Canadiens Sign Jared Davidson To Entry-Level Deal
The Canadiens have signed center Jared Davidson to a two-year, entry-level deal, per a team release. The Canadian pivot was set to become an unrestricted free agent tomorrow at 4 p.m. CT if not signed to his ELC.
Davidson, 22 in July, is coming off his first professional season for the AHL’s Laval Rocket. He made 38 appearances for the Habs’ top minor-league affiliate, scoring 11 goals and five assists for 16 points with 31 PIMs and a +1 rating.
Initially eligible for selection in the 2020 draft, he was passed over twice before landing with Montreal via the 130th overall pick in 2022. The Edmonton native spent his amateur career with the Seattle Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League. He was a non-factor offensively in his draft year, limited to 16 points in 59 games, but had a strong run during the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season (19 points in 23 games). That prefaced a major breakout in 2021-22, learning All-Star nods after leading the T-birds in scoring with 89 points (42 goals, 47 assists) in 64 games, thus earning him draft consideration.
Financial terms of his entry-level pact weren’t initially disclosed. The two-year term carries him through the 2025-26 season, and he’ll be a restricted free agent upon expiry if tendered a qualifying offer.
Canadiens Won’t Re-Sign Tanner Pearson
Add Tanner Pearson‘s name to those all but confirmed to be heading to market in July. The Canadiens have opted not to re-sign the 2014 Stanley Cup champion, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reports.
The 31-year-old will reach unrestricted free agency for the first time in his career. While he’s switched teams three times in his 11-year career, all have been via trade.
Pearson’s had a rough go of the past two seasons, missing significant time due to injuries. With the Canucks in 2022-23, Pearson needed multiple hand surgeries and was limited to one goal in 14 games. His extended stay on long-term injured reserve spurred comments from then-teammate Quinn Hughes that his injury wasn’t being addressed properly by the team’s medical staff, prompting brief NHLPA scrutiny.
He was cleared to play entering training camp last September, but a cap crunch in Vancouver prompted the Canucks to trade him to the Canadiens along with a 2025 third-round pick for backup goaltender Casey DeSmith. Pearson, who cost $3.25MM against the cap this season, was limited to five goals, eight assists, 13 points and a -12 rating in 54 appearances with the Habs.
There was some interest in his services nearing the trade deadline, but reports at the time indicated none of the offers were strong enough to convince general manager Kent Hughes to execute a move. Now, Pearson walks for nothing after averaging 12:56 per game for Montreal, his lowest usage since his Cup-winning rookie season with the Kings.
A Los Angeles first-round pick in 2012, Pearson has 138 goals and 285 points in 644 career games for the Canadiens, Canucks, Kings and Penguins. Pagnotta dubbed him “a quality mid-six add for a contender” in his report, but he likely slots in as a fourth-line or extra forward to begin the season after struggling to produce on a rebuilding club. His 0.24 points per game this season ranked 316th among 368 forwards with more than 50 games played.
He won’t cost very much on his next deal after his rough recent showing, and he did have 14 goals and 34 points in 68 games for the Canucks two years ago before his hand injuries arose. Evolving Hockey projects him to land a one-year, $1MM deal.
Rangers Reach Affiliation Agreement With ECHL Bloomington
The Rangers have reached an affiliation agreement with the expansion Bloomington Bison of the ECHL, general manager Chris Drury announced today. It makes the second straight offseason in which the Rangers have changed ECHL affiliates.
New York has long had a steady top-level affiliation with AHL Hartford, maintaining a primary relationship with them since 1997. They’re the ones more affected by any changes in secondary affiliations. Previously, the Rangers held an ECHL affiliation agreement with the Jacksonville Icemen in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons but switched affiliates with the Sabres last July and entered into an agreement with the Cincinnati Cyclones. That relationship ended up lasting just one season. The Cyclones are now without an NHL affiliate for 2024-25, although they’ll likely reach an agreement with a new club in the coming months.
Two players under contract with the Rangers – both goaltenders – spent time in the ECHL this season with Cincinnati. Their primary tandem was 2021 fourth-round pick Talyn Boyko and 2018 second-round pick Olof Lindbom, both of whom were on entry-level contracts this year. ECHL teams often play an important role in developing goalies for the NHL parent clubs, especially compared to other positions.
Boyko will likely return to the ECHL next season, now with Bloomington, while Lindbom is less likely. The Swede struggled with a .884 SV% in 29 games and is a pending restricted free agent, but he’s a strong non-tender candidate after that poor minor-league showing. 6’8″ netminder Hugo Ollas, who the Rangers drafted in the seventh round in 2020 and recently signed out of Merrimack College, is also a likely candidate for assignment to the Bison.
With the Illinois-based franchise and the Tahoe Knight Monsters both set to begin play next season, the ECHL will be comprised of 29 teams. Tahoe is the only club without an NHL/AHL affiliation.
Kings Hire Newell Brown As Assistant Coach
The Kings announced Thursday that they’ve named Newell Brown an assistant coach. He’d served in the same role for the Ducks for the past three seasons, but earlier this month, Anaheim announced they wouldn’t be renewing his contract.
Brown, 62, had a brief collegiate and minor-league playing career in the 1980s but immediately transitioned to coaching upon retiring. He’s been behind an NHL bench as an assistant in every season since 1996, working with the Blackhawks, Blue Jackets, Canucks, Coyotes and Ducks but has never gotten a shot as a head coach at the highest level.
The Ontario native has called Southern California home for most of his coaching career, serving on Anaheim’s staff on three different occasions (1998-2000, 2006-2010, 2021-2024). After winning a Stanley Cup with the Kings’ closest geographical rival in 2007, he’ll jump to the other side of the Freeway Face-Off. There was a decent bit of interest in his services around the league after the Ducks let him go, with the Senators also expressing interest in adding him to new head coach Travis Green‘s staff, reports Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun.
Brown will replace Trent Yawney on the Los Angeles bench, who mutually parted ways with the club two weeks ago today. The team confirmed that his areas of focus will be working with the club’s forward group and the power play. He completes head coach Jim Hiller‘s staff as he enters his first full season leading an NHL bench, joining associate coach D.J. Smith, assistant coach Derik Johnson, goalie coach Mike Buckley and video coach Samson Lee.
Sabres To Let Three Prospects Become Free Agents
The Sabres won’t be signing any of the three prospects they’ll lose the exclusive signing rights to at 4 p.m. CT on Saturday, Lance Lysowski of The Buffalo News reports. 2022 fourth-round pick Mats Lindgren will be eligible to re-enter the 2024 draft, while 2020 seventh-round picks Jakub Konecny and Albert Lyckåsen will become true unrestricted free agents.
[RELATED: Full 2024 List Of Expiring Draft Rights]
Lindgren, 19, is the most surprising lapsed selection. The Swedish-Canadian blue liner was touted as a late second or third-round pick by most in his draft year but slipped to Buffalo at 106th overall. After putting up 44 points and a +25 rating in 68 games with the Western Hockey League’s Red Deer Rebels in 2021-22, he looked like he may have fringe top-four upside, but his point production and two-way play immediately hit a wall and hasn’t progressed by any degree.
He finished the 2023-24 campaign with 41 points and a -4 rating in 63 games for Red Deer and should be considered unlikely to be an overage selection in next month’s draft. If he turns pro this summer, it’ll likely be as an undrafted free agent signing with a minor-league club, although he could still land an entry-level deal with an NHL team after the draft passes.
Konecny and Lyckåsen are the elder statesmen of this group and will remain overseas next season. Jakub, who has no relation to Flyers star Travis Konecny, has spent the last three seasons in a bottom-six forward role for HC Sparta Praha of the Czech Extraliga. The 21-year-old 5’10” pivot has 14 goals and 30 points in 121 career top-level games across the last four seasons. He’ll be on the move next season after signing a one-year pact to remain in the top Czech league with HC Kometa Brno last month.
Lyckåsen, 22, has spent most of his time since the 2020 draft suiting up in the HockeyAllsvenskan, the second tier of Swedish hockey. The right-shot defenseman will suit up for his third team in three years next year after signing with Västerås IK. He does have 11 top-level Swedish Hockey League games to his name, all coming with Linköping HC from 2019 to 2022, but he failed to record a point. In 36 Allsvenskan games for BIK Karlskoga last season, Lyckåsen had three goals and 14 points with a -9 rating.
Jets’ Cole Perfetti Drawing Trade Interest
It’s been a tumultuous offseason in Winnipeg already after a disappointing first-round elimination, with Scott Arniel taking over behind the bench and deadline addition Tyler Toffoli reportedly not returning to the club. David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period writes that the Jets are also receiving interest in forward Cole Perfetti, although there haven’t been any serious trade discussions surrounding the pending restricted free agent.
Winnipeg has done well for themselves in the draft in recent years, picking up a few quality forward prospects to help extend their playoff contention window in the Connor Hellebuyck/Mark Scheifele era. 2022 first-rounders Rutger McGroarty and Brad Lambert look like top-six fixtures, especially the former, and 2023 first-rounder Colby Barlow is coming off his second straight 40-goal season with the Owen Sound Attack of the Ontario Hockey League.
But Perfetti, the 10th overall pick back in 2020, is the crown jewel of that group. Now 22, the Ontario native is coming off a decent sophomore campaign, totaling 19 goals and 38 points in 71 games with strong possession numbers. Yet his ice time dipped from his rookie season, averaging 13:35 per game in his second year under head coach Rick Bowness compared to 14:58 in 2022-23. He was used especially sparingly down the stretch and was inserted into the lineup just once in the first-round loss to the Avalanche, posting three shots on goal in under 11 minutes of ice time in their Game 5 season-ending loss.
His lack of usage late in the season naturally has teams inquiring about whether he’s on the trade block. But as an RFA without arbitration rights, there’s no urgency to move him aside from the threat of an offer sheet, which would provide them with appropriate compensation anyway.
Trading Perfetti also jumps out as an unforced error as the matching seven-year, $59.5MM extensions for Hellebuyck and Scheifele kick in next season. He was especially strong before the All-Star break, putting up 30 points and a +12 rating in 47 contests. However, he resumed play with an 11-game pointless streak and overall had five goals and eight points in his final 24 outings. Part of that was due to his ice time beginning to routinely dip under 10 minutes per game, though.
For a team facing a decent amount of free-agent turnover this summer, parting with a high-ceiling asset like Perfetti doesn’t make much sense, especially since he won’t command immense value on his next deal after his slow end to the campaign. Evolving Hockey projects a bridge deal for the youngster at $3MM per season for two years, and he could likely be had for closer to $2MM on a one-year pact if conserving cap space becomes a premium for general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff. Perfetti won’t be eligible for unrestricted free agency until 2029, so the length of a short-term deal doesn’t matter much, although he will be eligible for arbitration the next time he’s up for a new contract.
Latest On The Golden Knights’ Pending UFAs
The Golden Knights won’t be able to re-sign most of their pending unrestricted free agents with a looming salary cap crunch, and they’ve already gone through the process of elimination on who to prioritize. The team has informed forwards Michael Amadio, William Carrier and Anthony Mantha that they won’t be offered extensions before July 1, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reported yesterday. All three will hit the UFA market.
Amadio is a tough loss after being arguably their most cost-effective depth scorer over the past three seasons. After being claimed off waivers from the Maple Leafs early in the 2021-22 campaign, he enjoyed the best run of his career in Sin City. The 28-year-old has played nearly 200 regular-season games in a Vegas uniform, posting 41 goals and 72 points in less than 13 minutes of ice time per game. He’s also been quite the playoff performer, posting 10 points in 16 games en route to their Stanley Cup win in 2023 and logging a goal and an assist in their first-round elimination against the Stars this year. Amadio has made the league minimum salary each season, but he could likely land close to $3MM annually this summer.
Carrier, 29, is an original Golden Knight. Selected from the Sabres in the 2017 expansion draft, the Québec native has been a serviceable fourth-line winger, and his 372 appearances rank sixth in franchise history. He struggled with injuries this season, limited to eight points in 39 games, but had a career-high 16 goals in 56 games the year before. Carrier has shining career possession numbers at even strength – a 53.6 CF% and a 55.9 xGF% – making him one of the better two-way options in the entire league for his role.
He likely won’t land much of an increase, if any, on his expiring $1.4MM cap hit. Still, Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon needs every inch of flexibility possible to keep Jonathan Marchessault and Chandler Stephenson from heading to market.
Giving up a pair of draft picks for Mantha at the trade deadline may have been a rare ill-advised move from McCrimmon. The 29-year-old winger seemed to fit nicely into their top nine down the stretch in the regular season, posting three goals and 10 points in 18 games. However, he fell out of the lineup once Tomáš Hertl and Mark Stone were ready to return from their injuries and only played in three of their seven playoff games against Dallas without recording a point. He’d been making an average of $5.7MM annually for the past four years on a deal signed by Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman in the 2020 offseason, and while he won’t earn that much again on his next deal, he might get close after his first 20-goal season since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Golden Knights are also unlikely to re-sign veteran defenseman Alec Martinez, who likely wouldn’t have been in their opening night lineup next season after Noah Hanifin‘s acquisition. But they haven’t informed him of anything like the others, Pagnotta said, and it’s unclear if he’ll test the market in July. After winning the Cup with Vegas last year and twice with the Kings in the early 2010s, the 36-year-old is “evaluating his options” as the end of his career draws closer.
And while Marchessault is the higher-priority extension target, McCrimmon hasn’t closed the door on a Stephenson re-signing. Pagnotta reports he’ll speak to Stephenson’s camp in the next two weeks to gauge his price. Still, if he heads to market, he’ll have plenty of suitors as the second-best center potentially available after Elias Lindholm. As such, his market value could very well eclipse a $6MM AAV – a prohibitively expensive figure for Vegas unless significant cap-cutting trades are made.
Full 2024 List Of Expiring Draft Rights
When drafting a player out of North America or any European country with a transfer agreement, a team acquires exclusive negotiating rights for a set amount of time. Each year on June 1, a long list of players see those rights expire and become unrestricted free agents (or choose to re-enter the draft, depending on specific circumstances).
With the deadline in a matter of days, it’s time to examine which players may become UFAs (data courtesy of CapFriendly). Some of the players listed below have already signed overseas, and others will have agreements announced soon after their current rights expire.
Anaheim Ducks
LW Connor Hvidston (139th overall, 2022)
C Ben King (107th overall, 2022)
C Albin Sundsvik (160th overall, 2020)
Boston Bruins
G Reid Dyck (183rd overall, 2022)
Buffalo Sabres
C Jakub Konecny (216th overall, 2020)
LD Mats Lindgren (106th overall, 2022)
RD Albert Lyckåsen (193rd overall, 2020)
Carolina Hurricanes
RW Zion Nybeck (115th overall, 2020)
Chicago Blackhawks
RD Michael Krutil (110th overall, 2020)
Colorado Avalanche
LD Graham Sward (146th overall, 2022) rights acquired from Predators via trade
G Ivan Zhigalov (225th overall, 2022)
Dallas Stars
C Daniel Ljungman (154th overall, 2020)
Detroit Red Wings
G Jan Bednar (107th overall, 2020)
LD Tnias Mathurin (137th overall, 2022)
C Theodor Niederbach (51st overall, 2020)
Edmonton Oilers
LW Jeremias Lindewall (200th overall, 2020)
Florida Panthers
C Liam Arnsby (214th overall, 2022)
C Elliot Ekmark (198th overall, 2020)
RD Kasper Puutio (153rd overall, 2020)
Los Angeles Kings
G Juho Markkanen (112th overall, 2020)
C Kasper Simontaival (66th overall, 2020)
Minnesota Wild
C Servác Petrovský (185th overall, 2022)
Montreal Canadiens
C Jared Davidson (130th overall, 2022) (has since signed with Montreal)
C/LW Cédrick Guindon (127th overall, 2022)
LD Petteri Nurmi (194th overall, 2022)
RD Miguël Tourigny (216th overall, 2022)
New Jersey Devils
C Jaromír Pytlík (99th overall, 2020)
New York Islanders
LW Alexander Ljungkrantz (90th overall, 2020)
LD Matias Rajaniemi (183rd overall, 2020)
New York Rangers
LW Maxim Barbashev (161st overall, 2022)
C Oliver Tärnström (92nd overall, 2020)
Pittsburgh Penguins
RD Nolan Collins (167th overall, 2022)
RD Thimo Nickl (104th overall, 2020) rights acquired from Ducks via trade
San Jose Sharks
G Mason Beaupit (108th overall, 2022)
Seattle Kraken
C Kyle Jackson (196th overall, 2022)
St. Louis Blues
RW Landon Sim (184th overall, 2022)
Tampa Bay Lightning
G Nick Malík (160th overall, 2022)
Toronto Maple Leafs
LW Brandon Lisowsky (218th overall, 2022)
Utah all players selected by the Arizona Coyotes franchise, rights transferred to Utah in sale of hockey operations in April
C/LW Filip Barklund (173rd overall, 2020)
RW Elliot Ekefjärd (192nd overall, 2020)
LD Jérémy Langlois (94th overall, 2022)
Vancouver Canucks
RD Viktor Persson (191st overall, 2020)
Vegas Golden Knights
LW/C Patrick Guay (145th overall, 2022)
Washington Capitals
C Jake Karabela (149th overall, 2022)
C/RW Oskar Magnusson (211th overall, 2020)
Winnipeg Jets
LD Anton Johannesson (133rd overall, 2020)
PHR Live Chat Transcript: 5/29/24
PHR’s Josh Erickson hosted his weekly live chat today at 2 p.m. Central Time! You can view the transcript for today’s session using this link.
Predators Hire Mitch Korn As Director Of Goaltending
The Predators have hired Mitch Korn to be their new director of goaltending, the team said in a statement Wednesday. Korn, the team’s goalie coach for its first 15 seasons from 1998 to 2014, had been working as the Islanders’ director of goaltending and was previously expected back with the team next season.
Korn, 66, began his coaching career at the low collegiate level with Kent State University in 1979. He worked his way up the ranks over the next decade before being named the Sabres’ goalie coach in 1990. After being hired by the expansion Predators under head coach Barry Trotz in 1998, Korn and Trotz were nearly inseparable. He’s followed him to subsequent coaching jobs with the Capitals and Islanders, winning a Stanley Cup in Washington in 2018. He re-joins Trotz, now the Preds’ general manager, in Nashville.
The New York native is arguably one of the best goalie specialists in league history despite not having played professionally. He played a significant role in the development and success of all-time great Dominik Hašek in Buffalo before doing the same with All-Stars Pekka Rinne and Tomáš Vokoun in Nashville. He also presided over the best years of Braden Holtby‘s career in Washington and helped Ilya Sorokin become one of the best goalies in the league with New York.
Predators fans hope Korn can have the same effect with 2020 11th-overall pick Yaroslav Askarov, who’s set to challenge for full-time NHL duties after back-to-back All-Star seasons with AHL Milwaukee. Korn will have direct reports in Preds goalie coach Ben Vanderklok, who’s held the role since 2014, goaltending development coach Jason Barron, and Rinne, their European development coach and scout.