Edmonton Oilers Sign Tyler Benson
The Edmonton Oilers have signed minor league forward Tyler Benson to a one-year, two-way contract for the 2021-22 season. The deal will pay him $750K at the NHL level. Benson was a restricted free agent this offseason but did not qualify for salary arbitration.
It’s been five years now since Benson was selected 32nd overall by the Oilers, and despite very strong minor league numbers he still has just seven games played at the NHL level. This season the young forward started the season playing in Switzerland, before re-joining the Bakersfield Condors when the AHL season got underway. In 36 regular season games with the Condors, he once again put up big numbers, scoring ten goals and 36 points.
There’s never really been a question about Benson’s offensive upside at the AHL level, but he has failed to ever really grab an NHL roster spot and run with it. He’ll likely get another chance at training camp this season, battling with players like Brendan Perlini for the last few spots. This time, there’s a big difference in his favor–Benson is no longer waiver-exempt.
That means the Oilers would need to risk him to the rest of the league in order to send him to the minor leagues, and though waiver claims are relatively infrequent, a 23-year-old point-per-game AHL player would likely attract some interest. If there was ever a chance to have the best training camp of your career, it’s now for Benson.
Carolina Hurricanes Agree To Terms With Andrew Poturalski
The Carolina Hurricanes have agreed to terms with a familiar face, signing Andrew Poturalski to a one-year, two-way contract. The deal will carry an NHL salary of $750K, an AHL salary of $200K and a minor league guarantee of $250K. Hurricanes GM Don Waddell released a short statement:
Andrew is a playmaking forward who has put up excellent numbers at the AHL level. He previously spent four years in our organization, and we’re excited to bring back a player we’re very familiar with.
Fans of the team will remember Poturalski as the 2019 Calder Cup MVP, after leading the AHL playoffs in goals and points. He spent the last two years with the San Diego Gulls, scoring 43 points in 44 games this past season. The 27-year-old has two games under his belt at the NHL level but is really being brought in to solidify the Chicago Wolves roster, which is looking like it will be a competitive one this season.
The Hurricanes are now at 45 of their allotted 50 NHL contracts, with a few more restricted free agents to sign. The team does have some wiggle room with players whose contracts will slide if sent back to junior, removing them from that 50-count, but it appears as though they are approaching the end of their offseason for the most part.
Winnipeg Jets, Neal Pionk Avoid Arbitration
The Winnipeg Jets and Neal Pionk won’t need their upcoming arbitration hearing after all, as they’ve agreed on a long-term contract instead. The RFA defenseman has signed a four-year deal that will carry an average annual value of $5.875MM. Pionk’s hearing had been scheduled for Friday. PuckPedia reports the full breakdown:
- 2021-22: $3.5MM
- 2022-23: $6.5MM
- 2023-24: $7.5MM + 6-team no-trade
- 2024-25: $6.0MM + 6-team no-trade
It’s easy to underestimate just how strong a player Pionk has become because of the market he plays in and the high-profile player he was traded for. Acquired as part of the package for Jacob Trouba, the 26-year-old defenseman has become one of the most reliable offensive defensemen in the league. In fact, since joining the Jets in 2019, Pionk ranks 13th among all NHL defensemen in scoring with 77 points in 125 games. That’s more than twice as many as Trouba, who signed a seven-year, $56MM deal with the Rangers upon arrival.
That’s not to say the two are directly comparable, but is just evidence to show how valuable Pionk has become in Winnipeg. He has averaged nearly 23 minutes a night since arriving, contributing to both the powerplay and penalty kill. When the Jets’ need for a defenseman was discussed at length this season it was to find Pionk some help, but his place on this team will continue to be a leading one.
By buying out two years of unrestricted free agency, the Jets have locked up Pionk through his prime, but it didn’t come at much of a bargain. After acquiring Nate Schmidt and Brenden Dillon this offseason, the team now has five defensemen making at least $3MM for the next three seasons. Winnipeg now sits just barely under the salary cap ceiling but still has a lot of work to do, with an arbitration case for Andrew Copp on the horizon. The team does have some wiggle room as Bryan Little will be placed on long-term injured reserve again, but it isn’t a lot considering they have just nine forwards signed to one-way deals at the moment.
Committing so much to the defense is not usually a bad plan, but it’s unclear exactly how the Jets expect to give their young options playing time now. Logan Stanley, Ville Heinola, Sami Niku, and Dylan Samberg are all ready to contribute, but the route to the roster is pretty much blocked through 2023-24. There will be one regular spot to fight over when the season begins (injuries notwithstanding), with Stanley obviously having the inside track after his performance this year.
For Pionk, this contract is basically perfect, giving him a huge raise through the next several years while still letting him test free agency at a young enough age to land another multi-year deal.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Seattle Kraken Announce Coaching Hires
The announcement came with a plan when the Seattle Kraken signed an agreement with the Charlotte Checkers to share them as an AHL affiliate during the 2021-22 season. The Kraken would provide a certain number of players to the minor league team, which is the primary affiliate of the Florida Panthers, but would also hire an assistant coach to join the Checkers staff. That way their prospects would be overseen by someone directly connected to the NHL organization.
Today they’ve made that hire, adding former Jack Adams winner Dan Byslma as an AHL assistant. Kraken GM Ron Francis released a statement explaining the move:
Dan joins our organization with an impressive resume and his experience speaks for itself. He has a proven track record and we look forward to him coaching our prospects in Charlotte alongside Geordie Kinnear.
Bylsma served as an assistant with the Detroit Red Wings for the last three seasons and will probably be the most overqualified AHL assistant in the league. His record as an NHL head coach is 320-190-55, including a Stanley Cup championship in 2009 with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He won the Jack Adams in 2011 when he led the Penguins to a 49-25-8 record despite Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin each playing no more than 43 games. Since the Kraken are only using the Checkers for one season before their own Palm Springs AHL team begins play, it will be interesting to see if Bylsma is the choice for their minor league coach a year from now.
The Kraken have also officially announced Andrew Allen as the team’s goaltending coach. Allen had originally joined the team as a pro scout, but will transition to the coaching role now that they are approaching their inaugural season. Interestingly enough, Allen actually received his first NHL coaching job under Bylsma in Buffalo during the 2015-16 season. He spent four years as the goaltending coach for the Sabres, after previously working with the Rockford IceHogs of the AHL.
Tony Esposito Passes Away At 78
The hockey world is in mourning again today, as it says goodbye to one of its own. Tony Esposito has passed away at the age of 78 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. The Chicago Blackhawks announced the news with a long letter to the Esposito family from team chairman Rocky Wirtz.
…Tony was one of the most important and popular figures in the history of the franchise as we near its 100th anniversary. Four generations of our family — my grandfather Arthur, my father Bill, my son Danny and I — were blessed by his work ethic as a Hall of Fame goalie, but more importantly, by his mere presence and spirit.
Upon his retirement in 1984, Esposito went down as one of the greatest goaltenders to ever play in the NHL. Only 12 men in the history of the game have won the Vezina Trophy at least three times, and Esposito was one of them, taking home the award in 1970, 1972 and 1974. Though he started his career with the Montreal Canadiens, he will always be remembered as a member of the Blackhawks. He is the franchise leader in games played, wins, saves, and shutouts. He won the Calder Trophy in 1970 as the league’s best rookie, was a five-time NHL All-Star, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1988. He was named to the list of 100 Greatest NHL players in 2017.
It wasn’t just his success, but the flair and style of how Esposito stopped the puck that created so many fans across the hockey world. Though he entered front offices including the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning in retirement, his connection to Chicago was for life. In 2016 at the Winter Classic, it was Esposito who served as coach of the Blackhawks alumni team taking on the St. Louis Blues.
The entire staff at PHR sends our condolences to the Esposito family.
Salary Cap Lower Limit Complicates Jack Eichel Trade
The Buffalo Sabres have been expected to trade Jack Eichel for months. His neck injury this season caused a difference of opinion between his camp and the team, leading to a lack of trust, which only exasperated a tough situation. Eichel has been in Buffalo for six seasons but has still not suited up for a single playoff game. On the other side, the Sabres have been paying him $10MM per season for three years without any postseason revenue to show for it. A split seemed inevitable, but there are many complicating factors.
One of them that has been discussed at length is that $10MM cap hit and how it is difficult for other teams to fit under the cap ceiling. Eichel is a top player when healthy, but his injury situation makes it an extremely risky proposition for anyone interested in acquiring his services.
There’s another complication caused by his contract though, and this one has gotten far less attention. In fact, it’s basically the opposite problem of an acquiring team not being able to afford Eichel. The Sabres can’t really afford to take him off the books at this point.
Right now, there are two teams in the league that are actually well short of the salary cap’s lower limit of $60.2MM–the Ottawa Senators and, you guessed it, the Buffalo Sabres. According to CapFriendly, Buffalo currently sits at a projected cap hit for the 2021-22 season of just $52,897,763, more than $7.3MM under the lower limit. “But they have Casey Mittelstadt, Rasmus Dahlin and Henri Jokiharju to sign!” you might say, and that’s true, those three restricted free agents will likely take them well over the salary cap floor.
The problem is, that projection is including the $10MM owed to Eichel. If the team trades him, suddenly they’re more than $17.3MM under the lower limit, a number that will be a lot harder to make up with three restricted free agent deals.
Buffalo has already moved out some of their high-priced talent this offseason, trading away Rasmus Ristolainen and Sam Reinhart. They watched Linus Ullmark and Jake McCabe walk in free agency, replacing them with 40-year-old Craig Anderson for league minimum and Mark Pysyk at $900K. For whatever reason, they had the New Jersey Devils retain part of Will Butcher‘s contract, making him cost even less for them.
Moving Eichel out of this financial puzzle right now for nothing but futures would mean several other moves would have to follow just to get the Sabres cap compliant for the start of the year. This isn’t really a situation that has ever played out in the NHL, but it’s one of their own making. Buffalo has been aggressively shedding salary all summer to restock the prospect and draft cupboards, but the side effect of those moves is that the last big chip is now an even more complicated piece to trade.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Minor Transactions: 08/10/21
The NHL is rounding out rosters by finishing restricted free agent negotiations, but that isn’t the only thing going on in the hockey world. With European leagues ramping up, the AHL preparing for a full schedule and junior players getting ready to show what they can do, there are plenty of minor transactions across the landscape. As always, we’ll keep track of notable ones right here.
- Kirill Kudryavtsev, a potential first-round pick in 2022, has signed with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds for the upcoming season. The 17-year-old defenseman was the sixth overall pick in the recent CHL import draft, and has decided to come over to continue his development in North America. The Greyhounds now list him at 6’0″ 185-lbs. Kudryavtsev recently won the Hlinka-Gretzky tournament with Russia, posting two points in five games.
- Giorgio Estephan, a 2015 draft pick of the Buffalo Sabres, has decided to take his talents overseas. The 24-year-old forward has signed with HC Litvinov of the Czech league on a one-year deal with an option for 2022-23. A 2019 Kelly Cup champion with the Newfoundland Growlers, Estephan played 19 games for the Stockton Heat this year.
- Riley Woods played 26 games for the Colorado Eagles this season, but is off to Sweden after signing with MODO. The 23-year-old forward went undrafted out of the WHL, but has dominated at the ECHL level and held his own in the AHL. His deal overseas is just for one year.
- The Belleville Senators have added Zac Leslie, Colby Williams and Tyrell Goulbourne on AHL contracts for next season. Goulbourne, 27, is the only one with any NHL experience, having played 11 games for the Philadelphia Flyers. The former Kelowna Rockets star failed to register a single point in those games and has just five in his last 71 games at the AHL level.
- Ryan Kuffner, who signed an entry-level deal out of Princeton in 2019 and played 10 games with the Detroit Red Wings, has now agreed to a one-year deal with the Iowa Wild. The 25-year-old spent last season playing in Germany, where he registered 14 points in 31 games. Kuffner is actually signing a two-way minor league deal, meaning he’ll make different salaries depending on if he’s playing in the AHL or ECHL next season.
- Vincent Arseneau has signed with the Abbotsford Canucks for next season, staying with the Vancouver Canucks AHL affiliate. The 29-year-old forward has played the last four seasons with the Utica Comets, scoring four goals in 13 games this year.
- The Syracuse Crunch have signed defenseman Ryan Jones to a one-year, AHL deal. The 25-year-old played in 29 games last season with AHL Rochester, his first professional action after completing his college career at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
This page will be updated with other minor transactions
Los Angeles Kings Sign Brandt Clarke
The Los Angeles Kings have inked their top draft pick, signing Brandt Clarke to a three-year entry-level contract. The deal will carry an NHL cap hit of $925K. Clarke was selected eighth overall last month.
The 18-year-old defenseman will almost certainly not burn the first year of that deal this season, which would require him playing more than ten games in the NHL. Instead, he’s likely headed back to the OHL, a league he hasn’t played in since the 2019-20 season. This year, because of COVID restrictions in Ontario, the junior league didn’t play at all, meaning the top prospects needed to find a home elsewhere. Clarke found that in Slovakia, where he played 26 games for HC Nove Zamky.
Even as a teenager playing in the professional league, Clarke stood out with his ability to skate the puck out of trouble and drive offensive play. He had six goals and 13 points in those 26 games overseas, while also racking up 41 penalty minutes. The 6’2″ defenseman should dominate the OHL if he does indeed return to the Barrie Colts given his age and experience. Even in 2019-20, starting the year as a 16-year-old, he registered 38 points in 57 games.
There’s a bright future for Clarke in the NHL though, even if it doesn’t come this season. The Kings will see both Alexander Edler and Olli Maatta reach unrestricted free agency next summer, and though they play the left side, it still opens minutes and opportunities on the back end for young players. Now signed, Clarke is one to watch in the Kings’ system.
Chicago Blackhawks Extend Mike Hardman
One of the moves that may have gone overlooked late in the season was the Chicago Blackhawks signing of undrafted college free agent Mike Hardman to an entry-level contract after Boston College was eliminated from the NCAA tournament. The 22-year-old forward managed to get into eight games with the team down the stretch and immediately made an impact with his full-throttle playstyle, scoring a goal and three points. Now, with a year remaining on his entry-level deal, the Blackhawks have decided to lock him up.
Chicago has signed Hardman to a two-year contract extension through the 2023-24 season. The deal will carry an average annual value of $800K. PuckPedia reports that it is one-way, and will pay Hardman $750K in 2021-22 and $850K in 2022-23. That means the young forward will be an inexpensive option for the next three years even if he finds a full-time role on the team right away.
That role certainly isn’t guaranteed, given how many forwards the Blackhawks have brought in to compete for spots. Tyler Johnson, Brett Connolly, Henrik Borgstrom, Adam Gaudette, and Jujhar Khaira have all been added since the trade deadline. Captain Jonathan Toews and young star Kirby Dach are returning from seasons ruined by illness and injury, while even Alexander Nylander will be in competition after missing the entire 2020-21 campaign.
That’s quite the crowded field for Hardman to crack, and given he is still waiver-exempt he may have to start off with some games in the minor leagues. But he’s not there to play for a contract anymore, that part of his professional life has been dealt with early. The undrafted 6’2″ winger is now a part of the Blackhawks organization for the next several seasons, so he can focus entirely on his on-ice performance.
Jakub Vrana, Detroit Red Wings Avoid Arbitration
It was getting close to the wire, but the Detroit Red Wings and Jakub Vrana won’t need their arbitration hearing tomorrow after all. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports that the two sides have agreed upon a three-year contract, avoiding the rest of the arbitration process. The deal will carry an average annual value of $5.25MM and CapFriendly reports the deal breaks down as follows:
2021-22: $4.75MM
2022-23: $5.25MM
2023-24: $5.75MM
Vrana had filed for $5.7MM. while the Red Wings had countered with $3.65MM, but neither one of those would have represented a three-year contract. With this new deal, Vrana will actually be giving up one year of unrestricted free agency, something that can’t be awarded through arbitration.
For $5.25MM, he gets a healthy raise from the $3.35MM cap hit he carried over the last two seasons. He will tie Frans Nielsen as the team’s second-highest-paid forward, just below Dylan Larkin‘s $6.1MM. That represents his place in the lineup, as Vrana is arguably the team’s most exciting forward heading into this season after lighting it up following a midseason trade. Acquired from the Washington Capitals as part of a package for Anthony Mantha, Vrana scored eight goals and 11 points in 11 games down the stretch.
That kind of production hasn’t been common in Detroit recently, but it actually shouldn’t be all that surprising from the 25-year-old Czech. In the 2019-20 season, he had 25 goals and 52 points in 69 games for the Capitals. His playoff performance left something to be desired though, which likely factored into the decision to move him for a bigger Mantha. Still, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Vrana outproduce Mantha during the regular season at least, and he now comes in at a cheaper price tag. The big forward in Washington is on a four-year deal that carries a $5.7MM cap hit.
With the Red Wings in the early stages of a rebuild still, it will be interesting to see if Vrana even plays out this deal in Detroit. Though he’s not old by any means, he is quite a few years older than the rest of the talent that GM Steve Yzerman is collecting. There’s certainly no guarantee that the Red Wings will be competitive by the time Vrana’s entering the final year of this deal, meaning he could become a rental down the road. For now, he’ll be getting a huge opportunity in the team’s top-six to play big minutes and show what his offensive ceiling really is.
Now that Vrana has settled, Neal Pionk is next on the arbitration list. His hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images