Ducks Notes: Marchessault, Stamkos, Gibson, Gudas
Anaheim was also one of the many teams making serious pitches for star forwards Jonathan Marchessault and Steven Stamkos during their brief stints on the free agent market earlier this summer, said Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet on today’s “32 Thoughts” podcast. TSN’s Bob McKenzie reported at the time that the Ducks were among the top five teams making competitive offers for Stamkos, but Marchessault wasn’t linked to Anaheim until now. Many expected Anaheim to be a major player in free agency after picking up veterans Gudas and Alex Killorn in last year’s frenzy, especially with ample cap space to spend, but their offseason moves ended up being more conservative after Marchessault and Stamkos opted to both sign deals with the Predators instead.
There’s more from Friedman on Orange County:
- The Ducks haven’t given up on trying to move goaltender John Gibson and are still shopping him with three years left on his contract, Friedman said. But there hasn’t been any significant progress, and no deal appears close with less than two weeks to go until training camp. They’ve been in trade discussions regarding the 31-year-old, who posted a career-worst .888 SV% in 46 appearances last season, for the entirety of the offseason, per Friedman.
- With trade rumors now surrounding the Ducks’ longest-tenured player, Cam Fowler, expect them to name Radko Gudas their next captain before the season starts, Friedman said. The hulking 34-year-old defender was Anaheim’s best defensive player last season by a wide margin after signing a three-year, $12MM deal in free agency, leading the team with a +14 rating, 128 PIMs, 154 blocks, and 232 hits. The captaincy in Anaheim has been vacant since Ryan Getzlaf retired in 2022.
Ducks, Cam Fowler Reportedly Exploring Trade Options
After over a decade in Orange County, defenseman Cam Fowler‘s time with the Ducks may soon come to an end. Both he and the team are in the early stages of exploring trade options in what Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman called a “positive working environment” on Friday’s episode of the “32 Thoughts” podcast.
[Fowler’s] a little bit older. They’ve got a lot of good young players, and eventually what you’ve got to start doing is you’ve got to say, ‘You know what, Cam, we have to start taking some of your ice time so that these other players learn what it’s like to play in the important situations’… Fowler knows that when they’re good and they’re really ready to contend, it’s going to be their team and not his team.
Fowler, 32, has been a staple on the Anaheim blue line ever since they made him the 12th overall pick in the 2010 draft. He hit the NHL full-time the following season, stepping into a top-four role on a team in the throes of playoff contention.
While never cementing himself as a true star defender, he’s been remarkably consistent across a 974-game NHL career that’s spanned 14 seasons. He’s averaged over 20 minutes per game in every year of his career thus far, and his offensive production never varies too much from his career average of 0.47 points per game.
Fowler has only received outside Norris Trophy consideration once. It was in 2017 after he scored a career-high 11 goals, averaged another career-high 24:51 per game, and played a pivotal role in the Ducks advancing to the Western Conference Final. That performance spurned Fowler’s big payday – an eight-year, $52MM extension he signed immediately upon becoming eligible in the 2017 offseason that kicked in for the 2018-19 campaign.
He’s now entering the final two seasons of that deal, which carries a $6.5MM cap hit. The Windsor, Ontario native is still Anaheim’s undisputed top defender, averaging north of 24 minutes per night over the last three years. His offensive output has remained at, if not slightly above, his career average as the Ducks tore down their roster in the late 2010s in anticipation of their ongoing post-Ryan Getzlaf rebuild.
The past two campaigns have been difficult for the club, especially in their own end. That’s led to some pretty eye-popping numbers for Fowler, who’s posted a combined -59 rating in 163 games since the start of 2022-23. He may be logging the most ice time among Ducks defenders, but he’s not receiving the most challenging matchups. His offensive and defensive zone starts at even strength have remained relatively even, as they have for most of his career.
Poor goaltending doesn’t drag down that rating too much. His possession numbers have been legitimately bad, controlling only 46.1% of expected goals at even strength over the past two seasons, per Hockey Reference. However, his shot attempt shares were above team average during that time, a fact that the Ducks’ front office will likely point out in trade talks to prove that reports of Fowler’s defensive demise are exaggerated.
Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek will likely need to retain a small amount of Fowler’s remaining salary to move him. Only nine teams have the cap space for Fowler’s full $6.5MM hit if a trade were to happen today, per PuckPedia, and nearly all of them are in rebuilds themselves or still have a significant financial commitment to make this offseason to one or more unsigned restricted free agents. But doing so wouldn’t be an issue for Anaheim, which is only $2.1MM above the cap floor and has all three of its salary retention slots open.
Fowler largely has control over where he ends up as talks advance. The defender has a modified no-trade clause that allows him to submit a list of four teams to which he’d be willing to accept a trade. However, Friedman reports he’s willing to give the Ducks more teams to work with outside of the list, which he already submitted to the team over the summer.
Senators Sign Calen Addison, Nikolai Kulemin To PTOs
The Senators are bringing in defenseman Calen Addison and veteran winger Nikolai Kulemin into training camp on professional tryout agreements, the team announced Thursday.
Addison, 24, will look to catch on in Ottawa after a difficult 2023-24 campaign. The right-shot defender broke into a full-time role with the Wild in 2022-23, playing minimally at even strength but posting 29 points in 62 games while logging significant time on the Minnesota power play.
Defensive concerns have always been paramount with Addison’s game, though. A second-round pick of the Penguins back in 2018, he arrived in Minnesota’s prospect pool two years later via the trade that sent Jason Zucker to Pittsburgh. In his limited usage in 2022-23, averaging 16:07 per game, he still managed to log a team-worst -17 rating.
An RFA last offseason, Addison held out for much of the summer before agreeing to a one-year, $825K deal shortly after training camp began in September. He played just 12 games for the Wild, posting five assists and a -3 rating, before he was traded to the league-worst Sharks in early November.
Even as the top offensive and power-play option on a paper-thin San Jose defense, Addison couldn’t reclaim his offensive production from the year before. He posted a more conservative 12 points in 60 games after the trade, averaging 17:21 per game and supplementing it with a -35 rating, although that figure doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb on a Sharks team that finished the season with a -150 goal differential.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t particularly surprising when the Sharks non-tendered Addison in June, letting him hit the unrestricted free-agent market three years before he’d otherwise be eligible for UFA status. With no interest in a guaranteed deal, he’ll look to land a likely league-minimum pact in camp with the Sens.
While Ottawa’s top four on defense are set to enter the season with Thomas Chabot, Nick Jensen, Jake Sanderson, and Artem Zub, there will be a fair amount of competition for bottom-pairing jobs. Veteran Travis Hamonic is still under contract, and he’ll be competing with the younger Jacob Bernard-Docker and Tyler Kleven for minutes out of the gate. There’s more than enough room for Addison to squeeze himself into the conversation, especially as a much more skilled puck-mover than any member of that trio.
Meanwhile, Kulemin is an immediate contender for the most eye-popping PTO of the offseason. The 38-year-old winger was a second-round pick of the Maple Leafs back in 2006, playing in over 400 games for the club (including a 30-goal campaign in 2010-11). He then signed a four-year deal with the Islanders in free agency in 2014, recording 37 goals and 79 points in 248 games there.
But after falling to a fourth-line role amid a rash of injuries in 2017-18, the final season of his contract in New York, Kulemin opted to return to his native Russia the following summer. He’s spent the last six years in the Kontinental Hockey League playing for Metallurg Magnitogorsk and Salavat Yulaev Ufa.
Kulemin is still an effective secondary scorer in a top professional league, though, even in the final stages of his career. He had 13 goals and 25 points in 46 games for Ufa last season, finishing sixth on the team in scoring while serving as an alternate captain.
It’s a puzzling career move for Kulemin, but it appears he’s intent on getting another shot in North America. There is an outside chance he could land a fourth-line role and make the opening night roster, competing with players like Angus Crookshank and Zack MacEwen. But if he’s intent on adding to his 669 career NHL games, he’ll likely need to do it by starting with the Sens’ AHL affiliate in Belleville and working his way back up.
Maple Leafs Sign Marshall Rifai To Two-Year Extension
The Maple Leafs have extended defenseman Marshall Rifai on a two-year contract, the team announced today. The deal will pay him up to $1.55MM in total ($775K per season) if he’s on the NHL roster – the league minimum. PuckPedia adds that it’s a one-way agreement in both years.
Rifai, 26, signed an AHL contract with the Maple Leafs’ affiliate, the Toronto Marlies, after completing his collegiate career at Harvard in 2022. He landed a two-year, two-way NHL deal with the Maple Leafs the following summer after recording 16 points, a +3 rating, and a team-high 118 PIMs in 69 games with the Marlies in his first professional season.
The left-shot defender’s first year under an NHL contract also saw him make his NHL debut. Rifai suited up twice for the Leafs last season, posting a +1 rating, one shot, and four hits while averaging 11:40 of ice time across the pair of February contests. He also improved offensively on the farm, upping his production to 17 assists and 19 points in 57 games with the Marlies while posting 71 PIMs and a +14 rating.
Rifai would have become an unrestricted free agent next summer, a fate avoided with today’s extension. He’ll now be eligible to test the open market when his new deal expires in 2027. Attaching two additional years of term to his contract now makes it highly unlikely that a team will claim Rifai off waivers when Toronto attempts to assign him to the Marlies to begin the season.
Ducks Sign Oscar Dansk To Two-Way Deal
The Ducks have added free agent goaltender Oscar Dansk, signing him to a two-way deal, the team announced today in a press release. Financial terms were not disclosed by the team but PuckPedia reports that the contract pays $775K in the NHL, $150K in the minors, and has a guarantee of $200K.
Dansk, 30, has made just six NHL appearances, all for the Golden Knights, and hasn’t seen NHL ice since March 2021. He hasn’t been out of the NHL pyramid, though. He spent the last two seasons on two-way deals with the Flames, recording a 3.04 GAA, .900 SV%, and a 19-18-5 record in 44 AHL games for the Calgary Wranglers while backing up top goaltending prospect Dustin Wolf.
Following that run, he’ll remain in a No. 3/4 role for a Pacific Division club. Dansk will likely land on waivers during training camp and, if he clears, report to the AHL’s San Diego Gulls. There, he’ll complement a trio of young Ducks netminders: Vyacheslav Butsayets, Calle Clang, and Tomas Suchanek. At least one of those three, likely Butsayets, will be destined for assignment one level further down to the ECHL’s Tulsa Oilers.
Dansk, a Stockholm native, was a second-round pick of the Blue Jackets in 2012. In addition to his time in the Columbus, Vegas, and Calgary organizations, Dansk has played professionally for Rögle BK of the Swedish Hockey League (2015-2017) and Spartak Moscow of the Kontinental Hockey League (2021-22).
Devils Sign Jakub Zboril, Michael Hutchinson To PTOs
The Devils have officially signed defenseman Jakub Zboril and goaltender Michael Hutchinson to professional tryout agreements, the team announced today in a pair of press releases.
Zboril, the No. 13 overall pick by the Bruins in 2015, didn’t see any NHL action last season for the first time since 2019-20. He was waived following training camp and assigned to the AHL’s Providence Bruins, where he was limited to nine points and a -5 rating in 31 games before his nine-year tenure in the Boston organization ended in March.
After being shipped to the Blue Jackets in the trade deadline deal that saw Andrew Peeke head to the Bruins, Zboril posted four assists and a -2 rating in 15 games to end the season with Columbus’ AHL affiliate, the Cleveland Monsters. He wasn’t brought back after reaching unrestricted free agency this summer following the conclusion of the two-year, $2.28MM extension he signed to stay in Boston in 2022.
Now 27, Zboril has topped out as a top-four AHL defender or a fringe No. 7 option on an NHL roster. He has one goal, 15 assists, 16 points, and an even rating in 76 career appearances in parts of four seasons with the Bruins, averaging 15:38 per game. The 6’0″, 194-lb defender does play an effective physical game, but he hasn’t been a notable offensive option in the pros, even at the AHL level.
Hutchinson, 34, will provide veteran insurance between the pipes during camp to complement a trio of young, NHL-contracted depth netminders who will be jockeying for AHL and ECHL starts. He hasn’t been a full-time NHL option since the mid-2010s, but he has still made at least one appearance per year in a depth role for various teams.
He spent last season with the Red Wings, mostly with their AHL affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins. But he did make one NHL start, ironically against the Devils, posting a .917 SV% in a loss on Dec. 23, 2023. He’s struggled in AHL action over the past few years, posting sub-.900 save percentages for three seasons in a row.
Neither player will compete earnestly for a spot on the Devils’ opening night roster. Instead, they’ll look to convert strong camp performances into two-way deals and land with New Jersey’s AHL affiliate, the Utica Comets, for 2024-25 after likely passing through waivers unclaimed.
Alex Goligoski Confirms Retirement
Free agent defenseman Alex Goligoski is hanging up his skates, he confirmed to Joe Smith of The Athletic. It’s the expected outcome after reports in June indicated he wasn’t expected back with the Wild, where he spent the final three seasons of his career.
“I think I’ve known for a while,” Goligoski told Smith. “Do you hang around and see if some team wants to throw some money at you? I have no desire to move my family. No desire to go by myself and do all that. That’s the most amazing thing about finishing in Minnesota. It makes it easier to say, ‘Hey, I’m good.’”
“…I think it’s the longevity of it, honestly. I can totally see where it’d be very difficult if you’re not planning on being done, where it’s like you don’t get a contract but you’re still younger. It feels to me like I’ve had my fun, I’ve done it long enough. I’m good to step away and move on.”
Goligoski, 39, was a second-round pick by the Penguins in 2004 before starting a three-year run at the University of Minnesota. The Grand Rapids, Minnesota native turned pro with Pittsburgh for the 2007-08 campaign, playing parts of four seasons in the Steel City before being sent to the Stars in a blockbuster swap for James Neal and Matt Niskanen.
A top-pairing option for much of the 2010s in Dallas, Goligoski’s signing rights were traded to the Coyotes just days before becoming a free agent in 2016 and quickly signed a five-year, $27.38MM deal. He continued to hold down top-four minutes there for the life of that contract before signing a one-year, $5MM deal with the Wild, his hometown club, in 2021. He signed a two-year, $4MM deal to extend his stay in the State of Hockey the following summer, which expired this June.
The writing was on the wall for Goligoski after last season, which saw him limited to 10 assists in 36 games while averaging 14:49 per game and serving as a healthy scratch for long stretches of the season. He hasn’t been a top-of-the-lineup option since his days in Arizona, but he did remain a capable puck-moving presence in a limited role after joining the Wild.
Goligoski was one of the league’s 10 oldest players last season. Three players ahead of him on the list – Jeff Carter, Zach Parise, and Joe Pavelski – had already retired this summer, making Goligoski the sixth-oldest active player in the league at the time of his retirement.
His first season as an NHL regular saw him lift the Stanley Cup with the Penguins in 2009, appearing in 45 regular-season games and two playoff games en route to the championship win. Over 1,078 regular-season games, he scored 87 goals, 388 assists, and 475 points and posted a +55 rating while averaging 21:55 per night. He added 21 points in 47 playoff games in six trips to the postseason (2009, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2020, and 2022).
While ending his playing days, Goligoski hopes to kick off a career in an NHL front office soon. “I’ve always liked breaking down what teams do and why they do it,” he told Smith. “I have a good sense of the right way to do things. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the right way and the wrong way to do things. I think it’d be something I’m good at. So we’ll see.” He doesn’t have an official role with the Wild, but Smith reports Wild general manager Bill Guerin will be open to hiring him once he’s ready to begin the next phase of his hockey career.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Marc Staal Retires, Joins Rangers As Development Coach
Veteran defenseman Marc Staal has announced his retirement after 17 seasons. He’s immediately beginning his front office career with the Rangers as a player development assistant, the team announced.
For Staal, it’s a return to where his NHL career began nearly two decades ago. The No. 12 pick in the 2005 draft by the Rangers, he was the third Staal brother to reach the NHL, following Eric Staal with the Hurricanes and Jordan Staal with the Penguins.
Staal, now 37, spent two post-draft seasons back in junior hockey with the Ontario Hockey League’s Sudbury Wolves before becoming a full-time fixture on the New York blue line immediately upon turning pro in 2007. He challenged for top-four minutes in his rookie season, posting 10 points and a +2 rating in 80 games while averaging nearly 19 minutes per night en route to finishing 12th in Calder Trophy voting in 2007-08.
By the time his entry-level deal expired, Staal was averaging over 22 minutes per game and had become one of the better stay-at-home defenders in the league on a team consistently in the playoff race. He also contributed a decent amount of offense, posting 27 points in his final ELC year of 2009-10 – all at even strength. That led the Blueshirts to give him a five-year, $19.88MM payday after a somewhat lengthy holdout during the 2010 offseason, putting pen to paper on the deal just around when training camp began in September.
Staal would remain a top-four fixture for the Rangers throughout the 2010s, signing a six-year, $34.2MM extension on top of his previous deal in 2015 to avoid becoming an unrestricted free agent. He helped guide the Rangers to the 2014 Eastern Conference championship, although they lost the Stanley Cup Final in five games to the Kings. His top showing was inarguably the 2010-11 campaign, when he recorded a career-high 22 assists, 29 points, and averaged 25:44 per game en route to receiving Norris Trophy votes for the only time in his career.
The stalwart defender saw his usage drop early on in that six-year extension, though, and he was a bottom-pairing option by the time the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020. With one year left on his deal, the Rangers attached a second-round pick for the Red Wings to take on the final season of his contract. He’d spent two seasons on a rebuilding Detroit club, signing a one-year pact to extend his stay, before landing with the Panthers as a free agent for the 2022-23 campaign.
Staal seemed to get some life back in South Florida, playing alongside brother Eric for the second time (Eric had a brief stint with the Rangers in 2016). He appeared in all 82 games for the third time in his career and posted 15 points with a +10 rating, sliding into top-four spot duty alongside Brandon Montour. He was held without a point in 21 playoff games but averaged nearly 21 minutes per night as Florida charged through to the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, ultimately losing to the Golden Knights.
A reunion wasn’t in the cards, though, leaving Staal to land a one-year, $1.1MM deal in free agency with the Flyers last summer. He was relegated to fringe usage as a No. 7 option, though, making only 35 appearances and averaging 13:49 per game.
For his career, Staal scored 53 goals, 181 assists, and 234 points and posted a +52 rating while averaging 19:56 per game across 1,136 regular season appearances. He also totaled 20 points, a -17 rating and averaged 21:46 per game in 128 playoff games with Florida and New York. He’ll be working with the organization’s defense prospects in his development role, per Larry Brooks of the New York Post.
Larry Brooks of the New York Post was first to report Staal’s retirement and development role with the Rangers.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Atlantic Notes: Peterka, Kostadinski, McCue
The NHL has ramped up its visits overseas coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, they often make an effort to reunite foreign-born NHLers with their home countries and, even in some cases, their former teams.
That’ll be the case for emerging Sabres winger John-Jason Peterka, who spoke to NHL.com’s Nick Cotsonika about getting the chance to suit up in his native Germany and play a preseason game against EHC Munich of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, where he played in 2019-20 and 2020-21.
“I was always there with my parents cheering for the team,” Peterka told Cotsonika. “We were in the stands all the time. It was so special for me to play for Munich because I’m from there [and grew] up there. Yeah, having the chance now to go back there, play against them, play in front of all the fans again, yeah, it’s going to be really special.”
After their exhibition game in Munich, the Sabres will open the regular season with a back-to-back against the Devils in Prague, Czechia. It’s the start of a crucial campaign for Peterka, who’s entering the final season of his entry-level contract after scoring a career-high 28 goals and 50 points last season.
Other items of note from around the Atlantic:
- Bruins defense prospect Kristian Kostadinski has committed to Boston College, reports Mark Divver of the New England Hockey Journal and NHL.com. Boston drafted the 6’6″, 220-lb stay-at-home defender in the seventh round of the 2023 draft. The Gothenburg, Sweden native spent last season at home with Frölunda HC’s U20 club and will touch down in the North American juniors circuit this season with the Dubuque Fighting Saints of the United States Hockey League. The 19-year-old will head to BC for his freshman campaign in 2025-26.
- Maple Leafs seventh-rounder Sam McCue has a real chance to outperform his draft slot, opines Steven Ellis of Daily Faceoff for The Leafs Nation. McCue, 19 next month, was taken 216th overall a few months ago after posting 37 points in 68 games with the Ontario Hockey League’s Peterborough Petes and Owen Sound Attack last year. But despite those conservative point totals, Ellis believes McCue has NHL upside in his game as a “high-motor winger.”
Mattias Norlinder Signs Two-Year Deal In Sweden
As expected, former Canadiens defense prospect Mattias Norlinder will continue his career in his native Sweden. The 24-year-old inked a two-year deal with MoDo Hockey of the Swedish Hockey League yesterday, per a club announcement.
Montreal didn’t issue a qualifying offer to Norlinder when he was set to become a restricted free agent earlier this summer, relinquishing his NHL signing rights. But the team still had interest in retaining the blue liner as late as last week, when his agent told Swedish media that the Habs had made Norlinder an offer to return.
Norlinder declined a return to Montreal, though, instead choosing to return to the organization where he spent most of his development. Citing a desire for more offensive freedom, he reportedly reached an agreement with MoDo earlier in the week.
However, the deal wasn’t finished because they lacked the funds to sign him. After a short crowd-funding campaign, they garnered enough cash to land him.
The Canadiens brought Norlinder into the organization with the No. 64 overall pick in the 2019 draft. They let him bake for two more seasons in Sweden with MoDo and Frölunda HC before signing him to his entry-level contract during the 2021 offseason.
Montreal loaned Norlinder back to Frölunda in the SHL for 2021-22, which is when the first cracks in an otherwise solid development path up to that point began to emerge. The smooth-skating defender had been a reliable two-way presence to start his professional career overseas and had the point totals to back it up. However, he managed just two assists in 21 games with Frölunda during his first season under contract with the Habs.
The Canadiens recalled Norlinder from his loan after Frölunda’s season ended, giving him his first taste of NHL action. He was limited to 12:18 per game through six contests but managed to record his first and only NHL point and an assist, as well as a +2 rating, 2 PIMs, two shots, three blocks, and four hits.
Norlinder never got a recall after that initial NHL stint. He spent the final two seasons of his ELC strictly in the minors on assignment to the AHL’s Laval Rocket, where he struggled to the tune of nine points and a -14 rating in 50 games last season.
He’ll now look to rebuild his value with a resurgent offensive campaign. If he wants to return stateside, doing so could still land him NHL interest when his contract with MoDo runs out in 2026.