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Capitals Activate Burakovsky From LTIR

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Andre Burakovsky, sidelined since February 9th with a hand injury, has been activated from LTIR by the Washington Capitals and is expected to be in the lineup tonight as the team travels to Tampa Bay to play the Lightning, reports Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post.

The 22-year-old winger was injured blocking a shot by Brendan Smith during a game against Detroit and has missed the last 15 contests as a result. On the season, Burakovsky has tallied 11 goals with 18 assists in 52 games while posting a +15 plus/minus rating. In 184 career regular season contests, the Capitals 2013 first-round pick has netted 37 goals and 89 points.

Burakovsky’s return was expected following the team’s reassignment of rookie forward Jakub Vrana to Hershey of the AHL. That transaction left the Capitals with just 11 healthy forwards and suggested that Burakovsky was on the verge of a return.

Vrana has appeared in 21 contests for Washington during his freshman campaign and has tallied three goals and three helpers. The 21-year-old winger was chosen in the first round of the 2014 entry draft by Washington and is considered to be one of the team’s top prospects. For now he heads to Hershey, where he will provide the Bears with an offensive jolt. In 36 AHL games this season, Vrana has 14 goals and 26 points and should help Hershey in their quest to lock up a playoff spot.

Metro Notes: Blue Jackets, Penguins, Rowney

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The Columbus Blue Jackets surprisingly strong season put them in the rare position of deadline buyer earlier this month as the team added forward Lauri Korpikoski and blue liner Kyle Quincey, shoring up the club’s depth down the stretch. This newfound depth, while a good thing, has nonetheless forced head coach John Tortorella into making some tough lineup decisions now that the Jackets are again healthy, writes Aaron Portzline of The Columbus Dispatch. Korpikoski, acquired from Dallas for young defenseman Dillon Heatherington, was a recent casualty of that depth, as he was made a healthy scratch for the team’s 2 – 1 win over Florida Thursday night.

“I’ll continue to make my call during the game as far as who’s going and who’s not,” Tortorella said. “That will determine ice time. And then from game to game we will make a determination as to who will play. I don’t know what else to say about it, except it’s a good problem to have when you starting getting your players back healthy.”

Given the situation, it might make sense for Tortorella to take the opportunity to rest some of his veterans down the stretch but according to Portzline, that isn’t something the veteran bench boss has “even considered.” Instead, Torts will let it ride with 14 healthy forwards and use individual player performances dictate who plays and who doesn’t.

Elsewhere in the Metro Division:

  • Five teams – Boston, Montreal, Florida, the New York Islanders and St. Louis – have made changes behind the bench at some point during the 2016-17 season and several Penguins players feel it’s in direct correlation to the success Pittsburgh experienced last year after replacing Mike Johnston with Mike Sullivan. But as Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes, in-season coaching changes are nothing new in the NHL. As Mackey adds, there have been 39 bench bosses replaced during the season since the 2006-07 campaign; a figure which is tops among the four major North American sports. While firing the head coach is not a recent trend in the league, it should be noted that four of the five clubs who have done so in 2016-17 are currently in contention for a playoff spot, suggesting the changes have in fact benefited the teams that made them.
  • In a separate piece for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mackey writes about how the Penguins depth has helped the team survive a bevy of injuries to key regulars. At some point this season, Pittsburgh has been without the services of Kris Letang, Trevor Daley, Evgeni Malkin, Patric Hornqvist and Carl Hagelin, among others for significant stretches but the Penguins have kept right on rolling. But GM Jim Rutherford, never one to shy away from making a deal to help his club, added blue liners Ron Hainsey and Mark Streit to bolster the defense corps while the club has relied primarily on AHL call-ups to fortify the forward ranks. One veteran minor leaguer, 27-year-old Carter Rowney, has filled in admirably when called upon this season. He tallied his first NHL goal and multi-point game in Pittsburgh’s victory over New Jersey last night. Last season, the Penguins received strong efforts from Tom Kuhnhackl, Bryan Rust and Conor Sheary, all of whom began the year in the minors, on their way to a Stanley Cup championship. It’s questionable whether Rowney will have that same level of impact on Pittsburgh’s fortunes this postseason but in a short sample he has proven he can at least serve as much needed depth.

 

Lightning Recall Joel Vermin From Syracuse

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Update (11:00am CST): Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times relays word from Lightning bench boss Jon Cooper that Palat is indeed ready to go and will be in the lineup tonight. Subsequently, Vermin has been returned to Syracuse, according to this tweet from the Elite Prospects Twitter account. It would seem then that Vermin was up as a potential emergency recall as it’s unlikely he would have been reassigned to the AHL immediately upon word Palat was healthy enough to play had the team exercised one of its four recalls.

8:45am CST: The Tampa Bay Lightning have announced the call-up of winger Joel Vermin from their AHL affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch. Bryan Burns, who covers the club for the team’s official website, added via Twitter the recall was necessary due to Ondrej Palat being banged up and questionable for tonight’s tilt against the Washington Capitals. Again according to Burns, Palat’s status should be made more clear following the team’s morning skate.

Vermin is one of several players the Lightning have had to shuttle back-and-forth between the big club and the Crunch in a season mired by injuries. In 11 appearances on the year, the 25-year-old winger has registered three points, all assists, to go with two penalty minutes while averaging 11;20 of ice time per game. The Swiss-born Vermin was originally a seventh-round draft selection by Tampa Bay in 2013 and has turned in a solid campaign for Syracuse with 12 goals and 28 points in 43 games for the Crunch.

The Lightning, despite selling assets at the trade deadline, have managed to sneak back into the playoff race and are currently just one point behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for the final Eastern Conference wild card slot. Already without centers Cedric Paquette and Tyler Johnson, both out of action since March 9th, the Tampa may also have to make do without the versatile Palat, who has 14 goals and 36 points on the season.

All told, 2016-17 has been a disappointing year for the Lightning, who were expected to be among the league’s elite teams and a Stanley Cup contender. Injuries to key players, including a significant knee injury which sidelined team captain Steven Stamkos back in November, have been a major factor in the club’s struggles but a surprising run which has seen the team accumulate 27 standings points over the last 18 contests has provided hope the Lightning will overcome and make the postseason. Should they do so, the Lightning would be a team no one wants to face, particularly with Stamkos eyeing a return to the lineup.

Emergency Recalls: Melchiori, Andersson

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As of March 1st, the day of the NHL trade deadline, teams are restricted to calling up no more than four players from the minor leagues and must be judicious in how they use them. There is, of course, an exception to that limitation: emergency recalls. Teams are allowed to call up a player on an emergency basis but they can only use a player with that designation in the event they don’t have enough healthy bodies to ice a full lineup. That very situation may possibly play out tonight for both Winnipeg and Calgary.

  • The Winnipeg Jets announced this morning that they have recalled defenseman Julian Melchiori from Manitoba of the AHL on an emergency basis. Fellow blue liner Ben Chiarot is “under the weather,” according to Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun, and is a game time decision. In the event Chiarot is unable to go, Melchiori will take his spot. Melchiori has appeared in five games this season for the Jets, going scoreless while averaging roughly 15 1/2 minutes per contest. He has registered eight points and 18 penalty minutes in 40 games for the Moose. The 6-foot-5 blue liner was chosen by Winnipeg in the third round of the 2010 entry draft.
  • With Michael Stone sidelined with an upper-body injury and Dougie Hamilton questionable for tonight’s contest due to a lower-body issue, the Calgary Flames have brought up defenseman Rasmus Andersson from Stoctkton with an emergency designation, the club announced yesterday. Andersson, 20, would make his NHL debut should Hamilton be ruled out tonight. Sportsnet 960’s Derek Willis tweeted that Hamilton was on the ice for the team’s morning skate but Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan called the blue liner a “game-time decision.” In his first season as a pro, Andersson has tallied three goals and 22 points in 50 games for the Heat. The 6-foot defenseman was Calgary’s second-round choice in the 2015 draft. Veteran blue liner Dennis Wideman will draw back into the lineup for the Flames, taking the place of Stone. It marks the first appearance for Wideman in more than three weeks.

Atlantic Division Notes: Sabres, Erne, Gourde, Panthers

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Entering the 2016-17 season, the Buffalo Sabres were considered by some as a dark horse playoff contender after the team added top-six winger Kyle Okposo in free agency and defenseman Dmitry Kulikov via trade last summer. However, a preseason ankle injury shelved sophomore center Jack Eichel for the first 21 games of the season and the team stumbled to a 7 – 9 – 5 mark in his absence. The team’s defense has also contributed to Buffalo’s struggles and unfortunately for the Sabres, there may not be much help on the way next summer, according to John Vogl of The Buffalo News.

Vogl examines the list of potential UFA defenders, a list which happens to include current Sabres Kulikov and Cody Franson, and aside from Kevin Shattenkirk and perhaps Karl Alzner, the scribe doesn’t see free agency as presenting a solution to Buffalo’s blue line woes. That means in all likelihood the Sabres will have to go the trade route in order to address their defensive shortcomings. Naturally, any deal to add a defenseman will likely cost the team a key forward and would essentially represent an example of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Elsewhere in the Atlantic:

  • We touched earlier on the injury issues impacting the Tampa Bay Lightning, but for the glass half full crowd, the absences of Tyler Johnson, Vladislav Namestnikov and Cedric Paquette offer opportunities for young players to step into more prominent roles and show the team’s coaching staff and management team what they are capable of at the NHL level. As Bryan Burns, NHL.com’s Tampa Bay Lightning contributor writes, the early beneficiaries of extra ice time and responsibility in Tampa are rookies Adam Erne and Yanni Gourde. As Burns notes, Gourde filled in as the team’s second line pivot Thursday night, recording a career-high 16:35 of ice time and registering the second point of his NHL career. Erne saw better than 14 minutes and even got some time on the power play. With Tampa Bay wrapping up a disappointing campaign, it’s quite possible the the team continues to give opportunities to some of its young talent as the front office begins to hatch its offseason strategy.
  • Last night’s 7 – 4 loss to Minnesota leaves Florida six points out of the second and final Eastern Conference wild card slot with just 16 games remaining in their season and with four teams to leapfrog in the standings. As Adam Gretz of Pro Hockey Talk writes, time is running out on the Panthers and barring a strong finish it appears Florida won’t be making their second straight postseason appearance. Missing the playoffs would represent a disappointing outcome for a team that was particularly aggressive in the offseason trying to build upon last year’s success. Florida acquired the rights to Keith Yandle and then inked the skilled puck-moving defender to a massive seven-year, $44.45MM contract extension. They signed Jason Demers as a free agent and traded for Mark Pysyk to further bolster their blue line. The Panthers also made smart under-the-radar signing, adding Jonathan Marchessault via free agency. The diminutive winger has registered a 20-goal, 39-point campaign for Florida. Yet all of those additions will be in vain unless the Panthers can close out on a hot streak and somehow sneak into the playoffs and that possibility is fading more and more with each passing day.

Central Division Notes: McKenzie, Hanzal, Blues

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The Dallas Stars decision to ink Curtis McKenzie to a one-year contract extension has obvious expansion draft implications in that it gives the team another forward that meets the minimum requirements making him eligible for exposure in the draft and allowing Dallas to protect someone else instead. However, as Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News writes, the Stars would prefer to hang onto the 26-year-old left wing rather than lose him to the Golden Knights.

Several players the Stars believed would play key roles up front (Ales Hemsky, Patrick Sharp, Mattias Janmark and Jiri Hudler among them) have missed significant portions of the season and McKenzie has proven invaluable by filling a number of roles for the team. He adds grit and penalty killing while sliding up and down the lineup as needed. McKenzie has tallied only four goals and 11 points in 43 games this season but that production is solid for a versatile, defensively responsible bottom-six forward. At a salary of just $700K for 2017-18, McKenzie represents a relative bargain, whether for Dallas or Vegas next season.

  • As is often the case with players joining a new team at the trade deadline, Martin Hanzal has struggled to find his way since being acquired by Minnesota from Arizona for a package of draft choices. But as Michael Russo of the Star Tribune notes, if anyone understands the difficulties of adjusting to a new team and new systems, it’s Wild bench boss Bruce Boudreau, who played for 17 different pro hockey clubs over the course of a 20-year career. Since joining Minnesota, Hanzal has had a rotating cast of linemates, a situation that complicates his adjustment but also one that allows Boudreau to figure out how best to ultimately deploy the veteran pivot. The coach’s patient handling of Hanzal may be starting to pay off. The 30-year-old had his best game as a member of the Wild in Minnesota’s 7 – 4 win over Florida Friday night. Hanzal recorded an assist, finished with three shots on goal and adding five hits. It’s that type of performance that made the 6-foot-6 pivot an attractive trade option at the deadline and if he can continue that level of play throughout the postseason the Wild will be pleased.
  • Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hosted his regular chat yesterday and covered a variety of Blues related topics. As usual, the entire piece is well worth the read but one item of particular interest was a look back at a March 2, 2015 trade which saw defenseman Ian Cole shipped by St. Louis to Pittsburgh in exchange for fellow blue liner Robert Bortuzzo and a 2016 seventh-round draft pick. Since joining the Penguins, the 28-year-old Cole has developed into a quality regular on the team’s back end. The seven year veteran is enjoying the best season of his career in 2016-17, registering four goals and 21 points in 63 contests while posting a +23 plus-minus rating. Meanwhile, Bortuzzo has failed to make much of an impact with his new club and has been a healthy scratch often. While the scribe understands the criticism of the deal in hindsight, he also believes that Cole wouldn’t have evolved into a legitimate top-four blue liner had he remained with the Blues. Rutherford believes that Cole simply didn’t mesh well with the Blues at the time. He goes on to write that the team needed more physicality and got that in the form of Bortuzzo. Ultimately, if they had it to do all over again, Rutherford isn’t sure St. Louis would pull the trigger on that deal.

Lundqvist Expected To Miss 2 – 3 Weeks

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The New York Rangers will be without star goaltender Henrik Lundqvist for 2 – 3 weeks with what the team is calling a “lower-body injury,” according to Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston, via Twitter. The scribe adds that the team has recalled Magnus Hellberg from Hartford of the AHL.

The worst case scenario would see Lundqvist return for the team’s final four or five contests, allowing the 35-year-old netminder enough game action to shake off any rust ahead of the postseason. “The King” was apparently injured at some point during the Blueshirts 5 – 2 win over Florida Tuesday night. The victory was number 404 of Lundqvist’s career and propelled him past Grant Fuhr for 10th place on the league’s all-time wins list. It also represented the 30th win of the 2016-17 campaign with Hank becoming the first goaltender in NHL history to record 11, 30-win seasons in his first 12 years in the league. The only season in which Lundqvist has failed to reach the 30-win plateau was the lockout-shortened 2012-13 campaign in which The King managed 24 victories in 43 starts.

Hellberg has made just one relief appearance in 2016-17 for the Rangers, stopping all four shots faced in a wild 7 – 6 loss to Dallas on January 17th. With four back-to-back sets over the next 15 days, it’s inevitable Hellberg will see some action in the next couple of weeks. In 31 AHL appearances Hellberg has recorded 11 wins against 11 losses with a GAA of 2.91 and a Save % of 0.902.

New York will likely rely heavily on Antti Raanta in Lundqvist’s absence. Raanta has turned in a stellar campaign as Hank’s understudy, winning 13 of 19 starts with a GAA of 2.33 and a Save % of 0.922. He’ll have to continue his strong play for the Rangers to have a realistic chance of catching either Pittsburgh or Columbus and sneaking into the top-three in the highly competitive Metro Division. Then again their best chance for a lengthy playoff run might come by securing the top wild card spot and shifting over into the Atlantic Division bracket thus avoiding a potential match-up with any of their Metro rivals until the Conference Final.

Lightning Recall Forward Matthew Peca

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The injury-riddled Tampa Bay Lightning recalled center Matthew Peca from the Syracuse Crunch of the AHL, the team announced this morning. Thursday night, the team lost centers Tyler Johnson, Vladislav Namestnikov and Cedric Paquette to in-game injuries and Peca will help provide the Lightning with additional depth at the center position.

At this point the injuries to Johnson, Namestnikov, and Paquette appear minor, with the trio each considered day-to-day, according to Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times. However, it’s unlikely any of the three will be able to suit up for tonight’s contest against Florida, necessitating the call-up of Peca.

In nine games this season with the Lightning, the 23-year-old Peca has registered two points while posting a -3 plus-minus rating. He has tallied eight goals with 22 assists in 53 appearances for the Crunch. After a strong four-year stretch with Quinnipiac University, Peca joined the Crunch and has scored 17 goals and 77 points in 126 career AHL matches. Peca was originally a seventh-round draft choice by the Lighting in the 2011 entry draft.

Okposo Out 7 – 10 Days WIth Upper-Body Injury

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Buffalo’s dwindling postseason chances have taken yet another hit with news that top-six forward Kyle Okposo would miss seven-to-10 days with a rib injury, as Sabres head coach Dan Bylsma told a pool of reporters covering the team this morning. Joe Yerdon of NHL.com adds that Bylsma compared Okposo’s injury to the one teammate Evander Kane suffered earlier this season.

Okposo, in the first season of a seven-year, $42MM contract he inked with the Sabres this past summer, leads Buffalo in scoring with 43 points. His 19 goals rank second on the squad.

Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News joined Yerdon among the reporters this morning in attendance for Bylsma’s statement and adds that in Okposo’s place, Nicolas Deslauriers draws into the lineup. As Harrington notes in his tweet, the Sabres have already utilized two of the four minor league recalls the team is allowed to make after the trade deadline and that for the time being the club has elected not to spend another. Recalls are allowed on an emergency basis when a team either doesn’t have enough healthy skaters to ice a full lineup or need a second netminder for a short stretch. Those recalls do not count against the limit of four.

The loss of Okposo, even if just for a week, dampens Buffalo’s already long odds of making the playoffs. Currently the team is five points out of the final wild card spot in the East and with Jack Eichel healthy and contributing at a high level, the Sabres could still make a late charge but the task is more difficult with Okposo sidelined.

 

Stars Notes: Roussel, Elie, Hemsky

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Injuries, a significant factor in the Dallas Stars disappointing season, continue to haunt the club as according to Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News, Antoine Roussel is now expected to miss essentially the rest of the season with a hand injury. The physical winger, who leads the NHL in PIM’s with 115, is in the midst of a career offensive campaign with 12 goals and 27 points in 60 appearances. Given that pace, Roussel would have finished with roughly 16 goals and 37 points had he completed the campaign healthy. Instead it appears as if the Stars will be without another of their key contributors for a lengthy stretch.

The bright side, if it can really be called that, is the Stars now have the opportunity to see what some of their AHL talent can do at the NHL level. First up will be Remi Elie, the team’s second-round draft choice in 2013 who has 25 points in 50 games with the AHL’s Texas Stars. Elie was called up last week but didn’t get into a game. Now it appears he will make his NHL debut after the team recalled him from Texas on an emergency basis.

Heika also reports that forward Adam Cracknell, out since February 18th with a lower-body injury, may be ready to return to the lineup as early as Monday when the Stars travel to Washington to face the Capitals. Cracknell, a veteran of seven NHL campaigns, is having a solid season with a career-high seven goals in 52 games while registering a +10 plus/minus rating.

The news of Roussel’s injury comes on the heels of the long-awaited return of scoring forward Ales Hemsky, who made just his second appearance of the season following surgery to repair a groin injury suffered during the World Cup. In a separate piece for the Dallas Morning News, Heika writes that Hemsky “hopes to make a statement” down the stretch in order to prove that he is once again fully healthy and able to contribute secondary scoring to teams who may be in that market this summer. Hemsky, in the final year of a three-year deal with the Stars, is poised to hit free agency and a strong performance in the season’s final leg would likely position the 33-year-old winger to earn an NHL contract next year despite missing much of the current campaign.

For his part, the veteran of 14 NHL seasons would like to return to Dallas and rekindle the chemistry he shared with Radek Faksa and Roussel in 2015-16. According to Heika, that trio was at times the Stars’ best line for a three-month stretch last year and given the likelihood the team will fancy itself a potential contender next season, bringing back a healthy and productive Hemsky on a short-term deal could prove to be a wise and relatively inexpensive move.

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