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Buffalo Sabres Win 2021 NHL Draft Lottery

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For the final time for the foreseeable future, all non-playoff teams were eligible to win the first overall pick in the NHL Draft Lottery. Beginning in 2022, a team can only move up a maximum of ten spots, meaning the teams who finish No. 12 through No. 16 in the final league standings cannot move high enough to take over the top pick. The stage was set for a climactic send-off for the old format.

Well, the lottery balls decided not to take a crazy bounce in their last opportunity to move a team from the middle of the first round all the way to the top. Instead, the draft order stayed virtually the same. The Buffalo Sabres, who held the worst record in the NHL this season and thus the top odds in the lottery, retained the No. 1 pick. The expansion Seattle Kraken, awarded the same odds as the third-worst record in the league, moved up one spot, switching places with the Anaheim Ducks. New this year, there were only two lottery draws as opposed to the former three. Here is the official first-round draft order for the top 15 picks:

  1. Buffalo Sabres
  2. Seattle Kraken
  3. Anaheim Ducks
  4. New Jersey Devils
  5. Columbus Blue Jackets
  6. Detroit Red Wings
  7. San Jose Sharks
  8. Los Angeles Kings
  9. Vancouver Canucks
  10. Ottawa Senators
  11. Chicago Blackhawks
  12. Calgary Flames
  13. Philadelphia Flyers
  14. Dallas Stars
  15. New York Rangers

(As a reminder, the Arizona Coyotes forfeited their first-round pick this years as discipline for scouting violations)

This will be the second time in four years that the Buffalo Sabres will pick first overall after selecting Rasmus Dahlin at the top spot in 2018. It also means that two teams, the Sabres and New Jersey Devils, will have owned the first pick in four of the past five drafts. The two clubs are happy that the NHL’s new rule limiting teams to two lottery wins in a five-year span kicks in next year with a clean slate. Incredibly, the Sabres lottery win also further advances the mythology of Taylor Hall. Although Hall is now with the Boston Bruins, this is the fifth time in Hall’s career that his most recent team eligible for the draft lottery has won. A No. 1 overall pick himself, Hall has brought luck to the Edmonton Oilers, Devils, and now Sabres.

Perhaps bigger news than Buffalo at No. 1 is Seattle at No. 2, a major opportunity for the Kraken to draft a player who is ready to join the team in their inaugural season. The Vegas Golden Knights, with the same odds in the 2017 NHL Draft Lottery, fell to No. 6 overall and drafted Cody Glass, who has still yet to establish himself as a regular in the Vegas lineup. With the second pick, Seattle will have better odds of adding an instant difference-maker.

The 2021 NHL Draft is unique compared to recent years in that there is no consensus top prospect. In fact, it is difficult to remember a draft class in recent memory that is so undecided at the top. One major factor has been the lack of complete scouting due to canceled and shortened seasons and limited live viewings. However, even with complete information, there is still seemingly no prospect that stands heads above the rest. University of Michigan defenseman Owen Power and forward Matthew Beniers are largely considered the top players at each position and the two most likely candidates for the top pick, with Power having a slight lead according to draft pundits. However, current teammate Kent Johnson and Wolverines commit Luke Hughes, a forward and defenseman respectively, are also in the mix. Canadian junior standouts Mason McTavish, Dylan Guenther, and Brandt Clarke and European pros William Eklund and Simon Edvinsson may also be in play.

AHL Announces 2020-21 All-Star Teams

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After revealing their All-Rookie Team yesterday, the AHL has handed out another set of accolades for the best players in the league. The 2020-21 All-Star teams have been released, honors that are voted on by coaches players, and media. Unlike most years, when a first and second team would be announced, the league decided to name All-Division teams in this unique season.

While these teams do not predict future NHL success as well as the All-Rookie group, there are still plenty of NHL stars that have been awarded AHL All-Star honors in the past. This year’s group many young players that will soon be on an NHL bench, including several members of the All-Rookie team.

Atlantic Division

G Jeremy Swayman, Providence Bruins
D Samuel Bolduc, Bridgeport Sound Tigers
D Tarmo Reunanen, Hartford Wolf Pack
F Morgan Barron, Hartford Wolf Pack
F Cameron Hughes, Providence Bruins
F Jakub Lauko, Providence Bruins

North Division

G Zane McIntyre, Lehigh Valley Phantoms
D Oskari Laaksonen, Rochester Americans
D Cameron Schilling, Hershey Bears
F Boris Katchouk, Syracuse Crunch
F Connor McMichael, Hershey Bears
F Taylor Raddysh, Syracuse Crunch

Canadian Division

G Cayden Primeau, Laval Rocket
D Otto Leskinen, Laval Rocket
D Connor Mackey, Stockton Heat
F Kalle Kossila, Toronto Marlies
F Egor Sokolov, Belleville Senators
F Nathan Todd, Manitoba Moose

Central Division

G Beck Warm, Chicago Wolves
D Calen Addison, Iowa Wild
D Cody Franson, Rockford IceHogs
F Riley Barber, Grand Rapids Griffins
F Riley Damiani, Texas Stars
F Adam Mascherin, Texas Stars

Pacific Division

G Logan Thompson, Henderson Silver Knights
D Josh Mahura, San Diego Gulls
D Ryan Murphy, Henderson Silver Knights
F Cooper Marody, Bakersfield Condors
F Andrew Poturalski, San Diego Gulls
F T.J. Tynan, Colorado Eagles

Julius Honka Signs In Sweden

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Seven years after being drafted 14th overall, it appears that Julius Honka’s time with the Dallas Stars organization is finally over. The 25-year-old defenseman has signed a two-year contract with Lulea HF in the SHL. Though the Stars could retain his restricted free agent rights this summer with a qualifying offer, Honka will become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2022-23 season after he turns 27.

It certainly hasn’t been a smooth ride for the Finnish defenseman. Honka was picked in the first half of the first round after an outstanding season with the Swift Current Broncos of the WHL and immediately joined the Texas Stars in the AHL as a teenager. During the 2014-15 season, he scored 31 points in 68 games while also returning to the World Juniors where he had won a gold medal the year prior. It looked like the Stars had a future top-pairing defenseman on their hands, but that didn’t end up being the case.

Over the next few years, Honka eventually got a chance at the NHL, but recorded just 13 points in 87 games and was scratched more than he played. By 2019 he wanted out and ended up playing all of last season in Finland while hoping for a trade. That made it somewhat surprising when he signed a one-year, two-way deal for the 2020-21 season, returning from Europe just to play in the AHL once again. Honka had five points in 17 games for Texas this season and didn’t see a minute of game time with Dallas.

He’ll get his chance to join another organization when his rights eventually expire, but it’s hard to know what kind of NHL opportunity will be waiting for Honka at that point—or if he even wants it.

Snapshots: Kampfer, Stars Goaltenders, Caufield

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The Boston Bruins lost some of their defensive depth today when head coach Bruce Cassidy said that Steven Kampfer will miss the rest of the playoffs with an arm injury, according to NHL.com’s Amalie Benjamin. No word on how he got hurt.

Kampfer has only appeared once in the last 13 games for Boston, including no playoff games. The one game he did play, back on May 11, he did get 24:05 of ice time. For the season, the 32-year-old appeared in 20 games, scoring two goals and five points, while blocking 24 shots.

The team will have to depend more on some of their remaining defensive depth, including Connor Clifton and Jarred Tinordi. With an injury to Kevan Miller, the team will turn to Tinordi to fill in.

  • Matthew DeFranks of the Dallas Morning News writes the Dallas Stars will have a goalie logjam next season with the return of Ben Bishop. While there was some early speculation that the team believed that the Seattle Kraken might grab veteran Anton Khudobin in the expansion draft (Jake Oettinger is exempt and Bishop has a no-movement clause), the scribe believes that Khudobin’s disappointing season, his age (35 years) and two years on his contract at $3.33MM doesn’t make that much sense for an expansion team. While the expansion draft is one potential way to fix the issue, the team might be better off trying to trade Khudobin to team looking for a solid backup. With many goaltenders going for quality prices, the team could pick up a solid draft pick if they decided to go that way.
  • The Montreal Canadiens got the split they needed in Toronto and now have home-ice advantage for the time being. However, The Athletic’s Arpon Basu (subscription required) believes the team needs youngster Cole Caufield to step into Game 3. The scribe notes that Montreal spent much of the second period of Game 2 short-handed mainly because Toronto controlled the puck almost entirely. To fix that problem, the team must add speed, something that Caufield and defenseman Alexander Romanov could provide the team. When asked, coach Dominique Ducharme shrugged. “Possible, like everyone available,” he said. “We have depth, and we’re going to use it.”

Roope Hintz Undergoes Successful Surgery

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  • Stars forward Roope Hintz has undergone successful surgery to repair his left adductor tendon that was injured back in the 2020 Stanley Cup Final, relays Saad Yousuf of The Athletic (Twitter link). The 24-year-old was basically a game-time decision for the majority of the season and while he did miss 15 games, he was still quite strong offensively, notching a career-high 43 points while finishing third in scoring for Dallas.  He is expected to make a full recovery in time for training camp in the fall and considering the year he had while playing injured, there is certainly cause for optimism for him finding another level offensively next season.

Dallas Stars Extend Tanner Kero

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The Dallas Stars have completed a bit of business, signing Tanner Kero to a two-year, two-way contract extension. Scheduled for unrestricted free agency, he will now remain with the organization through the 2022-23 season. PuckPedia reports that the deal will carry a cap hit of $750K at the NHL level but includes strong minor league guarantees.

Not only does the contract keep a valuable depth forward in the mix, but Kero also meets the exposure requirements for the upcoming expansion draft. Every team must expose at least two forwards that are both signed through 2021-22 and meet a games played requirement. Before Kero’s signing, only Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn, Joe Pavelski, Alexander Radulov, Radek Faksa, Roope Hintz, and Denis Gurianov met those two requirements, not leaving many options for exposure to Seattle.

Kero does meet them, because of how many games he played for the team this season. Despite not seeing any NHL action in the 2018-19 or 2019-20 seasons, the 28-year-old played in 39 games for the Stars this year, registering ten points. He may not get that many chances moving forward, but having a player with more than 100 games of NHL experience waiting in the wings is a valuable asset.

If the Stars want to send Kero to the minor leagues next season he would need to pass through waivers, though that doesn’t seem like a problem. The veteran forward cleared three times this season.

Stars Haven’t Asked Ben Bishop To Waive No-Move Protection

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One of the more intriguing goalie situations to watch for heading into Seattle’s expansion draft is in Dallas.  Ben Bishop and Anton Khudobin formed a high-quality tandem in 2018-19 and 2019-20 and would have this season had it not been for Bishop’s knee injury that cost him the entire year.  Both goalies require protection from the Kraken and, of course, teams can only protect one.

By default, that spot is currently held by Bishop by virtue of his no-move clause which protects the player from being exposed unless he agrees to waive it.  At Friday’s end-of-season media conference, GM Jim Nill told reporters, including NHL.com’s Tracey Myers, that the team has not approached Bishop about potentially waiving it; his comments also suggested that he may not be willing to ask either:

When Ben is healthy, he’s one of the top 3-5 goalies in the league.  He’s a guy who can be a difference-maker for you in the playoffs and in winning the Stanley Cup. I think it’s important for him to get back with us. He’s a big part of our team, a big part of our leadership group. He’s a guy who puts us over the top.

Right now, our plan is, let’s see where he’s at here and let’s see where he’s at in July. Right now, he feels very good and he’s on track for being ready for camp, so we’ll play that by ear.

Assuming he is medically cleared by July which, by all accounts, should be the case, he won’t be able to medically exempted from the draft so it certainly seems as if Khudobin will be made available.  The 35-year-old posted a 2.54 GAA with a .905 SV% in 32 starts for Dallas this season, his lowest save percentage since 2016-17.  However, given the injuries they dealt with plus a schedule that was scrambled up on multiple occasions, a step back is certainly understandable.  While he’ll only have one year left on his contract, Khudobin could be an intriguing option for the Kraken in July.

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that Jake Oettinger, who had a nice rookie season, is exempt.  Assuming that Bishop is ready to go next season, it stands to reason that those two would comprise the goaltending tandem which makes it unlikely that they will be willing to give extra compensation to steer Seattle away from Khudobin if that’s the direction they want to go.

Dallas GM Jim Nill Discusses Upcoming Contract Talks For Key Defensemen

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Dallas has a pair of important contracts on the back end to look at this offseason with Miro Heiskanen set to become a restricted free agent while John Klingberg will be entering the final year of his contract, making him eligible to sign an extension at that time.  Speaking with reporters including Mike Heika of the Stars’ team site, GM Jim Nill provided some comments about the situations for both of them.

With Heiskanen needing a new deal for next season, it stands to reason that his file should be the priority.  To that end, Nill indicated that discussions have already started on that front.  When asked about Klingberg’s case, he noted the challenges that lie ahead in those talks, ones that can be easily applied to Heiskanen as well:

On their end, they have to figure out…we have a flat cap, is this cap going to be flat for the next three, four, five years? We know businesses have been hit hard and sports businesses have been hit hard. We know there is a flat cap, how long does it stay flat? We don’t know. From their point of view, are they better off to do a short-term contract hoping that revenues are going to grow? If we talk a lot about a long-term deal? What that’s number? There’s a lot of unknowns.

From our end, we have to sit down and we’re trying to project the same thing. What number works for both parties? We’re open to both ways. The short-term, we’re comfortable and I think they are, too. If it’s long term, what’s the number long-term? We’ll just have to walk through this.

This is something that started coming into play last offseason with the flattened salary cap and since then, it has only intensified.  Even with plenty of deals coming off the books this summer, most of those players will be replaced by similarly-priced ones; the cap troubles aren’t going away.  The question of when league revenues jump up to the point where the escrow shortfall is paid off which will pave the way for an eventual cap increase is a big one.  No one really knows for sure when that will happen which leads to plenty of uncertainty.

Also creating some uncertainty is what type of offensive upside Heiskanen has.  His point per game rate this season ticked up only slightly over his first couple of seasons and while there is still plenty of value in a 35-point defenseman that can do as much as he can in terms of controlling possession and logging heavy minutes (nearly 25 minutes a night), that’s not the type of production that will get him the elite money for a defender.  If Heiskanen’s camp thinks that the 21-year-old can find another level on that front, it would make sense for them to push for a short-term deal and try their hand again a couple of years from now when they have arbitration eligibility.

As for Klingberg, he has been a fixture on the back end for Dallas since breaking into the league in the 2014-15 season and has been on an extremely team-friendly deal since 2015-16 with a cap hit of just $4.25MM.  With that contract having another year on it, he will be 30 when he first takes to the ice on his next deal.  While there could be a temptation to sign a shorter-term deal in the hopes of getting more money in a couple of years assuming revenue stabilizes by then, Klingberg would also be at the age where teams are a bit more hesitant to hand out big money, long-term contracts.  Accordingly, taking a bit of a discount in terms of the AAV but getting closer to a max-term agreement may be his best course of action.

Either way, both blueliners will soon be in for significant raises.  Fortunately for Dallas, they will have some flexibility on the cap front this summer with Andrew Cogliano and Blake Comeau ($5.65MM combined) coming off the books to help cover Heiskanen’s deal.  Meanwhile, in the 2022 offseason when Klingberg will need his new contract, Joe Pavelski and Alexander Radulov ($13.25MM combined) will be UFAs as well, providing plenty of wiggle room for Nill to work with.  Their back end will soon be getting a lot more expensive although they should still be worth the higher price tag.

Roope Hintz To Undergo Surgery

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The Dallas Stars held more media availability today, where GM Jim Nill gave reporters including Saad Yousuf of The Athletic several injury updates. Alexander Radulov, Ben Bishop, and Tyler Seguin are all on track to make full recoveries in time for next season’s training camp, but the real news was that Roope Hintz has surgery scheduled for next week. Hintz is dealing with a left abductor tendon injury according to Yousuf and will be out three to four months after surgery on Wednesday.

Hintz and Seguin ended up back on the shelf after the Stars were eliminated, ending what was a frustrating season for both players. While Seguin knew he was going to miss most of the year following hip and knee surgeries, Hintz spent the entire season struggling through injury. That makes his performance even more incredible, as the 24-year-old forward finished with 43 points in 41 games.

One can only imagine what Hintz will be able to do at full health, especially if he can continue the natural chemistry he found with Joe Pavelski this season. With the emergence of Jason Robertson as a line-driving player for the Stars, the team now has several top-level left-wing options to deploy, making it even more difficult to match lines.

It was a brutal season for the Stars, who dealt with a COVID situation at the beginning of the year, some major injuries from last year’s Cinderella Stanley Cup run, and inclement weather that delayed and disrupted their schedule. They ended up missing the playoffs by just four points despite all that and should still be in a position to compete in 2021-22. A lot of that hope will rely on injury recoveries, however, including this long-term rehab for Hintz.

Snapshots: Coyotes, Seguin, Hintz, Lightning, Ryan

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The Arizona Coyotes and head coach Rick Tocchet have mutually parted ways and the team announced they will begin the search for their next head coach immediately. However, knowing that Arizona is struggling financially, it’s seems likely that the team will be looking at cheaper options for their head coach.

TSN’s Pierre LeBrun points out that the team has as many as 10 candidates already for their open head coaching position with a strong likelihood they will reach out to several interesting hires, including New York Islanders assistant Lane Lambert, San Jose Sharks associate coach Rocky Thompson and Providence College’s Nate Leaman, who recently coached Team U.S.A to a gold medal at the 2021 World Junior Championship.

All three come with interesting resumes if the Coyotes can convince them to leave their current posts.

  • It looks like the season is over for two Dallas Stars. Head coach Rick Bowness said that forwards Tyler Seguin and Roope Hintz will not play in the team’s final two games, according to Dallas Morning News’ Matthew DeFranks. With no playoffs this year, the team will allow both players to rest. Seguin has appeared in three games after missing most of the season due to hip and knee surgeries. Hintz has been playing with a lower-body injury for months, so now that the team has been eliminated from a playoff berth, both will be held out to prevent any more injuries.
  • When asked whether Tampa Bay Lightning defensemen Victor Hedman, Ryan McDonagh and Jan Rutta, who are all considered day-to-day, would be ready for Game 1 of the playoffs, head coach Jon Cooper didn’t give a convincing answer, according to The Athletic’s Joe Smith (subscription required). “I don’t know,” Cooper said. “I hope so. We’re planning on it. But we’ll have to see.” Hedman is dealing with a lower-body injury, McDonagh with an upper-body injury, while Rutta is dealing with a lower-body injury. There is a report, according to Smith, that Hedman, who missed his first game of the season Saturday, was injured in a collision against the boards against Columbus on March 30 and had to be helped off. While he came back to the game not too long after, the rumor is that he might require surgery after the season, although Smith was not able to get that confirmed by Tampa Bay staff.
  • Despite briefly considering retirement before his triceps surgery, Detroit Red Wings forward Bobby Ryan said he is eager to return for a 15th season and hopes it can be with the Red Wings, according to MLive’s Ansar Khan. The 34-year-old, who signed a one-year deal last offseason with Detroit and will now be an unrestricted free agent, scored seven goals and 14 points in 33 games before going down with an injury on March 28. “I want to play hockey next year. I hope it’s Detroit,” Ryan said. “I haven’t had those conversations yet. I expect they’re going to come sometime down the line.”

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