA and a .907 SV% in nine starts so far this season.
  • Earlier today, Senators head coach D.J. Smith expressed optimism that defenseman Artem Zub would be back tonight against Toronto, he wound up being scratched for the seventh straight game, notes Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch (Twitter link). It’s the seventh straight game he has missed with a concussion.  With Ottawa also missing Thomas Chabot and Erik Brannstrom at the moment, getting Zub back will be a critical addition but they’ll have to wait a little longer for that to happen.

Kraken Recall Shane Wright And Ryan Winterton

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Seattle has added some reinforcements to its roster in advance of their game tomorrow against Colorado.  The team announced (Twitter link) that they’ve recalled forwards Shane Wright and Ryan Winterton from AHL Coachella Valley.

Wright was the fourth overall selection back in 2022 but wasn’t deemed to be ready for full-time action in the NHL.  Since he wasn’t eligible to play in the minors on a full-time basis, Seattle gave him spot duty in the NHL (eight games where he had a goal and an assist) plus a one-time conditioning assignment in the minors until the World Juniors.  After that event, he was sent back to major junior where he had 37 points in 20 games.  Once his Kingston team was eliminated, he became eligible to play in the minors and played in all 24 postseason contests with the Firebirds, notching nine points.

Following training camp, Seattle successfully received a waiver for Wright to play in Coachella Valley this season over returning for what would have been his final season in junior.  He’s off to a nice start in the minors this season, picking up six points in his first seven games, putting him tied for fourth on the team in scoring.

As Wright doesn’t turn 20 until early January, the nine-game threshold for junior-aged players still comes into play.  Wright can play up to nine times for Seattle this season without officially burning the first year of his entry-level contract.  Accordingly, it wouldn’t be surprising if this winds up being a shorter-term recall, one that lets them evaluate where he’s at before returning him to the Firebirds where he’d receive more playing time.  Should he play in ten or more games, the next threshold to watch for would be 40 games on the NHL roster at which point he’d receive a year of service time towards free agent eligibility.

As for Winterton, the 20-year-old was a third-round pick by the Kraken in 2021 and he certainly has outperformed that draft slot.  While injuries limited him to just 34 regular season games with OHL London last year, he was quite impactful during the Knights’ playoff run.  During that time, he picked up 13 goals and 16 assists in 21 games to lead the league in playoff scoring.

Winterton is now in his first professional campaign and is off to a good start as well, collecting three goals and two helpers in his first seven games.  Unlike Wright, the nine-game threshold doesn’t matter for Winterton.

Seattle had two vacant roster spots so no corresponding moves needed to be made to add Wright and Winterton to the active roster.  One of them seems likely to replace Jordan Eberle; Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times reports that the winger suffered a cut from a skate blade to the upper part of his leg in practice today.  He underwent tests to determine the severity of the injury although GM Ron Francis feels the worst-case scenario was avoided.

Pacific Notes: Sharks, Benning, Golden Knights, Hamblin

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While the Sharks snapped their season-long losing streak at 11 games yesterday with a win over the Flyers, clearly, there’s a lot of work to be done still.  However, don’t expect any reinforcements coming from the minors.  Speaking with Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News, GM Mike Grier indicated that while they’ve thought about bringing up some of their better prospects from the minors (including defensemen Henry Thrun and Shakir Mukhamadullin plus forward Daniil Gushchin), they’d like to see things get more stabilized first over putting those youngsters into a less than ideal situation from a development perspective.  Getting captain Logan Couture back would help on that front but with him suffering a recent setback in his recovery lately, there’s no timeline for when he’ll be able to join the lineup.

Elsewhere in the Pacific Division:

  • Still with the Sharks, Pashelka reports in a separate piece that blueliner Matt Benning has resumed skating as he works his way back from an undisclosed injury. The 29-year-old is coming off a career year offensively but, like many San Jose players, is off to a rough start this year with just a single point in his first eight appearances while averaging 18:29 per night.  Benning is on injured reserve but has already been on there for more than a week, meaning they’ll be able to activate him as soon as he’s cleared to return.
  • Ben Gotz of the Las Vegas Review-Journal relays (Twitter link) that Vegas center Chandler Stephenson will miss at least the next two games with an upper-body injury. The 29-year-old is off to a strong start in his contract year with 10 points in his first 12 games, good for fifth on the Golden Knights in scoring.  Jonas Rondbjerg was recalled yesterday for the fifth time in less than a month and is expected to take Stephenson’s spot in the lineup.  Meanwhile, Gotz adds that blueliner Zach Whitecloud is with Vegas on the road and could potentially be back as soon as Friday.  The 26-year-old has yet to play this season due to an upper-body injury and is currently on LTIR but is eligible to be activated as he has missed both 10 games and 24 days.
  • PuckPedia notes (Twitter link) that the Oilers have converted forward James Hamblin’s emergency exception recall into a regular one. When they sent Jack Campbell and down and recalled Calvin Pickard earlier today, Edmonton had enough cap space to fit Hamblin into its cap structure, meaning they were no longer eligible for the cap exemption he was recalled with.  The 24-year-old logged nearly 11 minutes in his season debut back on Monday.

Five Key Stories: 10/30/23 – 11/5/23

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As the calendar turned to November, there was plenty of news of note across the NHL which is recapped in our key stories.

Senators Out A First-Round Pick And A GM: Back at the 2022 trade deadline, a move that would have sent Evgenii Dadonov from Vegas to Anaheim was vetoed after the fact when it was revealed the Ducks were on his no-trade list.  The Golden Knights weren’t aware of that fact, resulting in them asking the league to look into it.  That investigation is now complete and they came down hard on Ottawa, who had dealt the winger to Vegas the previous offseason.  It was determined that they withheld the no-trade details during the trade call and as punishment, they will be required to forfeit a first-round pick in 2024, 2025, or 2026.  It’s their choice as to which year they opt to forfeit and it must be their own selection, not one they acquired from another team (such as the one they received from Detroit in the Alex DeBrincat trade).

New owner Michael Andlauer decided that this was the final straw for GM Pierre Dorion.  While initially termed as a firing, Dorion officially resigned his position.  He was at the helm in Ottawa since 2016 and helped bring in top young talents like Tim Stutzle, Jake Sanderson, and Brady Tkachuk to the fold but more recently, he’ll be remembered for creating an unworkable cap situation that limited them from re-signing Shane Pinto before his gambling suspension.  Steve Staios, who just joined the organization a little over a month ago, will serve as interim GM.

Four For McAvoy: Boston’s back end took a big short-term hit as defenseman Charlie McAvoy received a four-game suspension for an illegal check to the head on Panthers defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson that saw him receive a match penalty at the time.  The 25-year-old had gotten off to a strong start to his year with eight points in nine games but that’s on hold for now.  With Ekman-Larsson returning to Florida’s lineup quickly, McAvoy has appealed the ban, a move that doesn’t typically happen too often (although Rasmus Andersson went that route last month with no success).  Since it’s under six games, the appeal will be heard by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

Backstrom Takes A Leave: Long-time Capitals center Nicklas Backstrom underwent hip resurfacing surgery back in June 2022 but returned to the lineup earlier than expected.  He made it through training camp and the first few weeks of this season but has decided to take an indefinite leave of absence from the team while he determines his next steps.  The 35-year-old has spent the entirety of his 17-year NHL career with Washington and sits second to Alex Ovechkin for the most points in franchise history; it remains to be seen if he’ll return to add to his 1,033 career points.  Backstrom is signed through next season with a $9.2MM AAV so retirement won’t be on the table but he has already been placed on injured reserve and will likely be shifted to LTIR at some point.

Talks On Hold: Not long ago, it looked like the Flames were making progress on extension talks with prominent pending unrestricted free agents Noah Hanifin and Elias Lindholm.  However, with the team off to a rough start this season, sitting just 3-7-1, those discussions are now on hold.  If GM Craig Conroy determines that the team isn’t as close to winning as he originally hoped, it’s possible that he turns around and becomes a seller at which point locking up his two key UFAs could work against him.  For now, it appears it will be a wait-and-see approach to see if Calgary can turn things around but they’ll need to show some progress sooner than later.

Hanging Them Up: Veteran center Paul Stastny has decided to call it a career, announcing his retirement at the age of 37.  The 2005 second-round pick played in 17 seasons at the top level with five different teams including eight years with Colorado who originally drafted him.  In his prime, Stastny was a quality two-way middleman who was above average at the faceoff dot throughout his career.  He hangs up his skates with 293 goals and 529 assists in 1,145 career regular season games; his 822 points rank him in 20th place among U.S.-born players in NHL history.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Oilers Recall James Hamblin On Emergency Basis

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When Connor Brown wasn’t able to play on Saturday, the Oilers were forced to play short a player.  In doing so, they created a short-term cap-exempt emergency recall.  The team announced that the recall has been used on James Hamblin who has been promoted from AHL Bakersfield.

The 24-year-old made his NHL debut last season with Edmonton, getting into ten games with the big club.  He was held without a point but recorded a dozen shots on goal while averaging just under nine minutes per game.  He spent most of last season in the minors where he had 10 goals and 18 assists in 52 games with the Condors.  This season, Hamblin is off to a good start with two goals and three helpers in six contests, helping him earn this promotion.

Hamblin is in the final season of a two-year, entry-level contract which carries a cap hit of $807.5K.  The AAV being that low permitted him to be the recall; teams are limited to bringing up a player making no more than $100K above the league minimum salary ($775K this year) when using a cap-exempt promotion.  Once Brown or Mattias Janmark return from their respective injuries, Hamblin will need to be returned to Bakersfield.

Ducks Activate Alex Killorn, Assign Robert Hagg To AHL

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The Ducks are welcoming back a key forward tonight as they announced that they have activated winger Alex Killorn from injured reserve.  To make room for him on the roster, defenseman Robert Hagg was returned to AHL San Diego.

Killorn landed the richest deal for a forward in free agency last summer with Anaheim inking the 34-year-old to a four-year, $25MM agreement.  He was coming off a career year with Tampa Bay, one that saw him record 27 goals and 37 assists in 82 games while adding five points in six playoff contests against Toronto.

While the Ducks aren’t expected to be contending in the short term, GM Pat Verbeek clearly prioritized adding some veterans to what was (and still is) a pretty young roster and was hoping that Killorn would line up in a prominent role to start the season.  Instead, he suffered a fractured finger during the preseason, one that kept him out of the lineup for nearly five weeks.

As for Hagg, he was recalled just yesterday so his time with the big club was certainly short-lived.  He was brought up to serve as an extra defender with Tristan Luneau on a conditioning assignment but as Luneau remains part of Anaheim’s active roster while with San Diego, the Ducks needed Hagg’s roster spot to activate Killorn in advance of tonight’s game against Vegas.  He has played in three games for the Gulls so far this season.

Nino Niederreiter Hoping To Sign An Extension With Jets

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Getting players to sign extensions in Winnipeg has been a hit-or-miss proposition for GM Kevin Cheveldayoff.  In recent months, clearly, Pierre-Luc Dubois wanted no part of that but he got Mark Scheifele and Connor Hellebuyck to sign on the dotted line.  When those two did so, it took care of their two more prominent pending unrestricted free agents.

One notable among the list still needing a new deal is Nino Niederreiter.  Scott Billeck of the Winnipeg Sun reports that the winger’s camp has made it known to Cheveldayoff that he’d like to stick around and that his agent Andre Rufener will be in town this week to discuss a possible new contract for his client.

The 31-year-old didn’t have a particularly strong market in his last trip through unrestricted free agency in the 2022 offseason.  It took more than a week for him to land a two-year, $8MM contract with Nashville, a move that represented a $1.25MM cut in pay despite putting up a 24-goal showing with Carolina the year before.

Niederreiter’s stay with the Predators was fairly short-lived as he was moved to Winnipeg in the days leading up to the trade deadline back in February for a second-round pick.  He finished up the season relatively well with 13 points in 22 games while adding four more in their five-game first-round exit at the hands of Vegas.

Now, with a full training camp with the Jets under his belt, Niederreiter is off to a strong start to his 2023-24 season, notching five goals and four assists in his first 11 games, good for a share of the team lead in points.  With that in mind, it’s not surprising to see him want to extend his stay as the fit with Winnipeg appears to be a good one.

Speculatively, for Niederreiter to justify signing an extension this early in the season, it might take a bit more than his current price tag to get him to put pen to paper on a new deal.  On top of that, it stands to reason that a contract longer than two years will likely be required.  But if Winnipeg likes the way that he’s fitting in, an early extension would make a lot of sense on their end as well.  If one happens, it’ll be a pretty good longer-term outcome for a trade deadline pickup that largely went under the radar last season.

Injury Updates: Brown, McDonagh, Kastelic, Bear

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Oilers winger Connor Brown took the pregame today but play-by-play voice Jack Michaels relayed (Twitter link) that he wound up being a late scratch.  He’s officially listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury.  Edmonton doesn’t have enough cap space to carry an extra forward so they played today’s game against Nashville short a player.  Accordingly, it makes them eligible for an emergency cap-exempt recall of a forward making $875K or less should Brown still be unable to play on Monday against Vancouver.

It’s worth mentioning that when Brown does suit up for his next game, he will receive a $3.25MM bonus as part of the contract he signed with Edmonton this summer, one that guaranteed him just the NHL minimum.  Any amount of that bonus that the Oilers can’t absorb on their books this season would be treated as a carryover penalty and would count against their 2024-25 cap charges.

Other injury news from around the hockey world:

  • Also a late scratch from the Edmonton-Nashville game today was defenseman Ryan McDonagh. The Predators announced (Twitter link) that the blueliner is dealing with a lower-body injury and that he’s listed as day-to-day.  The 34-year-old has played in ten games so far this season, picking up a pair of assists while averaging exactly 20 minutes a night, his lowest ATOI since his rookie year back in 2010-11.  Marc Del Gaizo made his NHL debut in McDonagh’s absence.
  • Senators center Mark Kastelic is dealing with an ankle sprain, notes Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch (Twitter link). Yesterday, head coach D.J. Smith suggested that the 24-year-old would miss a few games but now stated that Kastelic “won’t play any time soon”.  Kastelic was placed on IR yesterday, meaning he’ll be out for at least a week.  He has been held off the scoresheet in his first nine games this season.
  • Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston relays that free agent defenseman Ethan Bear appears to be on track from his recovery from shoulder surgery and should be ready to play next month. The 26-year-old was injured playing at the Worlds back in May which played a role in him being non-tendered by Vancouver a month later.  While a reunion with them could make sense, they’d need to find a way to open up cap space over the next few weeks for that to happen.

Ducks Recall Robert Hagg

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The Ducks have made a roster move in advance of tomorrow’s game against Vegas.  They’ve announced that they have recalled defenseman Robert Hagg from AHL San Diego.

Hagg is in his first season with Anaheim after signing a one-year, $775K one-way deal with them in the first week of free agency.  However, despite a decent showing in the preseason where he had a goal and an assist in just two appearances, the Ducks waived him late in training camp.  He cleared and was assigned to the Gulls where he has played in three games, recording a single assist.  It’s his first AHL action since back in the 2016-17 campaign when he was with Philadelphia,

The 28-year-old battled injuries last season, resulting in him getting into just 38 games with Detroit where he had seven points and 111 hits.  For his career, Hagg has 16 goals, 47 assists, and 985 hits in 338 contests over parts of seven seasons.

On the surface, it appears that this is merely a depth-related promotion.  Anaheim recently loaned Tristan Luneau to San Diego on a conditioning stint, leaving them with just six healthy blueliners on their roster.  Luneau’s stint can last for up to two weeks so it appears that Hagg will serve as injury insurance in the youngster’s absence.

Sabres Place Mattias Samuelsson On IR, Recall Ryan Johnson

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Mattias Samuelsson’s lower-body injury from last night’s game against Philadelphia will keep him out for at least a week as he has been placed on injured reserve.  Taking his place on the roster will be Ryan Johnson who has been recalled per the AHL’s transactions log.

Samuelsson was averaging over 21 minutes a night heading into last night’s game (third among Sabres blueliners) while being a key cog on Buffalo’s penalty kill.  He has a goal and two assists plus 25 hits and 25 blocks through his first 11 games of the season and his absence will certainly be notable inside their top four.  The 23-year-old is in the first season of a seven-year, $30MM contract that was signed a little over a year ago when he had less than 60 games of NHL experience under his belt.

As for Johnson, he is in his first professional season after wrapping up his college career last year at the University of Minnesota.  He had 18 points in 40 games for the Golden Gophers, giving him 59 points in 143 contests over his four seasons there.

The 2019 first-round pick is off to a decent start with AHL Rochester, notching four assists in his first nine games and now has a chance to get his first taste of NHL action.  If he doesn’t take Samuelsson’s spot in the lineup, Jacob Bryson would be next in line after being healthy scratched on Friday.

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