Florida Panthers Sign Chris Tierney
July 19: The Panthers have now officially announced the signing.
July 16: The Panthers have signed center Chris Tierney, per CapFriendly, who is the second former Ottawa Senator they’ve taken a chance on this offseason, after their earlier signing of Colin White. While we are waiting on the official announcement of the deal, CapFriendly has details on the finances. Tierney is getting a one-year, $750K two-way deal with a hefty $400K AHL salary.
Tierney comes from the Senators organization, and it was there that he was once viewed as a foundational part of their rebuild, a potential middle-six staple for many years. Tierney arrived in Ottawa through the Erik Karlsson trade and was coming off of an impressive year in San Jose where he had 17 goals and 40 points. Tierney’s first year in Ottawa was impressive, and although he only had nine goals he finished with 48 points. From that point, Tierney steadily declined in offensive production, battling injuries along the way, and got to the point where he could only muster 18 points in 70 games, as he did in 2021-22.
Tierney’s two-way game had always been his calling card, but his reliability on that front suffered as well. Tierney’s once-reliable win rate at the face-off dot dipped below 50% and Tierney’s time on the Senators’ penalty kill, where he was once a fixture, all but evaporated. Tierney is only 28 years old, so there is still room for him to bounce back, and he heads to Florida with a chance to re-emerge as an impactful NHL player.
The Panthers have had success in reviving the careers of former Ottawa Senators, just one look at Anthony Duclair‘s numbers in Florida confirm that. Tierney’s signing gives him a chance to follow in Duclair’s footsteps and re-establish himself as an NHL option on the Panthers.
Boston Bruins Extend Jack Ahcan
As reported by PuckPedia, the Boston Bruins have re-signed defenseman Jack Ahcan to a one-year, $750K deal. The contract carries a $115K AHL salary and a $125K total guarantee.
Ahcan, 25, is an undrafted defenseman who turned pro with the Bruins organization in 2020-21 after a successful college career at St. Cloud State. An undersized blueliner, Ahcan’s calling card has always been his offense. In college, Ahcan was a productive offensive player. Ahcan finished his college career with 103 points in 144 games and even captained St. Cloud State during his senior season.
Ahcan’s transition to professional hockey has been an up-and-down affair. He’s shown some promise at the AHL level, scoring 33 points in 65 games across two seasons as well as handling a top-of-the-lineup role in Providence this season that required him to weather time on the penalty kill as well as anchor the team’s power play.
But Ahcan’s size is an issue, as he stands just five-foot-nine and weighs 180 pounds, meaning he’s a risk to be too frequently outmuscled for pucks and position by stronger players. As a result, his NHL impact has been limited, and he found himself a Bruins healthy scratch this season. The coaching staff in Providence clearly trusts him, though, meaning there’s more to his game than there might seem to be if one looks just at his size and production.
Ahcan will head to training camp in the fall and have an opportunity to battle other defenders for an NHL job. Ahcan’s one-year deal is an indication that 2022-23 is a make-or-break year for the 25-year-old to show that still has the potential to be a full-time NHLer.
Minor Transactions: 07/17/22
With NHL free agency now underway, dozens of lower-level players are also trying to find work. Many of them will end up overseas or signing minor league deals. This is where we will keep track of notable signings around the world.
- The Laval Rocket of the AHL announced today that they have agreed to a one-year, one-way AHL contract with forward Gabriel Bourque. Bourque, 31, has 413 games of NHL experience and spent last season with the Rocket. In 67 games in Laval, Bourque had 11 goals and 28 points. Bourque was the team’s most important penalty-killing forward and should help the Rocket have another strong season.
- The Rocket also announced two more contracts today: one-year, two-way (AHL/ECHL) deals with goaltenders Philippe Desrosiers and Joe Vrbetic. Desrosiers, 26, was the number-one goalie for the Montreal Canadiens’ new ECHL affiliate, the Trois-Rivieres Lions. Desrosiers went 19-13-1 with a .902 save percentage and 3.09 goals-against-average, helping lead the Lions to a playoff berth in their first-ever season. Desrosiers, a second-round pick of the Dallas Stars at the 2013 draft, will likely receive a similar role in the ECHL next season. Vrbetic, who turns 20 in October, was a seventh-rounder of the Canadiens at the 2021 draft. He was the starting goalie for one of the OHL’s best teams, the North Bay Battalion, and went 29-10-6 with a .906 save percentage.
- After dramatically avoiding relegation to Swedish third-tier league HockeyEttan, Sodertalje SK is looking to solidify their place in HockeyAllsvenskan. They took a step towards doing so today, signing former Erie Otters star Anthony Luciani. Luciani spent 2021-22 as a top scorer for Orli Znojmo in the Austrian Erste Bank Hockey League, where he had 51 points in 48 games.
- Former NHLer Taylor Beck, who last played in the NHL with the New York Rangers in 2016-17, signed a one-year contract with HC Sibir Novosibirsk of the KHL. Sibir was a playoff-caliber team in 2021-22 and should be boosted by the addition of Beck, who had 38 points in 42 games last season for Dynamo Minsk.
This page will be updated throughout the day
Florida Panthers Sign Michael Del Zotto
After being bought out on Tuesday, veteran defenseman Michael Del Zotto has found a new landing spot. The Florida Panthers have announced that they have signed Del Zotto to a one-year, two-way contract. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Del Zotto is the latest former Ottawa Senator to head to the Sunshine State, joining recent Panthers signings Colin White, Chris Tierney, and Rudolfs Balcers.
Del Zotto, 32, is a veteran of over 700 NHL games, and he is now on the ninth team of his NHL career. Del Zotto split time between the NHL and AHL levels in 2021-22, finding great success at the AHL level with the Belleville Senators while struggling to live up to his $2MM cap hit in Ottawa. Del Zotto had 27 points in 26 games in Belleville and 13 points in 26 games in Ottawa.
Del Zotto’s calling card has always been his ability to move the puck, and that’s what he’s being signed by Florida in order to provide. As it’s a two-way deal, Del Zotto will likely see time in both the AHL and NHL next season, although he could be a top-priority injury fill-in should one of the more talented Panthers defenders get injured.
As a cheap depth signing, Del Zotto is a wise add for a team that wants to improve on last season’s campaign, a year that resulted in both a President’s Trophy as well as a mightily disappointing second-round exit. Del Zotto will compete for opportunities against Marc Staal, Lucas Carlsson, and Anthony Bitetto, among others.
St. Louis Blues Extend Niko Mikkola
The St. Louis Blues announced today that they have re-signed defenseman Niko Mikkola to a one-year, $1.9MM contract.
Mikkola, 26, was a fifth-round pick of the Blues at the 2015 draft. By that point, Mikkola had gotten into just a handful of high-level professional hockey games, but in the year after he was drafted Mikkola took on a role as a regular defenseman on a strong KalPa Kuopio team. Mikkola spent three seasons at KalPa and then spent one season playing for Tappara Tampere before making the jump to North American hockey. Mikkola had established himself as a top-four quality defenseman in Liiga and needed to prove he could adjust and grow on North American ice.
Mikkola spent two seasons playing for the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL, slowly growing into one of their most dependable defensive defensemen. Mikkola’s success in San Antonio led him to a call-up in St. Louis, and Mikkola hasn’t been back to the AHL since that point. At the NHL level, Mikkola has averaged third-pairing minutes and seen time on the Blues’ second-unit penalty kill.
His offense isn’t what makes Nikkola an effective professional defenseman, it’s his size, reach, and overall defensive game. Mikkola is six-foot-four and weighs nearly 210 pounds, and he is able to effectively utilize that size to help clear traffic in front of Jordan Binnington. At 26 years old, Mikkola is in the thick of his prime and should be able to handle a role as a defensive specialist in St. Louis moving forward.
A $1.9MM deal is a very reasonable cost to the blues for what Mikkola brings to the table. The Blues, like all teams, are cap-conscious, although their need to maximize every cap dollar is made more important by their desire to remain a Stanley Cup contender for the next several years. Mikkola provides a cost-certain NHL-caliber defenseman, at least for next season. Beyond that point, Mikkola will have freedom to choose where he wants to play and the Blues will have to make the choice on whether he’s worth a pricier long-term investment.
Edmonton Oilers Sign Mattias Janmark
The Edmonton Oilers have announced their latest free agent signing: former Vegas Golden Knight Mattias Janmark is heading north, joining the Oilers on a one-year, $1.25MM deal.
Janmark, 29, was a third-round pick of the Dallas Stars at the 2013 draft and has been a consistent third or fourth-line forward since making his NHL debut in 2015-16. Janmark made the jump to North American professional hockey after an impressive season with Frolunda of the SHL and made an immediate impact with the Stars, scoring 15 goals and 29 points in 73 games. Janmark missed all of 2016-17 with a knee injury, but that didn’t stop his immediate production, as he scored 19 goals and 34 points in his first season after the injury.
The year after that, though, Janmark’s puck luck evaporated. Janmark’s shooting percentages in his first two seasons had hovered in the low teens, and in 2018-19 it crashed to just 5.7%, leading Janmark to a disappointing six-goal, 25-point year. In 2019-20, Janmark’s shooting rebounded only slightly, and he finished with another six-goal performance on a 7% shooting percentage. Those two disappointing years sealed Janmark’s exit from Dallas, and he signed a one-year, $2.25MM deal with the Chicago Blackhawks.
In Chicago, Janmark re-discovered his goal-scoring touch, potting ten goals and 19 points in just 41 games before he was traded to the Golden Knights as part of a three-team trade that net the Blackhawks second and third-round picks. In Vegas, Janmark had only five points in 15 regular season games, but that wasn’t what earned him a contract extension. Janmark is best known in Vegas for serving as the team’s hero in Game Seven against the Minnesota Wild, a game where Janmark scored a hat trick. Janmark finished with eight points in 16 playoff games and earned a one-year $2MM extension in Vegas.
Janmark’s most recent season with the Golden Knights was an up-and-down affair. His production was decent, as nine goals and 25 points aren’t totally out of line with his career averages. But injuries and the overall decline of the Golden Knights as a whole kept Janmark from having the night-to-night impact in a winning team’s bottom-six that he’s used to having. That’s what’s likely responsible for this slight decline in pay, although Janmark does now end up in a favorable situation in Edmonton.
Janmark is joining a team that just went to the Western Conference Final and he should be able to take on a valuable bottom-six role as a second-unit penalty-killer and secondary goal-scorer. Janmark has averaged around a minute of shorthanded ice time per game for the past few seasons and that’s about what should be expected of him in Edmonton.
At a $1.25MM price tag, the Oilers have secured a reliable, experienced, prime-age bottom-sixer who can help their penalty kill. The Oilers’ offseason is far from over, as Kailer Yamamoto, Jesse Puljujarvi, and Ryan McLeod are all restricted free agents, but this is a sensible addition nonetheless.
Latest On Patrik Laine
The Blue Jackets have had a huge offseason so far, with the signings of Johnny Gaudreau and Erik Gudbranson drawing particular attention. Now that free agency has settled, the focus in Columbus has shifted to the situation with restricted free agent winger Patrik Laine. The 24-year-old forward is two years away from unrestricted free agency and has the option to file for arbitration, take two (likely expensive) arbitration awards, and then hit free agency in 2024.
Columbus has a history of talented forwards leaving in free agency (Artemi Panarin sticks out as a recent example) so it makes sense that the Columbus market would be watching the Laine situation intensely with the hope that history doesn’t repeat itself. In this case, Blue Jackets fans have reason to exhale. Laine and his representatives, per Aaron Portzline of The Athletic, will not be filing for arbitration before the 5 pm deadline today.
That’s major news, as it’s a confirmation that both the Blue Jackets and Laine are earnestly committed to finding a contract solution that keeps Laine in Columbus long-term. Laine has played 101 games as a Blue Jacket and has an impressive 36 goals and 77 points, including 26 goals and 56 points in just 56 games in 2021-22. Laine has one of the best shots in hockey and has terrorized goaltenders ever since he made his debut as a rookie in Winnipeg.
Before the arrival of Gaudreau, Laine was one of the few stars on the Blue Jackets’ roster, perhaps the only other elite talent on the team besides defenseman Zach Werenski. With Gaudreau in the fold now, though, Laine has the opportunity to join an exciting team in Columbus that has the potential to be the most offensively gifted lineup in team history. Portzline states that negotiations between Laine’s agent, Andy Scott, and the team remain “amicable,” and it seems that Laine does have an interest in being part of that high-potential future in Columbus.
Nothing is a guarantee in the NHL, and negotiations can always go sideways. But avoiding arbitration is an important first step towards getting Laine locked-up long-term in Columbus. The deal he gets isn’t likely to rise higher than the $9.75MM AAV Gaudreau is earning, but a modest raise from Laine’s current $7.5MM cap hit would not be unreasonable.
The Blue Jackets don’t actually have a ton of cap room to get a Laine extension done, oddly enough, as CapFriendly projects the team to have $2.3MM in current cap space, which definitely would make any Laine extension a very tight squeeze. Columbus may need to move a contract in order to have enough room to get Laine’s deal done, and the contracts of Gustav Nyquist and Jakub Voracek could be their best options to move in order to get that space. With that being said, though, in today’s cap-strapped world, clearing space is as difficult and pricey as it’s ever been.
Michael DiPietro Accepts Qualifying Offer
Per CapFriendly, Vancouver Canucks goaltender Michael DiPietro has accepted his one-year qualifying offer. DiPietro’s offer carries an $840K cap hit and a $70K minors salary. DiPietro re-joins a crowded min0r-league goaltending situation in Vancouver, as the team already has prospect goalie Arturs Silovs in place as well as offseason signing Collin Delia.
DiPietro, 23, was drafted 64th overall at the 2017 draft. A star in the OHL, DiPietro has had a difficult transition to professional hockey. DiPietro played 36 games as a rookie for the Utica Comets in 2019-20 and did well, going 21-11-2 with a .908 save percentage. DiPietro’s 2020-21 was a nightmare, as he barely saw the ice thanks to a mix of injuries and his situation as a third goalie.
DiPietro’s 2021-22 was okay, but not the resounding step forward many were hoping for. In 34 AHL games, DiPietro went 15-13-4 with a .901 save percentage. CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal reported in June that the Canucks and DiPietro could be headed for a divorce this offseason, and it could be that a change of scenery is what DiPietro needs to live up to the hype as a prospect that he once held.
Winnipeg Jets Re-Sign Jansen Harkins
Another depth signing has come in tonight, this one with Jansen Harkins and the Winnipeg Jets. Per CapFriendly, Harkins has re-signed with the Jets on a two-year deal carrying an $850K AAV.
Harkins, 25, has been with the Jets organization since being drafted by the team in the second round of the 2015 draft. Harkins was a star in the WHL for the Prince George Cougars, scoring at least 20 goals in three straight seasons and over 70 points twice.
As a professional, Harkins has taken a long road to the NHL. Harkins spent parts of four seasons in the AHL with the Manitoba Moose and even spent a few games with the Jacksonville IceMen of the ECHL.
At the NHL level, Harkins has been a useful, if a bit unimpressive depth player for the Jets. He has 22 points in 132 career games and had seven goals and 13 points in 77 games this past year, his first as an NHL regular. Harkins played in an extremely limited role, getting under 10 minutes of ice time per game.
Such little ice time and zero special teams use isn’t ideal for a bottom-sixer, but Harkins provided energy to the Jets’ lineup, which is something they valued enough to keep him on their NHL roster.
At an $850k salary, getting Harkins back to fill out the Jets’ depth isn’t a bad piece of work for GM Kevin Cheveldayoff.
Offseason Notes: Dubois, Canadiens Defense, Kadri
The full extent of the Montreal Canadiens’ offseason plans began to take shape today, as the team traded defenseman Jeff Petry and center Ryan Poehling to the Pittsburgh Penguins. One major name that many have connected to the Canadiens is that of Winnipeg Jets center Pierre-Luc Dubois. It doesn’t take any detective work to understand why that connection is being made: Pat Brisson, Dubois’ agent, has communicated that his client would like to play in Montreal, and Dubois has reportedly communicated to the Jets that his intention is to leave as a free agent in two years time. Many have speculated, then, that the Canadiens would attempt to acquire Dubois this summer, and it appears that that sort of speculation is grounded in reality.
According to Arpon Basu of The Athletic (subscription link), Dubois attended the NHL Draft in Montreal because he “believed a trade would be completed on the draft floor.” Furthermore, Basu adds that “it is believed” that Winnipeg is “holding up a trade” because they want Montreal to include a player in the compensation package for Dubois that Montreal has no interest in moving. As we saw with the trade of Alexander Romanov to get Kirby Dach on draft night, Canadiens GM Kent Hughes is willing to trade players he isn’t actively looking to deal if he believes the player he’s getting in return is worth it. Dubois is extremely talented, but as a result the player the Jets could be seeking from Montreal could be someone too important for the Canadiens to move.
Now, for some other notes on ongoing offseason activity:
- Hughes spoke to the media today following the Petry deal, and mentioned, as relayed by David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, that the Canadiens would in all likelihood be looking for a right-side defenseman to fill the hole left by Petry’s absence. Star offensive defenseman John Klingberg‘s name sticks out as the best right-shot defender on the market, but he’s likely out of the Canadiens’ price range. Veteran defenseman Anton Stralman and Michael Stone are other UFA options, but neither truly inspire confidence. Perhaps the most intriguing option for the Canadiens is a possible return for P.K. Subban, who last played for the team in 2015-16. Subban maintains an active philanthropic presence in Montreal and his ties to the city have survived the many years he’s spent playing for other teams. While he may not be a long-term option for the Canadiens, his signing would definitely attract attention.
- Nazem Kadri is perhaps the best remaining UFA on the market, although he may not be without a contract for long. According to Peter Baugh of The Athletic, multiple teams are attempting to clear cap space in order to have room to sign Kadri. Kadri “wants to be on a contender” and has “ruled out” teams not considered true Stanley Cup threats. Kadri scored 28 goals and 87 points last season and just recently won the Stanley Cup. The contract he receives will likely be one of the biggest given out this offseason.