Clay Stevenson Drawing NHL Interest
At the collegiate level, there are times when a player bursts onto the scene without a ton of prior hype. Sometimes it can even lead to the attention of NHL scouts or even an NHL entry-level contract. It appears that’s the case with Clay Stevenson, a goaltender from Dartmouth College who may end up earning a deal in the coming weeks.
Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet writes that NHL teams are already making pitches to the undrafted free agent, whose final regular season game is this weekend. Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK TV goes a step further, reporting that the Vancouver Canucks have an interest in the Chilliwack, British Columbia native.
Perhaps burst onto the scene is a bit hyperbolic in Stevenson’s case, given how well he played in the BCHL before leaving for college. For the Coquitlam Express in 2019-20, the big goaltender posted a 30-2-2 record with a .936 save percentage, taking home the BCHL Top Goaltender award but missing a chance to win the Fred Page Cup after the league was shut down because of COVID-19 concerns. It was COVID issues that stole what would have been Stevenson’s regular freshman season in 2020-21 as well when Dartmouth and the other Ivy League hockey programs decided not to play.
The NCAA ruled that he would not lose a season of eligibility though, so this year is technically an impressive freshman campaign for the 22-year-old, even on a team without much success. His record is just 5-10-2 on the year, but Stevenson has produced a .925 save percentage as the primary starter. He’s even posted a pair of shutouts, two of the program’s six total wins. One of those came just a few days ago against Princeton, likely piquing the interest of scouts even further as the Dartmouth season comes to an end.
On March 1, teams will be eligible to sign entry-level contracts that begin in the 2022-23 season. It will be interesting to see whether or not Stevenson goes that route and then inks an amateur tryout to join a minor league club for the stretch run, as he’ll be limited to a two-year entry-level contract either way because of his age. A bargaining chip some teams may use to try and secure his services is having an ELC start for 2021-22, allowing him to enter the professional ranks right away and reach restricted free agency a little earlier.
Sean Avery Released By Orlando Solar Bears
Feb 25: Without actually appearing in a single game, Avery has now been released from his ECHL contract by the Solar Bears.
Feb 23: Sean Avery is a professional hockey player once again. The previously retired forward has signed an ECHL contract with the Orlando Solar Bears. He will begin on the team’s reserve list, as he returns to pro hockey after a decade away from the game.
Avery, 41, last played during the 2011-12 season, when he suited up 15 times for the New York Rangers and seven times for the Connecticut Whale of the AHL. Over parts of ten years in the NHL, the undrafted forward played in 580 regular season games, racking up 90 goals, 247 points, and 1,533 penalty minutes.
Perhaps known best for leading the league to create the “Avery Rule” which hands out a two-minute unsportsmanlike conduct penalty if a player “positions himself facing the opposition goaltender and engages in actions such as waving his arms or stick in front of the goaltender’s face, for the purpose of improperly interfering with and/or distracting the goaltender as opposed to positioning himself to try to make a play.” Avery’s on-ice antics made him one of the most talked-about players in the game during the peak of his career, though he was also an effective offensive player at times.
In 2006-07, a year split between the Rangers and Los Angeles Kings, Avery recorded 18 goals and 48 points, to go along with his 174 penalty minutes. Fifteen of those points came on the powerplay, while he also contributed on the penalty kill.
It is not yet clear when he will make his Solar Bears debut.
Dallas Stars Claim Marian Studenic; Waive Tanner Kero
Feb 25: Kero has cleared waivers, and can now be assigned to the AHL’s Texas Stars per Chris Johnston of TSN. It is the second time this season that Kero has cleared waivers. Kero has two assists in three total games with the AHL’s Stars so far this season.
Feb 24: The Dallas Stars have made a forward swap, claiming Marian Studenic from the New Jersey Devils and placing Tanner Kero on waivers, according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.
The swap is one depth forward without a ton of offensive upside for another, as Studenic and Kero have combined for one goal and four points in 40 games this season. The difference for the Stars is the six-year age difference in Studenic’s favor, along with the fact that Kero will likely clear waivers and remain with the organization.
Now 29, Kero is in the first season of a two-year contract he signed last spring that comes with a huge minor league guarantee, and given his lack of success in the NHL, it seems likely that he’ll be reporting to the Texas Stars in the next few days.
For Studenic, he joins a team much closer to the playoffs and avoids returning to the minor leagues, where he has spent the majority of the last few seasons. If he can find a way into the Dallas lineup, he’ll also set himself up for a much better negotiation this offseason, when he’s an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent.
In addition to those two moves, the Stars have recalled Riley Tufte from the AHL and placed Andrej Sekera on long-term injured reserve due to a non-COVID-related viral infection, retroactive to January 28.
Montreal Canadiens Issue Several Injury Updates
The Montreal Canadiens are on fire. The team has won four in a row under new head coach Martin St. Louis, with Cole Caufield looking reborn. The team is still dead last in the Eastern Conference, but they’ve now passed the Arizona Coyotes and are at least showing some fight for the future. With that in mind, the team has issued several updates on their injured players, starting with Carey Price.
Price is “doing better” in his off-ice rehab, but he’s still not ready to return to the ice just yet. The 34-year-old goaltender has been out all year for various reasons and may end up missing the entire year. The Canadiens aren’t rushing anything in their franchise goaltender’s rehabilitation, knowing that there’s not really any benefit in getting him back into games this season.
Corey Schueneman has been cleared from the COVID protocol and returned to practice today. He was joined by several other teammates that have been dealing with injuries. Joel Armia was at practice, is listed as day-to-day, but won’t play on Saturday night. Mathieu Perreault was a full participant in practice and is also listed as day-to-day. Josh Anderson meanwhile has been cleared to play tomorrow against Ottawa.
The two big ones are Joel Edmundson and Jake Allen, who have been out for quite some time–or in the former’s case, the entire season. Edmundson was on the ice for the first time with teammates, and will travel with the group to Ottawa. He won’t play, but it’s great to see Edmundson back on the ice at all after the nightmare season he has gone through. Allen was also on the ice and is “progressing” though there is no clear timeline on his return. Nor for Paul Byron, who is dealing with an upper-body injury and has no timeline for a return.
Chicago Blackhawks Down To Three Candidates In GM Search
The Chicago Blackhawks have whittled their general manager search down to just three names, according to multiple reports including Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Those three names are Kyle Davidson–who is currently serving as interim GM–Tampa Bay Lightning director of hockey operations Mathieu Darche and Chicago Cubs assistant GM Jeff Greenberg.
Greenberg’s name obviously stands out as someone that would be coming in from outside of the hockey world, though Friedman writes that he “knocked it onto Waveland Avenue” in his interview process. The Blackhawks are desperately trying to change the image of their organization and looked well outside the box in their search, though hiring Greenberg would certainly raise some eyebrows around the league given his lack of NHL experience.
Darche meanwhile is sort of the opposite, as someone who played in the league and has been interviewed for other jobs around the league. The 45-year-old has been with Tampa Bay since 2019 and is considered one of the most sought-after up-and-coming executives in the league, even if he too doesn’t have a ton of experience in an NHL front office at this point. A veteran of 250 NHL games, he also suited up more than 500 times in the minor leagues and has bounced all around the continent playing pro hockey.
Interestingly enough, Davidson appeared to be a surprising choice when he was named interim GM in the first place. He has been with the Blackhawks for a decade, working his way up from intern to assistant general manager, but was still relatively unknown when he took the reins. If he eventually is handed the full-time job it will be an incredible rise in a single organization.
It’s still not exactly clear when a decision will be made, though with the interview period over, one would assume it is coming quickly. Whoever does take over will have just a few weeks before the trade deadline to make some big decisions.
AHL Shuffle: 02/25/22
Six games are on the NHL schedule this evening, including a big tilt between the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks, two teams that look like they may be contenders in the Pacific Division for years to come. In the entire league, there is no race as tight as the one in the Pacific, where first and fifth are separated by just seven points. It’s Anaheim currently sitting in that seventh spot, meaning a win tonight could help them climb up the standings. As they and others prepare for action, we’ll keep track of all the minor league shuffling.
Atlantic Division
- The Toronto Maple Leafs have recalled top prospect Nick Robertson after Ilya Mikheyev left last night’s game with a non-COVID illness. Robertson, 20, has been limited by injury again this season but has eight points in his nine minor league contests. If he gets into the lineup tomorrow, it would be his first NHL game of the year.
- The Buffalo Sabres have sent down winger Brandon Biro after he made his NHL debut versus the Montreal Canadiens. Biro skated 13:30 of ice time in his debut, registering one hit in the Sabres’ shutout loss. Biro, 23, is a former Penn State Nittany Lion and has nine goals and 36 points in 39 AHL games this year.
Metropolitan Division
- The Pittsburgh Penguins have recalled Mark Friedman from his conditioning stint, where he played two games with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. Friedman has played in 12 games for Pittsburgh this season, recording four points in the process.
- The Columbus Blue Jackets have activated starting goaltender Elvis Merzlikins off of injured reserve, and in a corresponding move assigned goaltender Jet Greaves to the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters. Greaves, 20, has split time between the Monsters and the ECHL’s Kalamazoo Wings this season, and he has a save percentage of .898 in the AHL and .907 in the ECHL.
Central Division
- The Chicago Blackhawks have recalled Jakub Galvas from the minor leagues, according to Charlie Roumeliotis of NBCS Chicago. The 22-year-old defenseman has played in five games this season for Chicago, and 32 for the Rockford IceHogs of the AHL. Selected in the fifth round in 2017, this is his first season in North America.
- The Colorado Avalanche have activated Jacob MacDonald and assigned him to the AHL’s Colorado Eagles. MacDonald, 28, has been out since December 12th with an upper-body injury and has played in seven games for the Avalanche this season.
- The Nashville Predators have recalled veteran depth defenseman Matt Tennyson from the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals. Tennyson has three points in four games for the Predators so far this year and has 14 points in 40 AHL games. Tennyson is a veteran of 169 NHL games, having first appeared in the league with the San Jose Sharks in the 2012-2013 season. In a corresponding move, center Nick Cousins has been placed on injured reserve.
Pacific Division
- The Vancouver Canucks have brought up winger Phillip Di Giuseppe from Abbotsford of the AHL. The 28-year-old didn’t see any AHL action last season but has spent all of this season in the minors, notching 11 goals and 21 assists in 35 games.
- A day after Dmitry Zavgorodny terminated his KHL contract with Sochi, the Flames have assigned the winger to Stockton of the AHL, per CapFriendly. The 21-year-old started the season with the Heat, getting into six games before heading overseas where he got into ten games, picking up three assists.
This page will be updated throughout the day
PHR Live Chat Transcript: 02/24/22
Click here to read the transcript for this week’s live chat with PHR’s Gavin Lee.
Snapshots: Blackhawks, Laval, Bunting
The Chicago Blackhawks have concluded the interview phase of their general manager search, with CEO Danny Wirtz announcing that the leadership team will move to the next step in the process. The Blackhawks are known to have interviewed Kyle Davidson, Eric Tulsky, Scott Mellanby, Peter Chiarelli, Jeff Greenberg, and Mathieu Darche for the position, and were also linked to Toronto Raptors executive Teresa Resch.
Davidson has been operating as the team’s interim GM since late October when Stan Bowman left the organization. The team has been transparent throughout the process, though today’s announcement certainly doesn’t provide much of an update on when the next front office leader will actually be hired.
- The AHL will head to Laval for the 2023 All-Star Classic, returning three years after they were supposed to originally host the event. The Rocket were picked to host the 2021 All-Star festivities, which were ultimately canceled. The 2022 event was also going to go back to Laval, before eventually being canceled in December. Hopefully, things will work out this time, and the Rocket will be able to host the best of the minor leagues.
- Toronto Maple Leafs forward Michael Bunting has been fined $2,000 for diving/embellishment, meaning it was the second time he has been flagged this season. The first incident, which the league says occurred on November 16, results in a warning from the league. The latest, February 17 against the Penguins, results in a fine for the player. While embellishment fines never reach more than $5,000 for a player, after the fourth team violation a head coach starts to receive financial penalties. No player wants to be the reason why his coach is out money, meaning Bunting and the rest of the Maple Leafs will have to be a little more cautious when trying to draw penalties down the stretch.
Columbus Blue Jackets Taking Calls On Alexandre Texier
In the Eastern Conference, the playoff picture has looked set in stone for quite some time. Even now, with the Columbus Blue Jackets on an 8-2 run in their last ten, they’re still nine points behind the Boston Bruins for the last wild card position. That’s an impressive feat after struggling to find any consistency through the first half but it still might end up in a missed postseason, regardless of what they do in the coming weeks.
You can understand then, why teams may be calling the Blue Jackets to inquire about some of their players. Today, Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reports that the team has been taking calls on Alexandre Texier for the last little while, though the asking price is still quite high. Seravalli notes that to pry Texier out of Columbus, it would take a first-round pick and a roster player.
Selected 45th overall in 2017, Texier is something of an enigma. After lighting up the Finnish league as a teenager, the French forward made the jump to North America and quickly forced his way into the Blue Jackets lineup. In 2019, he played in eight of the team’s ten playoff games at age-19, including the entire four-game sweep of the powerhouse Tampa Bay Lightning. In that deciding game four, Texier opened the scoring on the powerplay and added an empty-net goal to help seal it. He was still 19 at the time.
Since then, things haven’t gone quite as smoothly. Since the start of the 2019-20 season, Texier has ended up on injured reserve three times and has just 48 points in 121 games. There is so much obvious skill in his 6’1″ frame, but his play has been inconsistent even when he’s healthy enough to contribute.
This season, he has doubled his career goal total with 11 tallies in 36 games, but once again finds himself on the shelf due to injury. He has been out since January 26 with a broken finger, and even before that had been held scoreless in his last five games.
The key to any team’s interest in Texier–to go along with oodles of potential–is that he’s also signed for next season at a very reasonable $1.525MM cap hit. If you could add him to a talented lineup and keep him healthy, there’s a very good chance that the 22-year-old vastly outperforms that number. After this contract is finished, Texier will still be an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent, meaning it’s not anywhere near the kind of trade that will see rentals swap teams at the deadline.
Again though, the Blue Jackets are in no rush here. Just as they don’t have to make a decision about Patrik Laine until the offseason–the star sniper is a restricted free agent just one year away from the open market–they also won’t be pressured into a deal for the even-younger Texier. If the asking price is actually as high as Seravalli reports, Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen is making it very clear that he isn’t desperate to move the young forward.
Jared McCann Placed On Injured Reserve
If there’s a player the Seattle Kraken couldn’t afford to lose for an extended period of time, it’s Jared McCann. The 25-year-old forward has been the team’s best offensive player all season, leading the squad in both goals and points so far. Unfortunately, McCann has now landed on injured reserve with an undisclosed injury, with the Kraken recalling Kole Lind from the AHL to replace him on the roster.
McCann is an interesting case study for those who want to know how the Kraken will approach the next few years. A restricted free agent at the end of this season, he’s put himself in prime position for a substantial raise, either through a long-term extension or the arbitration process. The question now becomes whether it’s the Kraken that are the other signatory on that next contract, or if McCann will be sold off for future assets at some point. That could come at the trade deadline or the offseason, depending on what kind of offers come in the next few weeks (and what kind of injury he’s currently dealing with).
There’s a real argument to be made that any extension with McCann would cover years when the Kraken are still not competitive in the Pacific Division, though the same might have been said during the unrestricted free agent period last summer. Instead of holding onto their cap space and building through the draft, general manager Ron Francis signed multi-year contracts with free agents like Philipp Grubauer, Jaden Schwartz, Jamie Oleksiak, Adam Larsson, and Alexander Wennberg, players that were already in their late-twenties and likely aren’t going to experience much improvement over the production they had already shown. It seemed, at least at the time, like the Kraken were targeting a playoff spot in year one, something that hasn’t come to fruition.
So a long-term deal with McCann would certainly be following their previous path, though the wisdom in that strategy is still up for debate. Alternatively, selling him off at some point before UFA status–he’ll reach the open market in the summer of 2023 if not signed–would signal that perhaps those initial moves were mistakes and that it will take quite a bit longer for the Kraken to reach playoff contender status.
There is of course also the possibility that McCann doesn’t want to stay in Seattle at all and an extension isn’t even possible, though with 21 goals and 33 points through 48 games, he’s already having the best season of his career with the improved offensive deployment.