Latest On Brock Boeser
All signs point to Canucks sniper Brock Boeser being ready for the season after he told reporters today he’s off blood thinners and has been cleared for contact (via Noah Strang of Daily Hive Vancouver). He missed the final game of Vancouver’s season, a Game 7 loss to the Oilers in the Second Round after scans showed clotting that stemmed from a blocked shot earlier in the series.
However, Boeser, 27, isn’t entirely out of the woods yet. He made it clear the situation will be one to “monitor throughout this season,” Strang said. He also added that he’ll need to wear compression gear on flights to prevent additional clotting issues.
After a breakout 40-goal, 73-point regular season, the clotting issue didn’t impact Boeser’s usual offseason training routine too much. During Vancouver’s end-of-season media availability in May, the winger said that he anticipated being ready for training camp in the fall. He didn’t disclose today if his contact clearance was a recent development or if it came earlier in the offseason.
And, as expected, Boeser also said he hasn’t begun negotiations on a contract extension and will instead let those play out after the season starts (per Strang). That’s what Rick Dhaliwal and Thomas Drance of The Athletic indicated would happen last month, with a lack of talks coming across the wire thus far in the offseason. Boeser is entering the final season of a three-year, $19.95MM deal with a $6.65MM AAV, one he’ll eclipse by a significant amount if he can repeat last season’s showing.
It’s unlikely that will be the case, though. Boeser could still earn a raise, but expecting him to hit the 40-goal mark again seems unrealistic. The Minnesota native shot 19.6% last season – nearly six points above his career average. With an expected regression to the 13-14% range, the 30-goal plateau is still reachable.
He still projects to play a starring role on a new-look Canucks offense that now features Jake DeBrusk, Danton Heinen, and Daniel Sprong, replacing some outgoing names like Sam Lafferty, Elias Lindholm, and Ilya Mikheyev. He’s slated to start the season as Vancouver’s top right wing in first-line minutes alongside J.T. Miller.
Dreger: Bruins, Jeremy Swayman Closer To Deal Than Previously Reported
After a long summer of contract negotiations between the Bruins and restricted free agent netminder Jeremy Swayman, cautious optimism is slowly building about the two sides coming to an agreement. Speaking on TSN 1050 Toronto’s “First Up” segment today, TSN’s Darren Dreger didn’t go so far as to say a deal before training camp is imminent but did report that “negotiations are probably closer than what we’re reading about” (stick taps to The Fourth Period).
As referenced by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on last week’s “32 Thoughts” podcast and first reported by Ryan Whitney of the “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast, the Bruins hadn’t reportedly moved much from an initial four-year, $24.8MM ($6.2MM AAV) offer they used to open talks at the beginning of the offseason. Swayman’s camp, meanwhile, has been looking for a longer-term pact in the $8.5MM AAV range, Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff said last month.
Regardless of how highly the Bruins value the 25-year-old Swayman, whose .918 SV% ranks third in the league over the past two seasons among goalies with over 50 appearances, they can’t commit to his ask without making a corresponding transaction. They have one open roster spot left for the goalie, but cap space would become an issue with $8.64MM in projected room, per PuckPedia.
While Dreger thinks negotiations are closer than that multi-year, multi-million-dollar gap, he wasn’t clear about which side was more willing to deviate from their ask. Last month, Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe opined a shorter-term deal with an AAV more similar to the Predators’ Juuse Saros, who inked an eight-year extension with a $7.78MM cap hit earlier this summer, could end up being what gets Swayman between the pipes before opening night.
And, while all indications still point to an agreement coming before then, it’s significantly less certain that Swayman will be in attendance when training camp opens next week. The netminder said on a podcast last month that he doesn’t want to drag down other goalies’ earning potential in the future by taking a lesser deal that could hurt their comparables.
With tandem partner Linus Ullmark out the door to the Senators, Swayman will be an undisputed No. 1 netminder for the first time this season – very clearly the root of Boston’s hesitancy to shell out superstar-level cash, even if his play has warranted it in lesser usage. He did make the slight majority of starts for the Bruins last season with 43, posting a 25-10-8 record and .916 SV% en route to finishing seventh in Vezina Trophy voting.
Latest On Alexei Kolosov
Flyers prospect Alexei Kolosov continues to be shrouded in uncertainty about whether he’ll report to the club for training camp next week, and speculation persists about where he’ll play this season.
Philly’s front office reportedly met with Kolosov’s camp, now led by agent Dan Milstein, late last month. Since then, it’s been reported that the Flyers still don’t have a firm answer on whether Kolosov will report to their AHL affiliate, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, but they’re operating under the assumption that he won’t.
If he doesn’t report and instead signs a contract with Dinamo Minsk of the Kontinental Hockey League for 2024-25, Daily Faceoff’s Anthony Di Marco reports the final two years of his entry-level contract will likely be tolled to the 2025-26 and 2026-27 campaigns. Notably, the situation very nearly mirrors the one the Flyers found themselves in when netminder Ivan Fedotov, who was signed to a valid NHL deal for the 2022-23 season, was prevented from reporting due to required military service in his native Russia and remained under contract with KHL club CSKA Moscow.
Fedotov’s deal instead went into effect for 2023-24. Although he signed an agreement last year with CSKA in violation of his NHL contract (which resulted in hefty sanctions to both parties from the IIHF), he managed to get out of his contract with CSKA and make his NHL debut for the Flyers in the closing days of the season.
Kolosov, a Minsk native, has made it clear he wants the Flyers to loan him back to Dinamo this season. The Flyers are still intent on having him log starts for Lehigh Valley, though, and that disconnect is what’s fueling their current dispute.
If Kolosov signs a contract with Dinamo for 2024-25 (or longer), violating his contract with Philadelphia, it won’t result in the same sanctions that Fedotov’s deal spurred. That’s because the KHL’s directors voted in July to make the league independent from the IIHF and the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, meaning they no longer need either governing body’s permission to sign players from foreign leagues.
Kolosov, still just 22, was a third-round pick of the Flyers in 2021. While on the small end at 6’0″ and 185 lbs, that hasn’t stopped him from growing into his own as a starter in one of the world’s top professional leagues at a young age.
Before coming to Philadelphia to end last season, Kolosov recorded career-highs in appearances (47), GAA (2.39), shutouts (4), and wins (22) in the KHL regular season for Dinamo. He put a bow on the campaign with a spectacular .925 SV% in six postseason games as Minsk fell to Dynamo Moscow. However, he struggled in brief action after coming over to Lehigh Valley, limited to a .885 SV% and 3.03 GAA in a win and a loss in two appearances.
Predators Re-Sign Juuso Pärssinen To One-Way Deal
The Predators are close to re-signing RFA center Juuso Pärssinen to a one-year, one-way deal, according to a team release. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet was first to report the contract. The left-shot forward will earn the league minimum salary of $775K.
Pärssinen, 23, made his NHL debut with Nashville in 2022-23 – certainly coming ahead of schedule for the 2019 seventh-round pick. He stayed on the roster for the entirety of the season after his initial November recall, making 45 appearances before an upper-body injury ended his season in late February. He posted six goals and 19 assists for 25 points, finishing eighth on the team in points per game, and averaged 14:20 per night while winning 50.2% of his faceoffs and logging 76 hits with middling possession numbers.
Last season, Pärssinen made the team out of camp but couldn’t carry over his overall level of play into his sophomore campaign. He posted 12 points in 44 games with similarly below-average possession numbers and a much worse showing in the faceoff dot (37.5 FOW%) before being assigned to the minors in late January.
Pärssinen remained there for the rest of the regular season, making 36 appearances for the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals with seven goals, 18 assists, 25 points, and a +12 rating. He was added back to the Preds’ playoff roster, and he did draw into the lineup for their season-ending 1-0 loss in Game 6 of the First Round against the Canucks.
An RFA at season’s end following the conclusion of his entry-level contract, Pärssinen is at a transitional spot in his development, making it difficult to work out a deal. His performance over the last few seasons in the minors has warranted his NHL looks.
The 6’3″ pivot’s production and physicality in a bottom-nine role certainly make it seem like there should be a consistent role for him down the line. Still, there are enough holes in his all-around game that warranted his demotion. As such, Nashville was likely angling for a two-way deal in negotiations here, likely with a slightly higher NHL salary should he spend time on the major league roster. Instead, Pärssinen lands a one-way pact that’s much safer financially.
It’s also indicative that he’ll make the Preds’ opening night roster for the second year in a row. With Pärssinen under contract, the Preds now have the minimum 12 forwards on their projected 2024-25 roster, per PuckPedia, and there are few (if any) forwards in the organization on entry-level or two-way contracts with a legitimate shot at starting the year in the NHL. They now have $1.5MM in projected cap space with two open roster spots and another RFA forward, Philip Tomasino, still left to sign.
Morning Notes: Blues Offer Sheets, Rossi, Gartner
The Blues tendered the first successful offer sheet(s) in three years last month when they landed both Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway from the Oilers. Some thought the rich contracts may have been a ploy to snag one while Edmonton matched the other. That wasn’t the case, as Blues general manager Doug Armstrong told Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic that the team “structured it that way in an attempt to get both players.”
“We scouted them,” Armstrong continued. “We’ve watched their development. We thought there was a chance that we could get both when you looked at the Oilers’ contracts coming up, and it ended up working out that way.”
It all indicates Armstrong’s hope to end his tenure as GM by returning the 2019 Stanley Cup winners to championship contention without a total teardown. “We now have double-digit players drafted in the first round over a five-, six-year span,” he said. “Now, they’re not all going to make it, but consistently, you have 70 to 80 percent of those guys make it; they can actually play together for the better part of five, six, seven years. Building something that’s sustainable is what we’re trying to do here. Those two players fit perfectly into that.”
More from around the NHL as training camp nears:
- Center Marco Rossi‘s commitment to a solid sophomore season in the State of Hockey was evidenced last month when he declined to participate for his native Austria in this summer’s qualifying tournament for the 2026 Winter Olympics, instead focusing on starting his pre-season training in Minnesota. The 22-year-old spoke recently to Joe Smith of The Athletic, saying he thinks a 30-goal season is “of course possible” after lighting the lamp 21 times in his rookie year. He’s got his confidence back after demonstrating his floor as a perfectly acceptable top-nine pivot last season – which wasn’t a guarantee for the 2020 ninth-overall pick after complications from COVID-19 cost him virtually all of his post-draft season. That adversity “always makes you stronger mentally,” he said.
- After a 10-year run as chairman of the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee, Lanny McDonald‘s tenure in the role will end in June 2025, thanks to term limits. He’ll be succeeded by nine-time 40-goal scorer and 2001 inductee Mike Gartner, as Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun relays. Gartner will enter a chairman-elect role next month to “support transitional matters and be on the search committee for a new president and CEO.” He’ll also preside over the induction of the 2025 class, which will be announced weeks after he takes over as chairman full-time.
Snapshots: Sharks, Shesterkin, Perfetti, Clutterbuck
The San Jose Sharks have rounded out their kinesiological staff with the hiring of Will Leonard as head athletic trainer, Ryan Ledwon as assistant athletic trainer, and Patrick Dugan as assistant strength and conditioning coach according to beat reporter Max Miller.
Leonard will take over as the team’s second athletic trainer for the team since the 1997-98 season. The position was previously held by Ray Tufts who was relieved of duties the same day as former-head coach David Quinn on April 24th of this year. Leonard had previously served as the head athletic trainer for the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda before working under Tufts for the last two years with the Sharks as an assistant athletic trainer.
Ledwon and Dugan are rookies to the organization with the former having experience in his role with the AHL’s San Diego Gulls of the Anaheim Ducks organization. Dugan’s new role with the Sharks will be marked as his first position in professional hockey.
Other snapshots:
- All signs point to Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin eclipsing the retired Carey Price to become the league’s highest-paid goalie, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet said on Friday’s “32 Thoughts” podcast. If that’s the case, his inevitable extension to keep him off the free agent market in 2025 will check in with a cap hit north of $10.5MM. The Rangers already have over $58MM tied up for 2025-26 with only 10 players signed, per PuckPedia.
- Jets RFA Cole Perfetti may still be without a contract, but the young forward has returned to Winnipeg to train before hopefully signing a new deal before training camp, Darren Dreger of TSN reports. Dreger adds that Perfetti, 22, still intends to represent the Jets at next week’s player media tour in Las Vegas, even if he doesn’t have a deal. Multiple Winnipeg-based pundits have posited a two-year bridge deal is the most likely outcome. However, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period said yesterday that Perfetti’s camp is still awaiting a firm offer from the Jets.
- Free agent winger Cal Clutterbuck has spurned PTO offers as he continues to search for guaranteed employment next season, reports James Nichols of New Jersey Hockey Now. Clutterbuck, who turns 37 in November, is on the open market after spending the last 11 years in an Islanders uniform, plying his trade as a valuable fourth-line checking presence. The 2006 third-round pick of the Wild played in all 82 games last season for the first time in his 17-year NHL career, posting seven goals and 12 assists for 19 points.
PHR’s Brennan McClain contributed to this article.
Atlantic Notes: Newhook, Dach, Panthers, Khaira
Expect Alex Newhook to start the season on the wing on the Canadiens’ second line centered by Kirby Dach and flanked by Patrik Laine, says Eric Engels of Sportsnet. It may not be a long-term fit, though, as Engels cautions not to be “surprised if there’s a bit of a revolving door next to Dach and Laine as the season rolls along.” Regardless of who plays with them, early signs point to Dach shifting to center after spending a good portion of his first season in Montreal, the 2022-23 campaign, on the wing. The 23-year-old forward missed all but two games last season after tearing his ACL and MCL in his right knee.
There’s more out of the Atlantic:
- The Panthers will dip their toes into the professional tryout market soon, says David Dwork of The Hockey News. They’re on the lookout for a veteran forward, likely to compete to help replace the departures of fourth-liners Nick Cousins, Steven Lorentz, Kyle Okposo, and Kevin Stenlund over the past few months. Notable UFAs left to fill those roles that haven’t landed PTOs elsewhere include Pierre-Édouard Bellemare, Cal Clutterbuck, Matt Martin, and Chris Tierney.
- Jujhar Khaira‘s streak of appearing in an NHL game for the last nine seasons is in jeopardy after settling for an AHL contract today with the Lightning’s affiliate, the Syracuse Crunch. Khaira, 30, was once a regular bottom-six presence for the Blackhawks and Oilers around the turn of the decade but was relegated to an AHL role last season after signing a two-way deal with the Wild, making just one NHL appearance for Minnesota early in the season. In 22 games with the Iowa Wild, his first minor league action since the 2016-17 campaign, he scored five goals and added 13 assists for 18 points. His AHL deal with the Crunch could include a PTO with the Lightning, allowing him to participate in NHL training camp and attempt to earn a two-way contract with Tampa.
Snapshots: McCabe, Couture, Shattenkirk, Kaprizov, Sorokin
The Maple Leafs have begun initial talks with defenseman Jake McCabe on a contract extension, per Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet on today’s “32 Thoughts” podcast. He’s entering the final season of a four-year, $16MM deal with a $4MM cap hit, but the Leafs are only on the hook for half of it thanks to the Blackhawks retaining $2MM per season on his deal when they traded him to Toronto before the 2023 trade deadline.
McCabe, 31 in October, has fit in seamlessly on the Toronto blue line, averaging 20:39 per game in his first entire season there last year. It wasn’t quite a career-high in ice time, but it was a career-best year for McCabe in nearly every other category, including goals (8), points (28), rating (+20), and hits (219).
While a passable puck-mover, McCabe is primarily effective as a stay-at-home piece. He averaged 2:12 per game on the penalty kill and kept his head above water in terms of controlling expected goals at even strength, the first time he’s done so in his career after toiling on rebuilders in Buffalo and Chicago. He’ll still feature heavily on a new-look Toronto defense next season featuring Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Chris Tanev.
More from around the league:
- There’s still uncertainty about Sharks captain Logan Couture‘s availability to begin the season, but Friedman said that he doesn’t get the sense Couture is considering hanging up his skates. The 35-year-old played just six games in 2023-24 due to osteitis pubis, a rare type of joint inflammation that causes pain and swelling in the groin and lower abdomen (from the Cleveland Clinic). With three seasons left on his contract at an $8MM cap hit, the 15-year veteran still hopes to be a core piece and guide San Jose’s new crop of young players through their ongoing rebuild.
- Free agent defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk still fully intends on returning for his 15th NHL season in 2024-25, his agent, George Bazos, tells Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic. Bazos said his camp is in discussions with a few teams regarding his client but didn’t say whether they were regarding guaranteed deals or professional tryout agreements. Shattenkirk, 35, had 24 points in 61 games with the Bruins last season in bottom-pairing minutes after signing a one-year, $1.05MM deal in Boston in free agency.
- Leon Draisaitl‘s recent eight-year mega-deal likely has positive implications for Kirill Kaprizov as he kicks off extension negotiations with the Wild, Friedman posits. Kaprizov’s deal runs for two more seasons, and he isn’t eligible to sign an extension until July 1, 2025, but there’s already a sentiment building around the league that Draisaitl’s $14MM cap hit is a “needle-mover” for contracts handed out to superstars, Friedman said. After winning the Calder Trophy during the shortened 2020-21 season, Kaprizov has emerged as one of the league’s most consistent scorers, topping the 40-goal mark for three years in a row. He’s still owed $17.5MM on the five-year, $45MM deal he signed as a restricted free agent in 2021.
- An undisclosed injury may have had something to do with Ilya Sorokin‘s slight regression in play for the Islanders last season, Friedman said. The 29-year-old netminder still managed to finish eighth in Vezina Trophy voting, but his .908 SV%, 3.01 GAA, and two shutouts were all career-lows. He’s about to kick off the eight-year, $66MM extension he signed to stay on Long Island last summer, and Friedman said whether Sorokin checks in at 100% when training camp begins later this month will be one of the bigger storylines to watch for the Isles.
Friedman: Sidney Crosby Still Undecided On Extension
Entering the final season of his 12-year, $104.4MM mega-deal with the Penguins, franchise cornerstone Sidney Crosby became eligible to sign an extension on July 1 this year. A deal seemed close shortly after that, with reports suggesting the two sides would formalize an extension weeks into free agency. However, with no news yet, Elliotte Friedman said on today’s “32 Thoughts” podcast that Crosby is still weighing whether he wants to sign any of the multiple offers presented to him by Pittsburgh general manager Kyle Dubas.
Crosby’s uncertainty isn’t related to a desire to maximize his earning potential in the latter stages of his career – it’s simply about whether he’s prepared to spend the final years of his time as a top-of-the-lineup player on a retooling Pittsburgh club. The Penguins have presented him with multiple offers with varying lengths, all of which are acceptable to Crosby in theory, Friedman notes.
One thing I wonder is if Crosby is simply sitting here saying ‘I’ve got no problem with the offers, I’ve got no problem with the Penguins, but if we’re not going to be making the playoffs, am I going to be able to handle that?’ I think that’s one of the things he’d kind of weighing. My prediction is he stays because I think he’s a Penguin and he wants to be a Penguin, but I’ve tried to ask around about why it isn’t done, and I think one of the reasons is it’s the summer and he doesn’t need to rush. He’s still got time. And I think the other one is what if it’s like that? Is [he] going to be able to deal with it, because he’s still at the top of his game and he’s competitive.
With the extension saga beginning to draw out into its third month, there’s been more discussion about contingency plans and ripple effects if he enters training camp in a couple of weeks without a deal in place. Travis Yost of TSN posited earlier this week that Crosby may accept a trade elsewhere at the deadline, allowing the Pens to bolster their future with a presumably gargantuan trade return before signing back in Pittsburgh as an unrestricted free agency next summer. Last month, Josh Yohe of The Athletic wrote about the off-ice impact of Crosby not extending before camp.
Crosby has one season left on his deal at an $8.7MM cap hit, but he’s owed just $3MM in salary this year. It’s the same structure his extremely front-loaded contract has carried since the 2022-23 campaign.
If there’s a lack of urgency from Crosby’s end to the degree that Friedman implies, it’s becoming more plausible than not that he’s still not signed past 2025 when camp kicks off in less than two weeks. Pittsburgh still needs his best if they have any intention of closing the three-point gap that kept them out of the postseason for the second year in a row last season. The 37-year-old had 42 goals and 94 points in all 82 games en route to finishing ninth in Hart Trophy voting, his highest finish in the MVP tally since 2021.
East Notes: Kapanen, Kolosov, Mercer
Canadiens center prospect Oliver Kapanen signed a two-year deal with Swedish Hockey League club Timrå IK back in May. He’s already made quite an impression on his new head coach, longtime NHLer Olli Jokinen, who showered the 21-year-old with praise in a recent interview with Marco D’Amico of Responsible Gambling.
In fact, Jokinen’s been so pleased with Kapanen’s play during the SHL preseason that he’s concerned about him spending more time than expected in Montreal next month when he heads to North America for training camp. “He’s been too good for our league so far this preseason, playing like a dominant force in every single game,” Jokinen said. “He’s been great offensively, scoring some goals, but also defensively and in the faceoff circle, which will be his biggest advantage going into Montreal.”
Kapanen may have inked a multi-year commitment with Timrå, but he also signed his entry-level contract with the Canadiens shortly thereafter. While technically eligible for assignment to the AHL’s Laval Rocket, there’s a European Assignment Clause in his ELC that will allow him to return to Timrå if cut from Montreal’s NHL roster, Jokinen said.
It would be a surprise to see Kapanen unseat another Canadiens youngster like Joshua Roy to win a roster spot, but the Finnish national is certainly trending in the right direction after recording 34 points in 51 games last season with Liiga’s KalPa. If he does play this season in Timrå, he’ll likely be their leader in ice time among forwards as “a first-line center with power play and penalty kill time,” said Jokinen.
Elsewhere in the Eastern Conference:
- The Flyers are now operating under the assumption that goaltending prospect Alexei Kolosov won’t be reporting to training camp, Anthony Di Marco of Daily Faceoff reports. He also adds that general manager Daniel Brière remains unwilling to loan the 22-year-old back to Dinamo Minsk of the Kontinental Hockey League, where he’s played for most of the past four seasons. Kolosov, a third-round pick of the Flyers in 2021, has two years left on his entry-level contract with Philadelphia. He’s been in dispute with the club about where to play this season since at least May, when reports emerged he had trouble adjusting to the North American environment after ending the 2023-24 campaign with a pair of appearances for Philly’s AHL affiliate, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
- Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet said on Friday’s “32 Thoughts” podcast that he’s confident the Devils’ pending agreement with RFA forward Dawson Mercer will be a short-term one. With just under $5MM in projected cap space (PuckPedia), he doesn’t think the Devils would be able to fit a long-term deal with Mercer under the cap this season without a significant preseason corresponding transaction. Mercer remains unsigned with less than two weeks to go until training camp, but general manager Tom Fitzgerald said last month that a resolution wasn’t too far off.