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Goalie Notes: Vasilevskiy, Kochetkov, Vladar, Nedeljkovic

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Lightning star Andrei Vasilevskiy will indeed get the start for Tampa’s home opener against the Senators tonight, head coach Jon Cooper told Benjamin Pierce of NHL.com. It’s the expected result following a bit of a saga during training camp that saw his workload early on limited. He practiced to start camp, but then disappeared from sessions for over a week due to what Cooper called “player management,” and there was enough concern about his status for the start of the season for the Bolts to claim Pheonix Copley off waivers from the Kings as insurance. Vasilevskiy ended up returning to practice in late September and made a preseason appearance against the Panthers, though, so it seemed for a while that opening night wouldn’t be a concern. With the reigning Vezina runner-up firmly back in the fold, there might be a deal in place to return Copley to Los Angeles, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet wrote earlier this week.

More updates from the world of goaltending:

  • Hurricanes tandem partner Pyotr Kochetkov will not dress against the Devils tonight after being “nicked up” in preseason, head coach Rod Brind’Amour told Walt Ruff of NHL.com. He’s day-to-day, and his injury offers up the missing context as to why Carolina claimed Brandon Bussi off waivers from the Panthers earlier this week. Frederik Andersen will get the start and will presumably see a higher-than-normal workload until Kochetkov returns – a risky bet considering injuries have limited Andersen to an average of 24 starts over the last three years. Bussi would be in line for his NHL debut should he see action during this stretch.
  • Free-agent signing Daniel Vladař is getting the start over Samuel Ersson as the Flyers open their season tonight, head coach Rick Tocchet told Charlie O’Connor of PHLY Sports. It was essentially a coin flip between the two, Tocchet said, signaling they’re likely set to receive similar workloads out of the gate. Both struggled in preseason samples, but Vladař was the better of the two with a .875 SV% and 2.32 GAA in a pair of appearances. Ersson played three exhibition games, logging a .841 SV% and 4.44 GAA.
  • In another toss-up, the Sharks are going with veteran addition Alex Nedeljkovic between the pipes to kick off their season over top prospect Yaroslav Askarov, relays Curtis Pashelka of the Bay Area News Group. It’s an earned reward for the 29-year-old, who stopped all but one of the 53 shots he faced in two preseason showings for San Jose for a staggering .981 SV% and 0.50 GAA. Askarov, while still locked into a full-time NHL role for the first time this year, struggled in exhibition play with a .855 SV% and 3.79 GAA in a team-high three appearances.

Hurricanes Waive, Assign Juha Jaaska

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The Carolina Hurricanes placed centerman Juha Jaaska on waivers on Tuesday. He cleared waivers on Wednesday, and will be assigned to the AHL’s Chicago Wolves, per NHL.com’s Walt Ruff.

Jaaska spent the majority of the 2024-25 season in the Chicago lineup. It was his first year in North American pros after playing in Finland’s Liiga from 2017 to 2024. Jaaska made quick work of the rookie year, earning an alternate captain role on the Wolves and posting 12 goals and 33 points in 53 games. His scoring ranked fifth on the Wolves and would have rivaled the top-30 in league-wide rookie scoring, though at 26, Jaaska was excluded from rookie counts.

Still, his debut year in Chicago was a promising one. It came as no surprise for those who followed the bulky winger’s career in Finland. He has long been lauded as a leader for his clubs, and wore a letter in all five years he spent with HIFK’s junior program. That includes captaining the U20 team in 2016-17 – his first year of draft eligibility – when he scored 24 points in 25 games in Finland’s top U20 league.

Despite the hot scoring, Jaaska’s struggles to match pace at the top level held back a lot of NHL attention. Those concerns continued through his final two years of draft eligibility, leaving Jaaska to pursue HIFK’s men’s team rather than a move to North America. That proved a fruitful decision, as the Helsinki-native began to claw his way up the lineup between 2018 and 2023. He showed his might at the pro level with 12 goals, 37 points, and a plus-14 in 56 games of the 2022-23 season; then matched that performance with 30 points and a plus-four in 57 games of the 2023-24 season. He wore an ’A’ in both seasons.

Those performances were enough to earn Jaaska a spot on Finland’s World Championship roster, and a contract with the Carolina Hurricanes. In addition to a prominent role on the Chicago Wolves, Jaaska also made his NHL debut last season, and totaled four assists in 18 games with the Hurricanes. Now, he’ll return to his role of alternate captain for the Wolves, with the goal of improving on a strong push into North America. With the right start to the season, or a few injuries ahead of him on the depth chart, Jaaska could quickly find his way into routine minutes on Carolina’s fourth-line.

Evan Bouchard Was Reportedly Targeted As Offer-Sheet Candidate During Summer

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The Edmonton Oilers signed Evan Bouchard just before the start of the new league year this past summer, locking their star defenseman up for the next four years on a $10.5MM AAV contract. It was a relatively expected outcome for the then-pending RFA, but Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that things were very close to getting a lot more interesting with Bouchard. Friedman wrote in his 32 Thoughts column today that “it’s believed the Hurricanes put together a one-year” offer sheet for Bouchard that would have come in “at a number higher than McDavid just signed for,” with the intent of the Hurricanes was to use that inflated one-year AAV to secure the player, and then “figure out an extension” afterwards.

Had the Oilers failed to re-sign Bouchard and that offer sheet proceeded, it would have been a repeat of sorts for both the Oilers and the Hurricanes. Carolina famously acquired center Jesperi Kotkaniemi using a similar tactic, signing the Finnish center from the Montreal Canadiens via an inflated-value one-year offer sheet. On the Oilers’ side, they have already lost players due to offer sheets in recent years, with Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway poached by the St. Louis Blues in the summer of 2024. But Bouchard, who is one of the league’s top offensive defensemen, would have been without a doubt the most notable offer sheet attempt since the Canadiens’ signing of Sebastian Aho in the summer of 2019, an offer Aho signed but was promptly matched by Carolina.

Hurricanes President Doug Warf Resigns

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  • The Carolina Hurricanes announced today that team president Doug Warf has resigned after a little over one year in his position. Warf, who oversaw all business operations for the Hurricanes and their arena, Lenovo Center, was officially announced as the team’s president in July of last year. Warf re-joined the Hurricanes in that post after previously working for the team from 2000-2017, according to the team’s press release. Regarding the news, The Fourth Period’s David Pagnotta reported that Warf’s resignation can be traced to “a difference in alignment” between himself and team owner Tom Dundon.

Maple Leafs Claim Cayden Primeau, Sammy Blais Off Waivers

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The Toronto Maple Leafs have added a pair of depth options off the waiver wire. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Maple Leafs have claimed netminder Cayden Primeau from the Carolina Hurricanes and forward Sammy Blais from the Montreal Canadiens.

Primeau’s tenure with the Hurricanes will end after having never appeared in a regular-season contest. Carolina acquired Primeau from the Canadiens this summer for a 2026 seventh-round pick. Despite signing him to a one-year, $775K contract a few days later, he’ll now play out that contract with Toronto.

After a promising 2023-24 campaign in which Primeau managed an 8-9-4 record in 24 games with a .910 SV%, he took a nosedive last year. Despite holding a 2-3-1 record in 11 games, he produced a disastrous .836 SV% and lost his job as the Canadiens’ backup to Jakub Dobes. Fortunately, Primeau revived some of his value with the AHL’s Laval Rocket, earning a 21-2-3 record in 26 games with a .927 SV%.

The Maple Leafs’ desire to add Primeau is fairly straightforward. The team will use Anthony Stolarz as the primary starter to begin the year, but has a question mark behind him with Joseph Woll taking an indefinite leave of absence. Dennis Hildeby has likely earned the role given his impressive preseason performance, and Primeau may start the year as their third-string option behind him, unless the team converts James Reimer’s PTO to a contract.

Meanwhile, Blais rejoins head coach Craig Berube in Toronto after winning a Stanley Cup ring with him in the 2019 playoffs. He’s a high-intensity forward and is coming off an impressive year with the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks, scoring 14 goals and 40 points in 51 games, with another six goals and 19 points in 23 games in the Calder Cup playoffs en route to another championship run.

Carolina Hurricanes Claim Brandon Bussi

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The Carolina Hurricanes have claimed netminder Brandon Bussi off of waivers from the Florida Panthers, according to a team announcement. The Hurricanes also announced a corresponding move, placing goalie Cayden Primeau on waivers for the purposes of reassignment to the AHL’s Chicago Wolves.

At face value, this is something of a curious move, as the Hurricanes’ NHL tandem of Frederik Andersen and Pyotr Kochetkov appears set in stone. It’s possible the Hurricanes made this claim with an eye to goaltending depth in the AHL, but with Primeau already in place as the organizational number-three (assuming he clears waivers) there doesn’t appear to be a significant need to add Bussi.

Accordingly, at this point, the clearest explanation for this waiver claim is that it is some form of injury insurance, similar to how the Sabres signed Alexandar Georgiev before an injury to Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen was reported.

With that said, in the case that there is not an un-reported injury that prompted this waiver claim, there is another potential explanation that relates to the current state of the Hurricanes’ goalie depth:

Taking a wider-view look at the Hurricanes’ situation in net overall, the situation behind Primeau in Chicago (assuming he clears waivers) is somewhat more wide open. The Wolves currently roster three goalies below Primeau on the depth chart: Ruslan Khazheyev, Amir Miftakhov, and Nikita Quapp. The trio, combined, have just 42 games worth of AHL experience, and just one Khazheyev, played in the AHL last season. (.876 save percentage in 20 games played)

Quapp, 22, spent 2024-25 with Düsseldorf in the German DEL, and is entering his first pro season in North America. Miftakhov, 25, was stellar in 2024-25 with the KHL’s Ak Bars Kazan (.927 save percentage in 30 games) but has not played in North America since his 2021-22 split between the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch and ECHL’s Orlando Solar Bears.

So, with that in mind, the reasoning behind this waiver claim becomes a bit clearer. Assuming there is no at-this-point unreported injury to either of the two Hurricanes’ starters, and assuming the Hurricanes do not have an appetite to carry three goalies on their roster for an extended period (they’ll need to because of this claim, at least for Monday), it seems as though Bussi could end up on waivers at some point in the short-term future.

If this waiver claim was indeed made with an eye to reinforcing the Wolves due to the trio of young goalies’ relative inexperience at the AHL level, it is understandable that the club would elect to claim Bussi. As things currently stand, the Hurricanes are one claim of Primeau, or one Primeau injury, from having to rely on that aforementioned trio to provide all of the goaltending for AHL Chicago. While it’s possible one (or more) of that trio is more than up to the task of playing a heavy workload without much prior AHL experience, the Hurricanes can’t be blamed if they have some uneasiness considering that prospect.

So, with this claim of Bussi, they have given themselves an opportunity to protect Chicago from that potential scenario. The 27-year-old Bussi is an ideal candidate for this kind of waiver claim for multiple reasons. First and foremost, he has no NHL experience, so he would not be the kind of goalie a team in need of NHL reinforcement in net would be expected to claim. That increases the odds Bussi will pass through waivers should the Hurricanes attempt to send him down.

Additionally, the Florida Panthers’ AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, are still left with four netminders under contract after Bussi’s claim. Although none of Cooper Black, Kirill Gerasimyuk, Evan Cormier, or Michael Simpson are particularly experienced at the AHL level, the sheer volume of netminders set to compete for a role in the crease in Charlotte would, theoretically, decrease the odds that Florida will try to re-claim Bussi should Carolina try to sneak him through waivers.

If one of those goalies has been particularly impressive in the training camp/preseason process and looks poised to steal a greater role in the AHL than the Panthers previously expected, those odds of a re-claim from the Panthers would decrease further still.

Bussi’s stellar performance in the AHL thus far in his career (.915 save percentage across 111 games) does complicate those odds, but if the Hurricanes have room to keep him on their NHL roster through Monday, it may be worth the chance of trying to place him back on waivers in order to reinforce Chicago. Based on their claim today, it appears the Hurricanes might agree.

This entire AHL explanation could be rendered meaningless if one of the Hurricanes’ NHL goalies is injured, of course, or if the Hurricanes surprisingly decide they want to carry three goalies. But at this point, it does appear that placing Bussi on waivers once again is the most easy-to-imagine scenario for how things will play out in Carolina’s crease moving forward.

Waivers: 10/3/25

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Twelve new names are on Friday’s waiver list, Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports relays. Out of the 22 names waived yesterday, three were claimed: Daemon Hunt heads from Columbus to Minnesota, Cole Schwindt from Vegas to Florida, and Ilya Solovyov from Calgary to Colorado.

Today’s placements are as follows:

Boston Bruins

F Patrick Brown
D Michael Callahan
F Georgii Merkulov
D Victor Söderström
F Riley Tufte

Carolina Hurricanes

F Givani Smith

Tampa Bay Lightning

G Brandon Halverson

Toronto Maple Leafs

F David Kämpf
D William Villeneuve

Utah Mammoth

G Matt Villalta

Vancouver Canucks

F Nils Åman

Washington Capitals

F Sheldon Rempal

Hurricanes Sign Givani Smith To Two-Way Deal

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The Hurricanes announced Friday they’ve signed winger Givani Smith to a two-way deal. He had been in camp on a professional tryout. The deal carries a $775K NHL salary and a $140K AHL salary with a guarantee of $250K.

A second-round pick by the Red Wings in 2016, Smith has become a journeyman over the past few seasons. Carolina will be the 27-year-old’s sixth NHL organization in the last four years. He split the 2022-23 campaign between the Red Wings and Panthers, spent all of 2023-24 in San Jose, and then split last year between the Sharks, Avalanche, and Flyers organizations. However, he never made an NHL appearance for Philadelphia.

The 6’2″ enforcer has gone 575 days since recording his last NHL point. He went without one in 13 showings last year and spent the back half of the campaign in the minors after clearing waivers. Since his debut six years ago, Smith has a 9-13–22 scoring line in 168 appearances with a -31 rating, 268 PIMs, and 330 hits. He’s averaged just 8:12 of ice time per game.

It remains to be seen whether the Canes keep Smith around for opening night or opt to waive him and stash him with AHL Charlotte. Considering fellow fringe forwards Juha Jaaska and Mark Jankowski are carrying day-to-day injury designations, it’ll likely be the former. He got a relatively long look in preseason, averaging nearly 13 minutes per game across four contests while scoring twice, adding an assist and 28 PIMs.

Smith beat out fellow PTO invite Kevin Labanc for a job, as well as first-round picks like Bradly Nadeau and Ryan Suzuki – the latter of whom managed to clear waivers this week. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent next summer.

Hurricanes No Longer Pursuing Michael McLeod, Carter Hart

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Oct. 3: While the two sides were close to a deal, talks between the Hurricanes and McLeod are no longer ongoing and won’t result in him joining Carolina. The breakdown wasn’t compensation-related, Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic reports. It’s worth noting the club faced significant pushback from season ticket holders following Pagnotta’s report. In kind, they’re no longer a potential landing spot for goaltender Carter Hart, who was charged in the same case and was previously linked to Carolina.

Sep. 18: The Hurricanes are expected to register a contract for center Michael McLeod after he becomes eligible to sign with an NHL club on Oct. 15, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reports Thursday. Until then, McLeod remains suspended by the league in relation to allegations of sexual assault made against him and four other NHL players that resulted in not-guilty verdicts at a trial in London, Ontario, in July. While he is eligible to sign then, he cannot return to play until Dec. 1.

“The events that transpired after the 2018 Hockey Canada Foundation Gala in London, Ontario, prior to these players’ arrival in the NHL, were deeply troubling and unacceptable,” the NHL said in its statement announcing the suspensions last week. “The League expects everyone connected with the game to conduct themselves with the highest level of moral integrity. And, in this case, while found not to have been criminal, the conduct of the players involved certainly did not meet that standard.”

McLeod, 27, was a first-round pick of the Devils and remained with the franchise up until he was formally charged with sexual assault in January 2024. He hasn’t played an NHL game since then and became an unrestricted free agent when New Jersey opted not to qualify him last year. He spent the 2024-25 season in the Kontinental Hockey League with Kazakhstan’s Barys Astana and Russia’s Avangard Omsk before returning to Canada this summer to stand trial.

He was a bottom-six faceoff specialist during his time with the Devils, going 58.3% on draws for his career to pair with 85 points in 287 appearances across six seasons. He managed a 6-13–19 scoring line in 35 games for Barys and Avangard last year.

The Hurricanes will now add him to a bottom-six mix that’s already filled out nicely. The path for McLeod to play an everyday center role will be muddy if the team rolls with Logan Stankoven as its second-line center – something head coach Rod Brind’Amour trialed in the first day of camp today after deploying him on the wing after acquiring the young forward from the Stars in last year’s Mikko Rantanen trade. That would leave Jordan Staal and Jesperi Kotkaniemi anchoring the third and fourth lines, meaning McLeod may have to shift to the wing to get back into an NHL lineup. He’ll be competing with names like William Carrier, Mark Jankowski, Tyson Jost, and Eric Robinson for minutes and a roster spot.

Nashville Predators Claim Tyson Jost Off Waivers

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According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Nashville Predators have added to their forward depth off the waiver wire. Friedman reports that the Predators have claimed forward Tyson Jost from the Carolina Hurricanes.

Heading to Nashville, Jost will join the fifth team of his career. Undoubtedly, the former 10th overall pick of the 2016 NHL Draft has fallen well short of expectations.

Throughout his first six years in the NHL with the Colorado Avalanche, Jost was fairly productive, scoring 45 goals and 103 points in 321 games, averaging 13:29 of ice time in a third-line role. Still, he failed to break through in any meaningful fashion, and the Avalanche traded Jost to the Minnesota Wild for Nico Sturm, who became a key depth piece for the franchise’s third Stanley Cup banner.

After failing to find a consistent role in the lineup with Minnesota, Jost was placed on waivers in mid-November of the 2022-23 season. He was subsequently claimed by the Buffalo Sabres, finishing the year with seven goals and 22 points in 59 games. Buffalo rewarded Jost’s efforts with a one-year, $2MM contract the following offseason.

For the third time in a row, Jost quickly fell out of the team’s lineup due to poor performances. Buffalo sent Jost through waivers in late December, and he spent the rest of the season as an oft-taxied depth forward from the Sabres to the AHL’s Rochester Americans.

Last season, Jost joined the Hurricanes on a one-year, $775K prove-it contract, which he turned into four goals and nine points in 39 games. Still, he showed signs of life, finishing the year with the highest CorsiFor% at even strength of his career.

The Hurricanes quickly re-signed Jost to an identical contract this summer, though he won’t play it out in Carolina. Now, after today’s waiver claim, he’ll likely compete for the next week for a fourth-line role with the Predators.

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