Montreal Canadiens Sign Laurent Dauphin
Another minor league forward will avoid Group VI unrestricted free agency, as Laurent Dauphin has signed a one-year, two-way contract with the Montreal Canadiens. The deal carries a $750K salary at the NHL level and includes a minor league guarantee of $215K. He was set to become a UFA after his one-year 2020-21 contract expired.
It’s now been multiple seasons since the last time Dauphin hit the ice for an NHL game, playing a single contest for the Arizona Coyotes in 2018-19. Overall, he has just 35 games at that level and has been mostly limited to the minor leagues. Selected 39th overall in 2013, he has settled into an important role for the Laval Rocket, scoring 16 points in 21 games this season. That’s likely where he’ll be back again next year, though with a nice AHL guarantee in his pocket.
Dauphin was one of a number of pending unrestricted free agents in the Canadiens organization, including fellow minor league Group VI players Brandon Baddock and Gustav Olofsson. Despite still being very much alive in the Stanley Cup playoffs, Montreal’s front office has a long list of things to get done this summer. Taking care of contracts like this one for Dauphin is easy enough to do while the NHL team is still playing, and will shorten the workload over the next few weeks.
Like any move being made lately, the expansion implications are important to mention. Dauphin will be eligible for selection by the Kraken, but does not fulfill any of the exposure requirements for the Canadiens. The likelihood of him being picked is just about zero, given the other options that will be available to Seattle.
Blake Comeau Re-Signs With Dallas Stars
The Dallas Stars are bringing back one of their veteran forwards, re-signing Blake Comeau to a one-year contract. The deal will carry a salary of $1MM for 2021-22 and does not include any performance bonuses.
Comeau would have been eligible for those bonuses because he is signing a one-year deal and is now 35, but instead, he’ll accept a contract just $250K more than the league minimum. The veteran checker doesn’t bring much offense to the table these days, scoring just four goals and 14 points in 51 games for the Stars this season, but is still a valuable member of the penalty kill and adds a good dose of physicality to the bottom-six.
In fact, in the Cinderella-like run for Dallas in the 2019-20 bubble playoffs, Comeau racked up 93 hits, good for ninth in the entire league. His 903-game NHL career has been filled with that kind of bang-and-crash style, which is becoming even more popular with this year’s gritty final four. More and more teams are re-evaluating their dependence on skilled perimeter players, with veteran leadership and physicality getting increased attention.
That’s exactly what Comeau brings, but it certainly can’t be the last move the Stars make if they want to get back to the promised land. The team is set to lose quite a bit of defensive depth with Jamie Oleksiak and Sami Vatanen scheduled for unrestricted free agency, while their top scorer, Joe Pavelski, will turn 37 in a few weeks. A return to full health for Tyler Seguin could perhaps be the most important factor in the Stars success next season.
Importantly, Comeau’s re-signing also gives the Stars another forward that meets the exposure requirements for the upcoming expansion draft. Previously, they had just eight forwards that met the threshold of games played and were signed for next season, meaning at least two of them would have been left unprotected. Now, the team has a little more flexibility as Comeau poses little threat of being selected by the Seattle Kraken–and even if he did, wouldn’t be too hard to replace for the Stars.
Tom Kurvers Passes Away At 58
The hockey world is in mourning today after news emerged that Tom Kurvers, Minnesota Wild assistant general manager, has passed away at the age of 58. Kurvers had been diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2019, but continued working for the Wild and is still listed as AGM.
The Minneapolis native had a long playing career before taking up his position in an NHL front office. In 1984, serving as captain of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, Kurvers was named the Hobey Baker award winner as the best college player in the country. He had scored 76 points in 43 games that year, despite being just a seventh-round pick in 1981. He stepped directly into the NHL with the Montreal Canadiens the following season, scoring 45 points as a rookie. His Canadiens won the Stanley Cup the following year, though he did not play in the postseason. A long winding career took him through Buffalo, New Jersey, Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Anaheim, and even to Japan for one season. Though he scored 421 points in 659 games, his impact was perhaps even greater in the front office.
Soon after his retirement, he became a scout in the Phoenix Coyotes organization and started the long climb of management. In 2015 he was promoted to director of player personnel and then in 2008 he was given his first opportunity as an assistant GM, this time with the Tampa Bay Lightning. He remained with the Lightning through the 2017-18 season, before following Paul Fenton to Minnesota. Even though Fenton was let go less than two years later, Kurvers stayed on with new GM Bill Guerin.
Along with the rest of the hockey world, PHR would like to send condolences to the Kurvers family.
Five Key Stories: 6/14/21 – 6/20/21
The Stanley Cup Finals are fast approaching, though no one from the final four is giving in easily. The year’s biggest transactions are still probably a couple of weeks away, but that doesn’t mean there has been a lack of news over the last week.
Empire State Of Mind: Things kicked off with a big name arriving in the Big Apple. The New York Rangers decided that Gerard Gallant would be the team’s next head coach, signing the former Golden Knights bench boss to a four-year, $14MM contract. Gallant has never made it through three seasons with a single team, but posted a .601 winning percentage at his last stop and took Vegas to the finals in their inaugural season. With a cast of young talented players and some valuable veterans, Rangers GM Chris Drury will hope Gallant can turn another trick and get New York back to the playoffs in 2021-22.
It’s An Honor To Be Nominated, But…: After finishing the finalist announcements, the league started handing out its regular season awards. Things started with Pekka Rinne of the Nashville Predators taking home the King Clancy and Oskar Lindblom winning the Masterton, both awards that have just as much to do with the player’s off-ice dedication as their on-ice play. Things then got a little more interesting when Rod Brind’Amour took home the Jack Adams as the league’s top coach, Aleksander Barkov won his first Selke as the league’s best defensive forward, and Jaccob Slavin became just the fourth defenseman in history to take home the Lady Byng.
The Bod Is Back In Town: Just a few hours before Brind’Amour was awarded the Jack Adams, he received some different good news. The head coach signed a new three-year deal with the Carolina Hurricanes after a long negotiation. In his press conference, Brind’Amour confirmed that the talks took so long because he was making sure his staff also received new contracts. There were several teams around the league ready to pounce if the Hurricanes happened to let their coach go, but the program they’ve built in Carolina will continue to have the same leader for the next few years.
Raise A Glass To Freedom: Though Brind’Amour is returning, it might not be the exact same group in Carolina next season. Dougie Hamilton, one of the team’s top defensemen, was given permission to speak to other teams in the league ahead of his pending unrestricted free agency. Hamilton, 28, is arguably the best defenseman in the 2021 free agent market and should be in line for a huge long-term contract. The act of letting him check out the market wasn’t a white flag from GM Don Waddell, who explained that the team still hopes to sign Hamilton but now also has an opportunity to trade his rights if he decides to go elsewhere.
Coyote Ugly: If you miss out on Hamilton, there’s always Oliver Ekman-Larsson if you’re looking for a highly-paid defenseman. The Arizona Coyotes captain is once again exploring the trade market with the team, looking for a fit for both sides. Last summer, the Coyotes approached Ekman-Larsson about waiving his no-trade clause but he decided that only trades to Boston or Vancouver would be acceptable. After that didn’t work out he spent the year in Arizona, playing 21 minutes a night and happily accepting his $8MM salary. Of course, this year a trade might be even more difficult, given the fact that he’s owed $10.5MM in 2021-22 and none of it is due as a signing bonus. Ekman-Larsson has six seasons left on the eight-year, $66MM deal he signed in 2018, carries an $8.25MM cap hit, and holds a full no-movement clause through the end of 2026-27.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Jaccob Slavin Wins 2021 Lady Byng Trophy
The NHL has announced the winner of another major regular season award. Jaccob Slavin of the Carolina Hurricanes has been awarded the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, given “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability”. Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Jared Spurgeon of the Minnesota Wild were the other finalists.
Slavin, 27, received 73 of the 100 first-place votes after recording just a single minor penalty in 52 games. He also becomes just the fourth defenseman to ever win the award and first since Brian Campbell in 2012. Slavin averaged nearly 23 minutes a night for the Hurricanes, carrying heavy defensive responsibility on a nightly basis. His career-low of two penalty minutes is incredible, yet somewhat unsurprising from a player that has never collected even 20 in a single season.
The top five were rounded out by Selke Trophy winner Aleksander Barkov and Rangers’ star Artemi Panarin. 57 players in total received at least one vote, but Slavin was included on all 100 ballots. The runaway winner finished well ahead of second-place Spurgeon, who received just one first-place vote but 17 second-place ballots.
This is the first major regular season award for Slavin, who finished fourth in Lady Byng voting and fifth in Norris Trophy voting a year ago.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Washington Capitals Re-Sign Shane Gersich
The Washington Capitals have re-signed one of their minor league forwards, inking Shane Gersich to a one-year, two-way contract. The deal will carry an NHL salary of $750K and keeps Gersich away from restricted free agency later this summer.
Now 24, Gersich made his Capitals debut in 2018 but hasn’t made it back to the NHL since. In 33 games for the Hershey Bears this season he managed to score six goals and 14 points, but still hasn’t been able to repeat the offensive performance that made him a star at the University of North Dakota. Drafted 134th overall in 2014, he has settled into a depth role in the AHL and is unlikely to see extended time with the Capitals, but is still a valuable asset for the organization as injury insurance.
Perhaps more important is his leadership role with the Bears, where he wore an “A” as an alternate captain this season. His minor league salary of $187,500 will keep him in the Washington organization and takes another RFA off the to-do list for Capitals GM Brian MacLellan.
Gersich will turn 25 in July, meaning that at this time next year he’ll be preparing for Group VI unrestricted free agency. That is of course unless he gets in 77 games with the Capitals next season, a notion that seems far-fetched at this point.
Aleksander Barkov Wins 2021 Selke Trophy
The NHL has announced another regular season award winner, this time naming Aleksander Barkov the recipient of the Frank J. Selke Trophy for the 2020-21 season, his first time winning the award. The Selke Trophy is voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association and is awarded to the forward deemed to “best excel in the defensive aspects of the game.” Patrice Bergeron came in second and Mark Stone was third.
Barkov, 25, has received Selke votes in each of the previous six seasons, but never finished higher than fourth in the final tally. This year he tops a titan in Bergeron, who is tied for the most career wins with four and Stone, who has now been a finalist twice in the past three seasons even without playing the center ice position. He received 62 of the 100 first-place votes and was listed on 92 ballots, which rank five players. 78 writers had him listed first or second, showing just how well respected his defensive capabilities are around the league.
There’s no question that Barkov is one of the most effective two-way players in the NHL, and his 58-point performance only helped him cement his status as a superstar. That was only his second season scoring at a better than point-per-game rate, but when combined with his defensive prowess it makes for an incredibly valuable player. He also becomes just the fifth player in NHL history that has won both the Selke and the Lady Byng, joining Pavel Datsyuk, Ron Francis, Anze Kopitar, and Ryan O’Reilly.
There were 28 other players that received votes for the Selke trophy. The top-five was rounded out by Joel Eriksson Ek and O’Reilly, the 2019 winner. Philip Danault (6th), Jean-Gabriel Pageau (16th) and Anthony Cirelli (20th) are the other players who received votes and are still alive in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Latest On Kirill Kaprizov’s Contract Talks
There’s a long list of things to do this offseason for Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin, but more important than anything is getting Kirill Kaprizov signed. The odds-on favorite for the Calder Trophy had an outstanding first season in the NHL, breathing life back into a franchise that was desperate for excitement. Because he took so long to come to North America after being drafted in 2015 and burned the first year of his entry-level contract in 2019-20 without actually playing, the 24-year-old forward is a restricted free agent this summer.
It has already been reported that the Wild have offered Kaprizov an eight-year contract, trying to lock him up for as long as possible right now. Michael Russo of The Athletic wrote a week ago that he didn’t think that would actually be signed, given the hesitation from the player to commit that much of his playing career to the organization. Russo explained that Kaprizov’s camp wants a “clear plan to upgrade the middle of the ice” in Minnesota and noted that it is a “big risk” if the team doesn’t significantly upgrade at the center position.
Now, Kevin Weekes of the NHL Network tweets that talks between the two sides have cooled. In fact, according to Weekes Kaprizov is currently in Moscow and that CSKA of the KHL is still trying to sign him. Of course, just traveling back to Russia doesn’t necessarily mean anything in regards to contract negotiations (in fact, Russo tweets that Kaprizov is there to attend a friend’s wedding and his agent informed the Wild of it ahead of time).
One thing to keep in mind with Kaprizov though is that now that he has played in North America, the Wild do not indefinitely hold his rights. When they selected him in 2015, they could wait as long as it took for him to try his hand at the NHL. The lack of a transfer agreement between the NHL and KHL meant that Kaprizov’s draft rights would never expire; if he wanted to play in the NHL, it had to be with Minnesota unless they traded him. But now that he has played out his entry-level contract and reached restricted free agency, that’s no longer the case. He would become an unrestricted free agent in three years when he turns 27, whether he plays in North America or not.
That makes this summer an absolutely crucial time for the Wild if they want to retain the services of the dynamic forward. Kaprizov scored 51 points in 55 games this season, 11 more than the team’s second-place scorer Kevin Fiala. Joel Eriksson Ek was the team’s highest-scoring center with just 30 points, though 19 of those were goals. The team does have an elite center prospect in Marco Rossi coming up the pipe, but after he missed the entire season with COVID-19 health complications, there’s no telling exactly how long it will take for him to break into the NHL. Matthew Boldy is also in the system but failed to make an NHL appearance after signing his entry-level deal in April.
There’s absolutely nothing more important for Guerin this offseason than keeping Kaprizov in the organization, and Wild fans shouldn’t panic just yet. The threat of a return to the KHL has been used many times in the past during contract negotiations but is rarely actually followed through on. It’s not clear which side this specific case will come down on, but it’s certainly a situation to keep an eye on this offseason.
Submit Your Questions For The #PHRMailbag
We’re now down to just four teams involved in the Stanley Cup chase, meaning the offseason has started for the vast majority of the NHL. Things are heating up with Dougie Hamilton allowed to speak to other teams, Seth Jones telling the Blue Jackets he won’t re-sign right now, and Jack Eichel still seeming likely to split with the Buffalo Sabres.
With that in mind, it’s time to run another edition of the PHR Mailbag. If you missed the last one, it was broken into two pieces. In the first part, Brian La Rose gave his thoughts on the Department of Player Safety, the future of Phil Kessel, and the aggressiveness of the Philadelphia front office. In the second, he gave us a Stanley Cup prediction, shared his thoughts on the Eichel situation, and projected the first few picks of the upcoming draft.
You can submit a question by using #PHRMailbag on Twitter or by leaving a comment down below.
Dominique Ducharme Tests Positive For COVID-19
The league has made the official announcement concerning Montreal Canadiens head coach Dominique Ducharme, who has tested positive for COVID-19 and is now in isolation. The press release indicates that all tests done on players have returned negative, meaning there will not be any other unforeseen absences in tonight’s game.
The full statement:
This morning, we became aware that a test administered yesterday in Las Vegas on Montreal Canadiens Head Coach Dominique Ducharme indicated a presumptive positive result for the COVID-19 virus that was confirmed on further testing today. Coach Ducharme has been partially vaccinated with his second shot administered less than two weeks ago, on June 9. Per NHL COVID Protocols, Coach Ducharme was immediately isolated from the team. All tests administered to the Players, other coaches and hockey staff from both yesterday and today have returned uniformly negative results. The Canadiens organization has, and will continue to follow, all guidelines aimed at protecting the health and safety of its Players, staff and community at large as set by the NHL, the Canadian Federal Government, the Quebec Provincial Government, and national and provincial health agencies.
While it is obviously a good thing that the Canadiens will have their full complement of players, losing their coach at this important juncture is not ideal. Ducharme will now miss the rest of the series, which is scheduled to go through June 26 if taken to seven games.
This is Ducharme’s first time as an NHL head coach in the playoffs, after taking over from Claude Julien earlier in the year. The team will turn to Luke Richardson to run the bench tonight, assisted by Alexandre Burrows and Sean Burke, according to GM Marc Bergevin. He also indicated that Ducharme is feeling well and will still be involved in preparing the game plan.