Waivers: 09/30/22
After waivers opened yesterday, quite a few players have ended up on the wire today. Teams keep making cuts to their rosters, and any veteran player needs to clear before being assigned to the minor leagues. Here are the names on waivers today.
Dallas Stars
Riley Barber
Ben Gleason
Tanner Kero
Jerad Rosburg
Joseph Cecconi
Rhett Gardner
Detroit Red Wings
Florida Panthers
New York Rangers
Philadelphia Flyers
San Jose Sharks
Tampa Bay Lightning
Daniel Walcott
Darren Raddysh
Maxime Lagace
Trevor Carrick
Washington Capitals
Michael Sgarbossa
Riley Sutter
Mike Vecchione
Hunter Shepard
Latest On Spencer Knight
The Florida Panthers recently re-signed goalie Spencer Knight to a three-year contract with a $4.5MM AAV. The contract raised some eyebrows due to its cost, as Knight’s extension will be more expensive than the recent Jake Oettinger deal, despite the fact that Oettinger seems to have firmly established himself as a quality starting netminder while Knight had an up-and-down 2021-22. Now that a few days have passed since the signing, though, we have some more context on why the Panthers felt comfortable taking a leap of faith with their extremely talented (but still relatively unproven) young netminder.
As Pierre LeBrun reported on TSN’s Insider Trading, the Panthers were “legitimately worried” about the possibility of another team offer sheeting Knight next summer, when he would have been a restricted free agent. The Panthers, who are paying starting goalie Sergei Bobrovsky $10MM AAV through the 2025-26 season, may not have been in a strong enough cap position to retain Knight at what his offer sheet may have cost. So, rather than risk losing the goalie they seem to firmly believe is their long-term future in net, the Panthers decided to sign Knight to this expensive bridge contract in order to ensure he remains in Sunrise for the foreseeable future.
Florida Panthers Extend Spencer Knight
The Florida Panthers have locked up their future in net, signing Spencer Knight to a three-year extension. The deal kicks in for the 2023-24 season and will carry an average annual value of $4.5MM. Panthers general manager Bill Zito released a statement:
Spencer is a phenomenal goaltender, as well as an exceptional athlete and person. He has thrived in his professional career, dedicating himself to his training through his first two seasons with our organization. With this extension, we are excited about the present and future of Panthers goaltending.
A three-year extension means Knight’s contract status now lines up with Sergei Bobrovsky, with both expiring after the 2025-26 season. While the team will have to carry a combined $14.5MM cap hit those three years, Knight will still be an RFA in the summer of 2026, meaning a long-term extension can still be worked out with the money that Bobrovsky was earning.
For this year, the 21-year-old netminder is still in the final season of his entry-level contract, despite already being a regular at the NHL level. The 13th overall pick from 2019 played in 32 games for the Panthers last season, registering a .908 save percentage. He also got into 11 games with the Charlotte Checkers to stay fresh, posting a .905 in the AHL.
Incredibly composed in net, Knight is basically the prototype for the modern NHL goaltender. Big and agile with strong positioning, there are few goaltending prospects better. While his results do leave a little bit of room for improvement, the Panthers obviously believe he is the real deal, signing him to a rather expensive bridge deal. He comes in ahead of Jake Oettinger (3 years, $4.0MM AAV), and Carter Hart (3 years, $3.979MM AAV), two other young goaltenders with big expectations.
It will be interesting to see how much Knight starts to take over in Florida, and whether the Panthers will ever consider moving on from Bobrovsky. While he holds a full no-movement clause at the moment, that will change to a 16-team no-trade list in the summer of 2024. It would obviously be difficult to move his massive contract but one thing in the Panthers’ favor is the financial structure. Bobrovsky will have earned $57.5MM of the $70MM deal by the end of 2023-24.
Regardless, locking up Knight at this point was important if they plan on giving him more responsibility this season. A breakout campaign would send his price skyrocketing, and potentially take a bridge deal off the table. Locking him in now is a bit risky, as it assumes he will continue to progress, but there aren’t many goaltenders that would be a better bet.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports
Florida Panthers Sign Patrick Giles
The Florida Panthers have reached an agreement with college free agent Patrick Giles, signing him to a two-year entry-level contract. PuckPedia reports the deal will carry a cap hit of $812.5K. The big forward played a handful of games for their AHL affiliate down the stretch after his four-year career at Boston College came to an end. General manager Bill Zito released a short statement:
Patrick is a physical and talented player and we are looking forward to his development within our Panthers organization.
Physical indeed, as Giles stands at an imposing 6’5″ and has started to learn to use that big frame at both ends of the rink. In his senior season with BC, he managed to score 15 goals in 37 games, mostly by being larger than much of his competition. That size will help him in the minor leagues, where he’ll continue his professional journey this year.
In 17 games with the Checkers, split between the regular season and playoffs, Giles registered three points and racked up nine penalty minutes. While he is certainly not a fighter, the Panthers have made it very clear this offseason that they want to get tougher as a team, and adding his size follows that idea.
Signing a player like this is just like playing a lottery ticket. There’s a real chance that Giles amounts to very little even in the minor leagues but if he can carve out a role as a bottom-six player, perhaps they can squeeze some NHL minutes out of another undrafted player. Remember, Mason Marchment was a big, undrafted winger that had a hard time finding much offensive success when he first hit the minor leagues – and he just received a four-year, $18MM contract with the Dallas Stars after breaking out with the Panthers last year.
Marchment’s slow development through the Toronto Maple Leafs system is a blueprint for Giles. He was nearly 26 by the time he became a regular in the NHL and had ground through a year in the ECHL and three more in the AHL.
Jean-Francois Berube Expected To Be In Panthers Camp
Given that Andrew Hammond is likely no longer attending Florida Panthers training camp on a PTO, with the veteran netminder expected to sign overseas, the team needed another goaltender. George Richards of Florida Hockey Now reports that it will be Jean-Francois Berube, who will now be in camp on a tryout basis, competing for a spot in the organization.
Berube, 31, has bounced around the league as a depth option for years now, playing for a number of organizations but rarely seeing much NHL playing time. In 2021-22 he was with the Columbus Blue Jackets, appearing six times and posting a .900 save percentage. In 19 appearances with the Cleveland Monsters of the AHL he actually fared worse, but despite middling minor league performances, Berube continues to be a trusted option for NHL clubs trying to add experience.
A PTO is about as much as he can hope for at this point, though it is important to remember that this doesn’t lock him into a deal with the Panthers. Berube can showcase himself in the preseason for the entire league and hope to land somewhere once injuries start to pile up.
For his career, Berube has appeared in 40 regular season games and owns a .898 save percentage with a 12-12-4 record.
Florida Panthers Add To Performance Department
- The Florida Panthers made some additions to their Performance Department today, announcing the hires of Chris McLellan, Mike Joyce, and Mark Gaydos. McLellan was named vice president of sports performance, Joyce was named head strength and conditioning coach, and Gaydos was named assistant strength and conditioning coach. The Panthers have big plans for this season, and these three hires beef up the off-ice support they’re offering to their players as they hope to achieve their lofty goals in 2022-23.
Charlotte Checkers Hire Jared Staal, Bobby Sanguinetti As Assistant Coaches
A pair of AHL teams have announced coaching hires, including a trio of former NHLers going behind the bench. The Charlotte Checkers, the AHL affiliate of the Florida Panthers, announced the hirings of Jared Staal and Bobby Sanguinetti as assistant coaches on the staff of Head Coach Geordie Kinnear. The two newest hires also join former teammate Zac Dalpe on Kinnear’s staff. Heading up north, the Hartford Wolf Pack have hired Jamie Tardif as an assistant coach and named Casey Torres as Player Development Assistant. Hartford currently serves as the AHL affiliate of the New York Rangers.
Colin White Preferred Short-Term Deal With Winning Team This Summer
- Panthers center Colin White told Ian Mendes of The Athletic (subscription link) that his preference this summer was to sign a one-year contract over pursuing a multi-year agreement on the open market. Some had speculated he’d follow long-time agent Kent Hughes to Montreal and while White mentioned he gave some consideration to doing so, he decided that it was more important to go to a winning team. While White is coming off a pair of injury-plagued seasons, the 25-year-old could be an upside signing for Florida on his one-year, $1.2MM deal.
German Rubtsov Signs In KHL
2016 Philadelphia Flyers first-round pick German Rubtsov has signed a one-year contract with Spartak Moskva in the KHL, per the team.
Rubtsov, a 24-year-old center, was taken 22nd overall in 2016 with the upside of being a high-end, two-way middle-six center. Things have never quite panned out for him at the professional level, though, as his AHL production had steadily decreased over the past few seasons. The Flyers dealt Rubtsov to the Florida Panthers as part of the Claude Giroux trade last season.
Down the stretch, Rubtsov had just one goal in six regular-season and playoff games with the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers. It wasn’t enough to convince the Panthers to issue him a qualifying offer, making him an unrestricted free agent this summer.
At 24, Rubtsov is nearly in his prime already. Although it is just a one-year deal, it’s extremely likely that Rubtsov’s chance at an NHL career, or even a career in North America, is completely gone. There’s always the chance that a move back home and a different system is able to help Rubtsov rediscover his game, but it would have to be a magnificent step forward for an NHL team to come calling for him next offseason.
Next season in Moscow, Rubtsov will join a Spartak team that’s made the playoffs for the past five seasons.
Breaking Down The Sean Monahan Trade Conditions
Seeing conditional draft picks get dealt is commonplace in this day and age. However, the stipulations on them are usually easy enough to understand. Whether it’s a third-round pick dropping down to a fourth if a player doesn’t play enough games for their new team, or a second-round pick upgrading to a first if the team in question wins the Stanley Cup, the conditions on trades are sensible, at least for the majority of the time.
The Montreal Canadiens seem to buck that trend, though. Starting with some lengthy conditions on the Christian Dvorak trade prior to last season, the Canadiens have agreed to an even more complex (and frivolous, depending on who you ask) set of conditions on the 2025 conditional first-round pick that they acquired today from the Calgary Flames, along with Sean Monahan. So much so that it’s worth its own post, with reference drawn from CapFriendly’s posting and reporting on the topic.
There are three possible umbrella scenarios that could determine which draft pick Montreal actually receives:
Scenario 1: If Calgary’s 2024 first-round pick falls between 20th and 32nd overall, Montreal can elect to receive Calgary’s 2024 first instead of their 2025 first.
Scenario 2: Calgary receives the 2025 lottery-protected first-round pick sent to them by the Florida Panthers in the Jonathan Huberdeau trade.
Scenario 3: Calgary does NOT receive Florida’s 2025 lottery-protected first-round pick.
Scenario 1
This is easily the simplest and potentially most likely scenario if the Flames are still rolling strong two years from now. If Montreal opts to swap out an unknown 2025 first-rounder for a late 2024 first-rounder, then the trade tree ends and Montreal receives no additional compensation.
Scenario 2
Now, things get complex with the addition of Florida’s 2025 lottery-protected first-round pick. In the event that both the Flames’ and Panthers’ 2025 first-round picks are NOT in the top 10, the Canadiens will receive the better of the two selections.
However, if the Flames’ 2025 first-round pick is a top 10 pick and the Panthers’ pick is not, Montreal is guaranteed to receive the Panthers’ pick. If the opposite is true, Montreal will receive Calgary’s selection.
Scenario 3
This is the most unlikely yet most complex scenario. If Florida’s 2025 first-round pick ends up as a top-ten choice, they’ll retain the pick and send their 2026 first-rounder to Calgary instead. This has two possible implications for Montreal:
If Calgary’s 2025 first is NOT top 10: Montreal will receive Calgary’s 2025 first-round pick, and, if Florida’s 2025 first-round pick is not top ten, but was transferred to another team due to prior conditions AND is a better pick than Calgary’s, Montreal will also receive Calgary’s 2025 fourth-round pick as compensation.
If Calgary’s 2025 first is top 10: If Calgary’s 2025 first-round pick is first overall, Montreal will receive the better of Florida’s and Calgary’s 2026 first-round picks AND Calgary’s 2025 third-round pick. If Calgary’s 2025 first-round pick falls between selections 2 through 10, Montreal will receive the pick.
All in all, if the reported conditions are correct, the Canadiens have the potential to receive one of the following five outcomes:
2024 Calgary first-round pick
2025 Calgary first-round pick + potential 2025 Calgary fourth-round pick
2025 Florida first-round pick
2026 Calgary first-round pick + 2025 Calgary third-round pick
2026 Florida first-round pick + 2025 Calgary third-round pick