Headlines

Go To MLB Trade Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Newsstand

Brady Tkachuk Out At Least A Month With Wrist Injury

at CDT | by 4 Comments

Senators captain Brady Tkachuk will miss at least four weeks due to the right wrist injury he sustained in yesterday’s game against the Predators, head coach Travis Green said (via Bruce Garrioch of Postmedia). They’ve yet to decide on whether surgery is required. If so, his return timeline will be extended.

Tkachuk sustained the injury early in the game. While on the power play, he took a cross-check from Nashville captain Roman Josi near the goal line that carried enough force to cause Tkachuk to fall forward into the boards, bending his right wrist awkwardly in the process. He didn’t immediately leave the game but ended up taking his last shift midway through the third period. Green said immediately after the match that Tkachuk was going for evaluation and that his absence wasn’t precautionary.

This will stand as Tkachuk’s largest absence to date. While he’s missed games due to injury in four of his seven full NHL seasons, none of them were serious enough to warrant lengthy recovery times. The most time he ever missed was nine games due to a leg injury early in his rookie season. His four-week minimum means his earliest return is Nov. 11 against the Stars, meaning at least a 13-game absence for the star winger.

Thankfully for Ottawa, they have a relatively easy stretch of games ahead. Only three of those 13 contests are against teams that made the playoffs last season. They’ve gotten off to a tough start, though, especially defensively. They’re 1-2-0 through their first three contests and have yet to give up fewer than four goals, averaging a 4.67 GA/GP mark that ranks 31st in the league. While their 26.0 shots against per game figure is sixth-best in the NHL, their 64.3% success rate on the penalty kill – fifth-worst in the league – hasn’t helped matters. Linus Ullmark has also allowed a league-worst 5.4 goals above expected in his three starts, per MoneyPuck. Tkachuk doesn’t factor in shorthanded, so in that sense, his absence won’t mean much as Ottawa looks to address its biggest early-season weaknesses.

His missing offense and intangibles will, though. Tkachuk had three assists and a +1 rating through his first three outings and, although his 29-26–55 scoring line in 72 games last year was underwhelming by his standards, he received Hart Trophy consideration for the first time as he captained Ottawa to its first playoff berth since 2017. Despite missing a good portion of yesterday’s contest, he still ranks third on the team so far with 10 hits, is tied for the team lead with 21 shot attempts, and has controlled possession well with a 56.5 CF% at even strength.

Now, it’ll be mid-November until he’s consistently in the mix this season. The Senators can place him on injured reserve whenever they need a roster spot. That will likely come in conjunction with activating Drake Batherson, who is expected to come off IR before tomorrow’s game, according to Garrioch. Tkachuk is eligible for long-term injured reserve as well and can yield up to $3.82MM in cap relief, but with the Sens already banking over $2.45MM in space, that won’t be necessary, at least for now.

Luckily for the Sens, they don’t have any mounting injuries behind their leader. They have all available options, including Batherson, to elevate into top-line duties alongside Tim Stützle and Fabian Zetterlund in his absence.

Canadiens Extend Jeff Gorton, Kent Hughes

at CDT | by 2 Comments

11:53 a.m.: Montreal has officially announced the deals. They’re both five-year extensions, per Eric Engels of Sportsnet.

9:33 a.m.: The Canadiens are closing in on contract extensions for front office cornerstones Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. Gorton, the team’s president of hockey operations, and Hughes, their general manager, were in the final years of their current deals.

Gorton and Hughes are both in the early stages of their fourth full season in Montreal. Gorton was the first of the duo to be brought into the organization, stepping in as the top hockey decision-maker in the organization in November 2021 after the club fired previous GM Marc Bergevin. He was the interim GM as well for a few months before hiring Hughes later that season.

They inherited a sticky situation – a club in the early stages of a rebuild despite coming off a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2021. Hughes immediately got to work accumulating assets, trading away veterans Tyler Toffoli, Ben Chiarot, Brett Kulak, and Artturi Lehkonen in the handful of weeks between his hiring and the 2022 trade deadline. The following offseason saw them retool further, acquiring Kirby Dach but surrendering Alexander Romanov in a three-team deal while also swapping aging puck-moving blueliners Jeff Petry and Mike Matheson for each other.

Things have been quieter on the trade front since, but they’ve been busy drafting hopeful franchise cornerstones in the first round – Juraj Slafkovsky first overall in 2022 and Ivan Demidov fifth overall in 2024 being the ones so far to establish themselves as NHLers. Their depth picks have already reached heights as well, with 2022 second-rounder Lane Hutson coming off a Calder Trophy and now a fresh eight-year extension. Even with those names aging out, they boast a universally recognized top-five prospect pool and still retain a good amount of draft capital moving forward.

While still early in the life of Montreal’s young core, initial indications are that Gorton and Hughes have pulled off an accelerated rebuild. They have blue-chip prospects at every position – particularly with goaltender Jacob Fowler working his way up from a 2023 third-round pick to being the reigning NCAA Goalie of the Year – and are coming off their first playoff berth since their Cup Final loss.

Undoubtedly, Gorton and Hughes’ asset management has opened the door for Montreal’s playoff window to begin as quickly as it did. In the past few years, they’ve pulled off one of the more impressive asset flips in recent memory – acquiring a first-round pick to take on Sean Monahan’s contract from the Flames before acquiring another from the Jets when they traded him to Winnipeg two years later. They began conservatively and targeted with their additions last year, acquiring high-priced winger Patrik Laine for barely any assets and upgrading their blue line by swapping youngster Justin Barron for the more experienced Alexandre Carrier a few weeks into the season. Only after reaching the postseason has Montreal really pressed the gas on their rebuild, making one of the biggest deals of last summer with the Noah Dobson sign-and-trade.

In all of that, they’ve also assembled one of the more enviable salary cap pictures in the NHL. Amid rapidly rising market values for players and an aggressively rising cap for the next few years, Montreal has no cap hits above $10MM on its roster while having the vast majority of its core signed through the remainder of the decade. Up front, there’s captain Nick Suzuki at a $7.875MM cap hit through 2029-30, Cole Caufield at $7.8MM through 2030-31, and Slafkovsky at $7.6MM through 2032-33. Their defense has Dobson at $9.5MM through 2032-33, Hutson at $8.85MM starting next season through 2033-34, and Kaiden Guhle at $5.55MM through 2030-31. At present, the only RFAs who will really cash in over the next few years are Zachary Bolduc next summer and Demidov in 2027.

Of course, they still have to finish the job. Montreal’s forward depth remains a concern, particularly in the second-line center slot. That’s a question they’ve been looking to answer long-term since assuming their posts. Nothing about their track record suggests it’ll be a rushed decision, nor does it have to be with multiple core contributors not even at their 23rd birthday yet.

With all that in mind, it’s no surprise that the Canadiens are moving quickly to get these deals done early in the season. Gorton had received interest from other clubs looking to fill GM vacancies last summer, including the Islanders, but the Habs denied him permission to interview.

He’s a seasoned executive, spending previous tenures at the helm of the Bruins and Rangers. For Hughes, though, it’s quite a success story. This post is his first front-office job at any level after working on the other side of the coin as a player agent for Quartexx, a career he held since 1998.

Josh Norris To Miss A Significant Amount Of Time

at CDT | by 17 Comments

Oct. 13th: According to Sabres correspondent Heather Engel, head coach Lindy Ruff suggests that Norris is expected to miss eight weeks of action. Still, he is receiving a second opinion on the injury. Should the second opinion agree on the recovery timeline, that would project Norris’ return in the first week of December, costing him over 25 games of the 2025-26 campaign.

Oct. 11th: On Friday, the Sabres were still evaluating Josh Norris’ upper-body injury to determine how long he might be out for.  The evaluation appears to be ongoing still but the outcome is not ideal as head coach Lindy Ruff told reporters, including Rachel Lenzi of The Buffalo News (Twitter link), that Norris will miss “a significant amount of time” due to the injury.

It is a tough but all-too-familiar blow for the 26-year-old as injuries have dogged him throughout his seven NHL seasons.  The injury occurred late in Thursday’s season opener against the Rangers off a faceoff and while he was eventually able to get up and go to the bench under his own power, he didn’t take a shift after that.

Norris was acquired by Buffalo in one of the bigger trades near the trade deadline last season, coming over from Ottawa with Dylan Cozens being the most significant piece going the other way in a swap of centers that might benefit from the change of scenery.  However, Norris wasn’t able to get a chance to prove that as he suffered a season-ending mid-body injury in just his third game with the team.  Now, he’s suffered another serious setback in his fourth game more than six months later.

Norris was coming off a 21-goal season in 2024-25, the second-best output of his career only coming behind the 35 tallies he had in 2021-22 with Ottawa.  The hope was that he’d be able to bring some extra firepower to their top six forward group and while that still could be the case, it clearly won’t be happening anytime soon.  Fortunately, Ruff later clarified to reporters, including WGR 550’s Paul Hamilton (Twitter link), that the injury isn’t related to any injuries he has had in the past.

If it’s determined that Norris will miss at least 10 games and 24 days with this latest injury, he will become LTIR-eligible.  However, with Buffalo having a little more than $2.2MM in cap space, per PuckPedia, they’re not necessarily in a spot where they should need to use that.  In the meantime, it’s likely that the Sabres will place him on regular injured reserve in the near future, opening up a roster spot for a recall from AHL Rochester.

Canadiens Sign Lane Hutson To Eight-Year Extension

at CDT | by 21 Comments

The Montreal Canadiens have gotten their young defensive star locked up for the foreseeable future. According to a team announcement, the Canadiens have signed Lane Hutson to an eight-year, $70.8MM ($8.85MM AAV) contract extension.

Shortly after the announcement, PuckPedia broke down the structure of Hutson’s new extension:

  • Year 1: $1MM salary, $11MM signing bonus
  • Year 2: $1MM salary, $11MM signing bonus
  • Year 3: $1MM salary, $9.5MM signing bonus
  • Year 4: $1MM salary, $6.5MM signing bonus
  • Year 5: $1.2MM salary, $6MM signing bonus
  • Year 6: $1.2MM salary, $6MM signing bonus, 10 team no-trade clause
  • Year 7: $2.2MM salary, $5MM signing bonus, 10-team no-trade clause
  • Year 8: $7.2MM salary, 10-team no-trade clause

The news is somewhat of a surprise, given last week’s update from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. Friedman noted that while both parties were close on terms and salary, there was a disagreement regarding “philosophy” concerning a Retirement Compensation Agreement (RCA). This agreement was the Canadiens’ attempt to maximize Hutson’s after-tax earnings while keeping his salary below $10MM.

In our update regarding Hutson, PHR’s Josh Erickson broke down an RCA, writing, “An RCA agreement allows a player to defer up to 49% of their salary – delaying earnings but retaining more of them. The deferred money isn’t taxed at its usual rate, which can exceed 50% in Canada for top NHL earners. Whatever is deferred is split in half, with one half going to a refundable deposit with Canada’s tax agency and the other half going into the trust. After an American player (i.e., Hutson) retires and returns to the United States, they receive the deposit back with no tax deducted. In contrast, withdrawals from the trust are taxed at American federal and state rates, which are often lower than the rates the player would pay in Canada.”

In their announcement, the Canadiens didn’t allude to the inclusion of an RCA in the new extension, and we’ll likely never know. Still, today’s agreement indicates that it wasn’t as much of a hangup as previously believed.

Objectively, Hutson’s most obvious comparable would be New Jersey Devils’ defenseman Luke Hughes, who signed a seven-year, $63MM deal shortly before the start of the 2025-26 season. Impressively, the Canadiens were able to keep Hutson’s salary lower than Hughes’ (albeit minimally), while gaining another year of him on the roster.

Still, this contract is more of a gamble than Hughes’ is. Despite winning the Calder Memorial Trophy last season as the league’s top rookie, Hutson only has 92 games of NHL experience (including playoffs) compared to Hughes’ 161.

Regardless, Hutson made the most of his only full season in the league. He tied Larry Murphy’s all-time assist record for rookie defensemen (60), and tied Phil Housley with 66 points, the fourth-most in NHL history for a freshman blueliner. Further, Hutson finished 9th in voting for the James Norris Memorial Trophy, joining Rasmus Dahlin, Thomas Harley, and Jake Sanderson as the only under-25 defenseman to finish top-10 in voting.

Unfortunately, although his offensive prowess is palpable, Hutson brings a lot of question marks on the defensive side of the puck. He finished last year with an 88.7% on-ice save percentage at even strength, despite starting 66.7% of his shifts in the offensive zone.

Meanwhile, although he spent much of the year next to Jayden Struble, his primary defensive partner was Kaiden Guhle before he suffered a longer-term injury. According to MoneyPuck, when paired with Guhle, who is his defensive partner this season, the two combined for a 48.1% xGoals%, which was middle-of-the-pack production on a playoff-caliber Canadiens lineup.

Another cause for concern would be Hutson’s size. While height and weight have become less important for forwards, they remain significant qualities for most teams’ defensive cores in the league. Hutson stands at 5’9″, 162 lbs, which may make him more susceptible to injuries, especially if Montreal lines up against a heavy-hitting team such as the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Regardless, Montreal now has three of its top-four defensemen signed to long-term contracts. Even after Hutson’s contract takes effect, the Canadiens will have approximately $28MM in cap space, leaving them plenty of room to sign Mike Matheson and keep their defensive core intact for the foreseeable future.

Photo courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.

Blue Jackets Name Jet Greaves Opening Night Starter

at CDT | by 2 Comments

Blue Jackets head coach Dean Evason confirmed to reporters today that Jet Greaves will open the season as Columbus’ starting netminder, via Aaron Portzline of The Athletic.

Given how last season transpired, it’s not much of a surprise. While Elvis Merzļikins remains under contract at a $5.4MM cap hit and has been the team’s starter since 2021-22, his workload in recent seasons has been because of a lack of other quality options, not because of his performance. He had a couple of excellent showings as Joonas Korpisalo’s backup to begin his NHL career, but hasn’t had an average showing since his first year as Columbus’ No. 1. He’s rebounded somewhat from a disastrous 2022-23 season, but still posted an uninspiring .892 SV% and 3.18 GAA in 53 appearances for the Jackets last year.

Greaves, on the other hand, has gone from unheralded prospect to one of the league’s most intriguing young goalies over the past couple of seasons. The 24-year-old has operated as the Blue Jackets’ third-stringer for the past two years and got into a career-high 11 games last year – including five straight starts to end the season as the Jackets chased a playoff berth. He went 5-0 in those games, but they’d fallen too far back in the race by that point and missed out on a wild-card spot by two points.

The undrafted netminder has logged a stellar .924 SV% in 21 career NHL appearances over the last three years, including a sparkling .938 mark and 1.91 GAA with a pair of shutouts in last season’s body of work. In those 11 games, Greaves managed to stop 14.5 goals saved above expected, per MoneyPuck – 15th in the league and more than what high-end starters like Mackenzie Blackwood, Adin Hill, and Linus Ullmark managed to produce over a full season’s worth of work.

Greaves was similarly outstanding as the starter for AHL Cleveland in 2024-25. His .920 SV% and 2.62 GAA in 40 appearances, the former of which ranked fourth in the league among goalies who saw that kind of workload.

The writing was also on the wall based on his and Merzļikins’ preseason performances. Greaves got slightly more minutes and had much better results – a .917 SV% in three outings compared to an .896 mark from his Latvian counterpart.

It remains to be seen how Evason manages Greaves’ workload this season, or whether he operates as an outright starter rather than a tandem lead. Given he’s untested in the NHL for extended periods, it will likely be the latter. The season might start with a rotation approach and, if Greaves still holds up as the clearly better option, he could be in line for more consistent usage in the back half of the year.

Oilers Sign Jack Roslovic

at CDT | by 10 Comments

The Oilers announced they’ve signed forward Jack Roslovic to a one-year deal worth $1.5MM. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was first to report the deal. Edmonton won’t be able to officially register the contract until they make a corresponding roster move, as they’ve got a full 23-man contingent.

Roslovic, 28, finally lands a contract after going all summer on the free agent market, not even opting to ink a PTO for training camp. He was PHR’s 20th-ranked UFA and had been the highest-profile skater available from Day 4 of free agency onward after Nikolaj Ehlers signed his deal with the Hurricanes, Roslovic’s now-former team.

It’s not often a 22-goal man stays unsigned into August, let alone October, but for whatever reason, that was the case. It’s not Edmonton’s first attempt to bring Roslovic in – they made a pitch early in the summer, which he declined, Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic reported at the beginning of camp. After tying his career-high in goals and totaling 39 points in 81 games with the Canes last year, he may well have asked for too much for too long in negotiations and ended up pricing himself out of a multi-year deal when the game of musical chairs stopped.

He now takes a nearly 50% pay cut from the one-year, $2.8MM deal he signed with Carolina last summer. There’s immense value potential for the Oilers here. The 2015 first-rounder brings over 500 games of NHL experience, can play all three forward positions, and has consistently hovered around a 40-point pace over the past few years. He’s a career 12.4% shooter and has posted a 16-25–41 scoring line per 82 games since debuting with the Jets back in 2017.

Roslovic will provide early-season top-nine reinforcements to a club missing Zach Hyman and Mattias Janmark to begin the season due to injuries. Early on, the Oilers haven’t opted to elevate their young players in the lineup as most expected. Only Matthew Savoie has managed to latch onto a top-six role, skating with Andrew Mangiapane and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins on opening night, while fellow rookie Isaac Howard has been relegated to fourth-line duties. That’s led to names like Kasperi Kapanen and Noah Philp potentially being overtaxed in third-line duties out of the gate, something adding Roslovic into the mix will help avoid.

Roslovic’s up-and-down versatility means he could conceivably slot in as high as first-line right wing with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl or usurp the inexperienced Philp for third-line center duties. It’s not clear who he’ll force out of the roster in the coming days when Edmonton registers his contract. Waiver-exempt forwards on Edmonton’s active roster include Howard, Savoie, and international free agent signing David Tomasek.

Golden Knights To Sign Jack Eichel To Eight-Year Extension

at CDT | by 13 Comments

The Vegas Golden Knights are expected to sign star center Jack Eichel to an eight-year, $108MM contract extension, per the Vegas Review Journal’s Danny Webster. The move was first reported by TSN’s Darren Dreger. Weber adds that the deal is believed to carry a $13.5MM cap hit.

On a day where the Winnipeg Jets extended star winger Kyle Connor, the Golden Knights have still found a way to steal the show. Eichel’s extension was long anticipated, both for his impact on the Golden Knights’ roster and the intricacies of how Vegas would fit the deal in alongside the $12MM cap hit of Mitch Marner. That question has now been answered, with Vegas locking up the tandem through the next eight seasons for $25.5MM each season.

Landing a max-term extension with Eichel before he has a chance to play alongside 100-point scorer Marner could prove lucrative for the Golden Knights. Eichel had a career-year last season, setting career-highs with 94 points and a plus-32 in 77 games. It was a major leap over the 31 goals and 68 points that Eichel managed in 63 games of the 2023-24 season – and the 66 points he scored in 67 games of the 2022-23 campaign. It seems the top center simply needed to ease into his starring role in Vegas after going through a true saga with the Buffalo Sabres.

Buffalo drafted Eichel second-overall in 2015, properly dubbing him second-fiddle to Connor McDavid’s historic draft season. Despite that seat, Eichel boasted plenty of reason for excitement in his own right, and seemed to single-handedly will Boston University to a National Championship loss in his draft year. He brought that team-leading drive straight into the NHL, marked by 24 goals and 56 points in 81 games of the 2015-16 season. That remains the most a Sabres rookie has scored since the 1980s. Even better, Eichel matched it in fewer games of his sophomore season, with 24 goals and 57 points in 61 games.

But – that quickly became Eichel’s M.O. He was oft-injured, but proved to be the undeniable star of Buffalo’s lineup when healthy. He reached at least 25 goals in each of his next three seasons in Buffalo, and even showed his strength with 82 points in 77 games of the 2018-19 season, when the Sabres collectively only won 33 games. The tension between a struggling club and their productive star reached a peak as the 2020s rolled around – and a breaking point when the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement on how Eichel should handle an unprecedented shoulder surgery in 2021.

After multiple bouts back-and-forth, and a seemingly endless run of trade rumors, Buffalo decided to trade Eichel to Vegas in November, 2021. In return, the Sabres received Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, the draft pick used on Noah Ostlund (2022: 1-16) and a second-round pick traded to Minnesota. All three players remain with Buffalo.

Meanwhile, Eichel quickly received the surgery he had preferred upon arriving in Vegas. His 2021-22 campaign was limited to 34 games as he recovered from injury, but he was back to health in time for the 2022-23 season. Routine injury still marred his year, but he stayed healthy long enough to lead Vegas on a run to the Stanley Cup in 2023. He led the Golden Knights, and the postseason, in scoring with a dazzling 26 points in 22 games – though the Conn Smythe trophy would go to his goal-scoring teammate Jonathan Marchessault.

Regardless, Eichel’s push towards a Cup win showed the Golden Knights, and the hockey world, that he had the grit to be the star center on an NHL champion. He has reaffirmed that thought with 17 points in 18 playoff games since Vegas lifted the Cup.

With this move, Vegas will place a strong bet on Eichel’s ability to hang onto that role through his 30s. More importantly, they’ll give him a big bode of confidence as he heads into his age-29 season. Eichel has never played alongside a 100-point scorer, nor broken that ceiling himself, but he’ll get his first chance this season. Like Eichel, Marner struggled to crack the century mark for multiple seasons, recording at least 85 points three times between 2021 and 2024. He even reached 99 points in 2022-23. But it wasn’t until last season, when he scored 27 goals and 102 points in 81 games, that Marner was finally able to achieve the feat.

In a rare shift, he has now changed teams following the career-year, and will look to keep the good times rolling on a recent Cup winner. The top of Vegas’ offense is truly a stacked group, featuring Mark Stone, Tomas Hertl, William Karlsson, Pavel Dorofeyev, and Ivan Barbashev to support Eichel and Marner. The heights of the lineup seem hard to place, and should all go well, Vegas has ensured they can keep the band together with a pair of max-term extensions for their two stars.

Photo courtesy of Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports.

Sabres’ Alexandar Georgiev Clears Waivers

at CDT | by 6 Comments

10/8: Georgiev has cleared waivers for the Sabres, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. He will head to the AHL’s Rochester Americans, per Chad DeDominicis of Expected Buffalo. DeDominicis points out that Georgiev will become the fourth goalie on Rochester’s lineup, likely prompting another move or demotion to the ECHL for one of the quartet.

10/7: The Sabres will be placing goaltender Alexandar Georgiev on waivers today, head coach Lindy Ruff told reporters (including Bill Hoppe of the Olean Times Herald).

Georgiev was listed on Buffalo’s opening night roster yesterday, but they were carrying three goalies after claiming Colten Ellis off waivers from the Blues. The Sabres value the latter more, with Ruff telling Rachel Lenzi of The Buffalo News that Ellis is someone the Sabres have been “really high on” for quite some time and were unwilling to pass up the opportunity to have him on the wire. As a result, Georgiev won’t be starting the season with the club and will head to AHL Rochester should he clear waivers.

Georgiev, 29, finished top 10 in Vezina Trophy voting as recently as 2022-23 but is now scrambling to find an NHL job. He made 49 appearances last year between the Avalanche and the Sharks, heading to San Jose in the midseason deal that sent Mackenzie Blackwood the other way. Among goalies with at least 30 starts, no one had a worse save percentage or GAA than Georgiev’s marks of .875 and 3.71, and that includes making over a third of his appearances behind a dominant group of Colorado skaters in the first half of the year.

He still has roughly league-average numbers for his career. Since debuting with the Rangers in the 2017-18 season, he’s logged a 151-108-26 record with 15 shutouts, a 2.99 GAA, and a .903 SV% in 303 appearances. He’s allowed 21.1 goals (4%) more than the average netminder during that time. It’s his last two seasons of work that have soured teams. Despite posting a league-leading 38 wins for the Avs in 2023-24, he only managed a .897 SV% in 63 appearances. That preceded a 2024-25 campaign where only the Flyers’ Samuel Ersson posted a worse goals saved above expected figure than Georgiev’s -17.9, according to MoneyPuck.

That three-goalie figure from yesterday doesn’t include starter Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, who begins the season on injured reserve after suffering a lower-body injury late in preseason. That’s a different injury from the one he showed up to camp with, which was the motivator for Buffalo to sign Georgiev to a one-year, $825K deal last month in the first place. Luukkonen has improved in the past few days, according to Paul Hamilton of WGR Sports Radio 550, although he still carries a week-to-week designation. Buffalo certainly wasn’t going to carry four goalies after he returned, so it’s no surprise to see them get ahead of the wheel and remove one from their active roster now – especially after Georgiev allowed 11 goals on 74 shots in four preseason games for a .851 SV% and 4.19 GAA.

The Sabres might very well carry three goalies when Lukkonen returns, though. It’s hard to see them risk losing Ellis on waivers unless he struggles in his first taste of NHL action. The club also signed Alex Lyon to a two-year, $3MM deal in free agency over the offseason to be Luukkonen’s primary backup option. He might have an easier time passing through waivers thanks to his $1.5MM cap hit, so if Buffalo does want to only carry the traditional pair, Lyon might end up hitting the wire, too.

Cam Atkinson To Retire

at CDT | by Leave a Comment

After a 13-season NHL career, veteran winger Cam Atkinson is hanging up his skates. The Blue Jackets announced Wednesday that they’ll be signing him to a one-day contract and will officially honor his retirement on Oct. 16 against the Avalanche. He’s expected to join Columbus in a front-office capacity at some point down the road, but that announcement won’t be coming now, he told Aaron Portzline of The Athletic.

Atkinson is one of the better draft steals in Blue Jackets franchise history, coming to them in the sixth round in 2008. He signed with Columbus three years later after a great run at Boston College and made his NHL debut in 2011-12, although it took him another two years to fully establish himself on the active roster. After going up and down between Columbus and AHL Springfield, Atkinson broke out into a top-six role for the 2013-14 season. He finished third on the team with 21 goals and fourth with 40 points in 79 appearances, helping fuel the Jackets to a then-franchise record 43-win season that resulted in their second-ever playoff appearance.

The undersized but skilled Atkinson remained a fixture in Columbus’ top six for the balance of the decade. He was a two-time All-Star, including his career-best 41-goal, 69-point effort in 2018-19 – leading the team in goals in the year they orchestrated one of the most drastic upsets in league history by sweeping the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Lightning in the first round for their first series win in franchise history. After the COVID-shortened 2021 season, Atkinson had totaled a 213-189–402 scoring line in 627 games for Columbus, still holding up as the second-leading goalscorer and point-getter in the Jackets’ record books behind Rick Nash.

After Atkinson’s points per game production peaked at 0.86 in that career year, he only managed to produce at about a 0.60 pace over the next two years. That soft decline led Columbus to ship Atkinson to the Flyers in the 2021 offseason in a one-for-one swap for Jakub Voráček. In hindsight, it ended up being a bit of a lose-lose endeavor. Atkinson seemed to pop back into form with a 23-27–50 effort in 73 games in 2021-22, but a neck injury sustained in the following training camp ended up costing him the entire 2022-23 season and accelerating his decline. He had just 28 points in 70 games for Philly upon returning to play in 2023-24, leading the club to buy out the final year of the seven-year, $41.13MM extension he signed with Columbus back in 2017.

Atkinson became an unrestricted free agent a year ahead of schedule and signed on with the Lightning on a one-year deal worth $900K. The bounceback he was looking for never came, though. He struggled to stick in the lineup and played sparingly when he did dress, averaging just nine minutes per game across 39 contests. After finishing the year with a 4-5–9 scoring line, the Lightning were quick to say Atkinson wouldn’t be brought back.

Atkinson told Portzline that he received professional tryout offers this summer but declined them, saying he essentially made up his mind when he made his final regular-season appearance for Tampa. He ends his career with a 253-236–489 scoring line in 809 appearances, including a -11 rating while averaging north of 17 minutes per game. We at Pro Hockey Rumors congratulate Atkinson on a lengthy and successful pro career and wish him the best in whatever comes next.

Image courtesy of Kim Klement-Imagn Images.

Oilers Extend Mattias Ekholm

at CDT | by 5 Comments

The Oilers announced that they have agreed to a three-year contract extension with defenseman Mattias Ekholm. It runs from 2026-27 through 2028-29 with a cap hit of $4MM and a total value of $12MM. According to Ryan Rishaug of TSN, he’ll have a $2MM signing bonus with a $2MM salary in 2026-27, followed by a flat $4MM salary in the final two years. He will have a no-movement clause for the life of the contract. Ekholm was previously slated for unrestricted free agency after this season.

Ekholm, 35, has long been a quality top-four piece and one of the league’s better two-way defenders. The 6’5″ lefty was drafted in the fourth round in 2009 by the Predators, with whom he’s spent the vast majority of his career. He first cracked the NHL lineup two years later and was a full-timer by 2013, one of many high-end young defenders Nashville was churning out in that era alongside Ryan Ellis, Seth Jones, and Roman Josi. He was a top-four staple by the time Nashville’s championship contention window opened, culminating in a Stanley Cup Final appearance in 2017, and peaked with a 10th-place finish in Norris Trophy voting in the 2018-19 season.

While Ekholm signed a four-year, $25MM extension with Nashville in 2021, he wouldn’t play very much for the Preds under that deal. With the club falling out of the playoff race in 2022-23 and the Oilers in desperate need of a needle-mover on defense, Edmonton surrendered a haul that included Tyson Barrie, recent first-round pick Reid Schaefer, plus their 2023 first-round pick to acquire Ekholm with three full seasons still left on his deal at a $6.25MM cap hit, which Nashville brought down to $6MM for the Oilers with a small amount of retention.

Since the deal, Ekholm has more than held up his end of the bargain. He’s been a staple on Edmonton’s top pair alongside offensive dynamo Evan Bouchard, highlighted by a dominant 2023-24 campaign that saw him record a career-high 11-34–45 scoring line in 79 games along with a dominant +44 rating. He finished 12th in Norris voting that year, controlling a remarkable 62.8% of expected goals on his pairing with Bouchard, according to MoneyPuck.

Last year was more of the same. He had 33 points in 65 games with a +11 rating, averaging north of 22 minutes per game, until a torn adductor effectively ended his regular season in March. He missed the vast majority of Edmonton’s second straight run to the Cup Final as a result, although he did return for the clinching Game 5 of the Western Conference Final and played through the entirety of the Cup Final. He wasn’t fully healthy and had his minutes capped at a slightly more conservative 21:35 per game as a result, but he still managed an even rating and remained involved offensively with a goal and five assists.

He remained stapled to Bouchard, and while they weren’t quite as dominant at controlling play as they were in 2023-24, they still controlled a sparkling 59.5% of expected goals together, finishing second in the league among pairings who logged at least 500 minutes. With his point production yet to see a sharp decline and his under-the-hood numbers remaining some of the best in the league in a system that serves him well, it’s easy to see why the Oilers don’t have a ton of concern about signing him through his age-38 season – particularly at a price as attractive as $4MM per season for a top-pair blue liner, far below his present market value.

Last week, it looked like Edmonton would enter the season with four big-name pending UFAs: Ekholm, Stuart Skinner, Jake Walman, and, in a category of his own, Connor McDavid. Three of those names have signed in the last three days. Walman’s seven-year, $49MM extension means Edmonton’s top four blue-liners, Bouchard and Darnell Nurse included, are now all signed through 2029, when Bouchard and Ekholm will be UFAs. There’s McDavid’s “win-now-or-lose-me” two-year, $25MM extension as well that keeps all of Edmonton’s true core in place through at least 2028, giving them three more legitimate chances at a championship before their window might begin to close.

With Ekholm and McDavid taking significant discounts, things are looking quite comfortable for Edmonton next summer. The club projects to have at least $18.71MM in cap space to fill eight roster spots, a number that could rise by a few million if the cap increases past its projected $104MM limit. While the big names are taken care of, there’s still serviceable depth like Adam Henrique, Kasperi Kapanen, and Brett Kulak on expiring deals, plus their top two goalies in Skinner and Calvin Pickard.

Photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images.

Pro Hockey Rumors is not affiliated with National Hockey League, NHL or NHL.com

Do not Sell or Share My Personal Information

scroll to top