Canucks Fire Patrik Allvin
The Canucks have relieved general manager Patrik Allvin of his duties, per a team announcement. Darren Dreger of TSN was first on it this morning after Thomas Ros of Sweden’s Aftonbladet said overnight that the Canucks made the decision around last night’s season finale to let him go.
For now, that’s the only change. The futures of first-year head coach Adam Foote and president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford are also up in the air after a woeful season in Vancouver finally came to an end last night with a 6-1 loss to the Oilers. Vancouver’s 25-49-8 record left them as the worst in the NHL by a 14-point margin, with their .354 points percentage serving as the franchise’s worst result since the 1998-99 campaign that rewarded them with the assets to draft franchise cornerstones Daniel Sedin and Henrik Sedin.
Ideally, the trials of this season will yield another franchise forward for the Canucks – whether that’s Gavin McKenna or another Swede in Ivar Stenberg. However, Allvin won’t be the one entrusted to steer the team through the early stages of that next era.
Allvin just finished his fourth full season in the GM’s chair in Vancouver and fifth overall. After Rutherford was hired as POHO midway through the 2021-22 season in the wake of Jim Benning‘s firing, he served as interim GM for a few weeks before eventually hiring Allvin to fill the role. The duo had worked together previously with the Penguins, where Allvin had served as director of various scouting departments from 2012 to 2021 before being promoted to assistant GM.
Since Allvin’s appointment on Jan. 26, 2022, the Canucks have a record of 173-150-45 (.531). That’s 23rd out of 33 NHL franchises (the Coyotes are tracked separately from the Mammoth) during that time.
The tinge of disappointment in Allvin and Rutherford’s tenure will be most felt by a roller-coaster graph in team success. A rebuild that failed to get off the ground in several years under Benning finally seemed to do so under Allvin’s direction in 2023-24. After hiring a new bench boss in Rick Tocchet and largely staying the course with his group, the Canucks exploded for a 50-win, 109-point season and their first division title in 11 years. That also yielded just their third playoff berth in that span, driving the eventual conference champion Oilers to seven games in the second round despite injuries forcing them to ice third-string goaltender Arturs Silovs from Game 4 of the first round onward.
Yet the Canucks have been in a free fall ever since. They failed to retain multiple key unrestricted free agents the following offseason, and while they netted some solid depth replacements like Jake DeBrusk, the team couldn’t recover. Their All-Star starter, Thatcher Demko, being limited to 43 starts over the last two seasons certainly didn’t help matters, but a slow degradation in their defensive structure – followed by a full-blown collapse once they failed to work out an extension with Tocchet and let him go following the 2024-25 season – destroyed any hope of being able to compensate for Demko’s absence.
In Tocchet’s second and final season, the team was salvageable. The loss of finishing talent in free agency was felt in an already defense-heavy system, but improved goaltending could have steered the Canucks back toward the playoff picture. Under Foote, though, a roster that was designed for Tocchet’s defense-first system imploded. The team allowed the most goals per game (3.83) by a wide margin, had the league’s worst penalty kill at 71.5%, and the second-most expected goals against per 60 at 5-on-5 at 2.80, per MoneyPuck.
Despite acquiring several young assets when the team was essentially forced into trading franchise defender Quinn Hughes to the Wild amid this season’s free-fall, Allvin’s middle-of-the-road drafting has only left the Canucks with a league-average prospect pool, Scott Wheeler of The Athletic opines. That will obviously get a jumpstart with the best odds at the first overall pick this June, plus three other selections they’ve accumulated through the first two rounds, but there’s still some work for Allvin’s successor to do before exiting their retool becomes a viable strategy.
As for who that successor might be, there’s a strong feeling it could be an internal promotion. The Canucks have denied other teams permission to speak to their assistant/AHL GM, longtime NHL center Ryan Johnson. He’s been with the organization since 2013, first as a development coach, before working his way up the ladder over the next decade-plus.
NHL Releases 2026 First Round Schedule
After last night’s results locked in the two Western Conference playoff series that had yet to be decided, the NHL announced the full schedule matrix for the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs after releasing select Game 1 information earlier in the day. Things will kick off Saturday afternoon, with only Friday serving as an off day between the regular and postseason.
Here’s the full day-by-day schedule for the first round, with game times in Central and TV/streaming information in the United States:
Saturday, April 18
2:00 p.m.: Senators at Hurricanes, Game 1 (ESPN)
4:30 p.m.: Wild at Stars, Game 1 (ESPN)
7:00 p.m.: Flyers at Penguins, Game 1 (ESPN)
Sunday, April 19
2:00 p.m.: Kings at Avalanche, Game 1 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
4:45 p.m.: Canadiens at Lightning, Game 1 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
6:30 p.m.: Bruins at Sabres, Game 1 (ESPN)
9:00 p.m.: Mammoth at Golden Knights, Game 1 (ESPN)
Monday, April 20
6:00 p.m.: Flyers at Penguins, Game 2 (ESPN)
6:30 p.m.: Senators at Hurricanes, Game 2 (ESPN2)
8:30 p.m.: Wild at Stars, Game 2 (ESPN)
9:00 p.m.: Ducks at Oilers, Game 1 (ESPN2)
Tuesday, April 21
6:00 p.m.: Canadiens at Lightning, Game 2 (ESPN2)
6:30 p.m.: Bruins at Sabres, Game 2 (ESPN)
9:00 p.m.: Kings at Avalanche, Game 2 (ESPN)
Wednesday, April 22
6:00 p.m.: Penguins at Flyers, Game 3 (ESPN)
8:30 p.m.: Stars at Wild, Game 3 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
9:00 p.m.: Ducks at Oilers, Game 2 (TBS, HBO Max)
Thursday, April 23
6:00 p.m.: Sabres at Bruins, Game 3 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
6:30 p.m.: Hurricanes at Senators, Game 3 (TBS, HBO Max)
9:00 p.m.: Avalanche at Kings, Game 3 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
Friday, April 24
6:00 p.m.: Lightning at Canadiens, Game 3 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
9:00 p.m.: Oilers at Ducks, Game 3 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
Saturday, April 25
2:00 p.m.: Senators at Hurricanes, Game 4 (TBS, truTV, HBO Max)
4:30 p.m.: Stars at Wild, Game 4 (TBS, truTV, HBO Max)
7:00 p.m.: Penguins at Flyers, Game 4 (TBS, truTV, HBO Max)
Sunday, April 26
1:00 p.m.: Sabres at Bruins, Game 4 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
3:30 p.m.: Avalanche at Kings, Game 4 (TNT, truTV, HBO Max)
6:00 p.m.: Lightning at Canadiens, Game 4 (ESPN)
8:30 p.m.: Oilers at Ducks, Game 4 (ESPN)
Times for Games 5-7 TBD
Monday, April 27
Senators at Hurricanes, Game 5
Flyers at Penguins, Game 5
Golden Knights at Mammoth, Game 4 (ESPN)
Tuesday, April 28
Bruins at Sabres, Game 5
Wild at Stars, Game 5
Ducks at Oilers, Game 5
Wednesday, April 29
Canadiens at Lightning, Game 5
Penguins at Flyers, Game 6
Kings at Avalanche, Game 5
Mammoth at Golden Knights, Game 5
Thursday, April 30
Hurricanes at Senators, Game 6
Stars at Wild, Game 6
Oilers at Ducks, Game 6
Friday, May 1
Sabres at Bruins, Game 6
Lightning at Canadiens, Game 6
Avalanche at Kings, Game 6
Golden Knights at Mammoth, Game 6
Saturday, May 2
Senators at Hurricanes, Game 7
Flyers at Penguins, Game 7
Wild at Stars, Game 7
Ducks at Oilers, Game 7
Sunday, May 3
Bruins at Sabres, Game 7
Canadiens at Lightning, Game 7
Kings at Avalanche, Game 7
Mammoth at Golden Knights, Game 7
Devils Name Sunny Mehta General Manager
This evening the New Jersey Devils shared that Sunny Mehta has been named their new general manager, sixth in franchise history, replacing Tom Fitzgerald.
Mehta, 48, had been serving as Assistant General Manager and Director of Analytics for the Florida Panthers since 2023, helping lead them to a level of unprecedented success with back-to-back Stanley Cups. He returns to Newark, the first NHL job of his career, where he’d been from 2014-2018 as Director of Hockey Analytics.
Having grown up in Wyckoff, New Jersey as a young Devils fan, Mehta’s path to leading an NHL franchise is a fascinating one. An analytics wizard, he did play the game, a varsity skater for Ramapo High School in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Still, it’s quite different from the previous GM Fitzgerald, and his over 1,000 NHL appearances.
After the long-standing Lou Lamoriello era, which spanned across four different decades (1987-2015), New Jersey experienced more change in their front office than usual, with Ray Shero and Fitzgerald both coming and going since. Now Mehta is back into the fold, bridging the gap having worked with the team back in an entirely different era, where he’ll hope to clean up an impressive roster which has some flaws.
With his playing career over after high school, Mehta attended the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, studying Jazz Guitar and graduating in 2000. He became a professional musician, also a successful poker player who co-authored successful books on strategy within the card game. Eventually obtaining his Master’s in Data Science from City University of New York, needless to say, Mehta’s background is fully evident of a departure from typical within the National Hockey League.
Guitar or cards aside, Mehta’s hockey resume speaks for itself. Still under age 50, he is a two-time Stanley Cup Champion, spearheading the first full-time analytics department in the NHL. If there’s any doubt on his ability to evaluate talent, Mehta’s input helped New Jersey land one of the biggest draft steals in recent memory. His model ranked Jesper Bratt as third in the 2016 draft, behind just Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine, the top two picks that year. If anyone shrugged off the analytical guru at the draft table a decade ago, Mehta has the last laugh, as New Jersey eventually heeded his advice, choosing the Swedish winger in the sixth round. Since then, he’s blossomed into a top scorer for the Devils, currently ranking fifth in total points out of 2016 draftees, not bad for 162nd overall.
Moving on to Florida, where he worked alongside general manager Bill Zito, Mehta has received much praise for his impact. Florida’s ability to assemble a perfectly-structured team with a number of savvy moves brought them a level of success nobody could have anticipated a decade ago. Earlier this month, Mehta was outlined in an article by TSN’s Mark Masters, where Panther Mackie Samoskevich said “Everything he touches turns to gold”.
Along with a reunion with a prospect he sought out, Mehta inherits a roster which is mostly intact, for better or for worse. Across their entire forward core, only Evgenii Dadonov and Zack MacEwen are pending unrestricted free agents, neither of whom made an impact this year. It’s much the same on the back end, with only Dennis Cholowski having an expiring contract. In net, Jacob Markström and Jake Allen are locked up for the foreseeable future. The former had his worst professional season in a decade, but the hope will be that the towering Swede can turn it around somehow, although he’s now 36 years old.
The situation presents an intriguing challenge for Mehta, who must shake things up after a disappointing campaign, where his Devils came out hot but fell flat after a series of unfortunate events. None of which were more vexing than top scorer Jack Hughes‘ freak hand injury which happened in a restaurant and cost him 25% of the season. There’s little need for some huge free agent spending spree, nor a massive retool, as few teams offer a one-two punch down the middle as young and formidable as the Devils between Hughes and Nico Hischier.
Mehta’s work will be cut out for him in fixing Fitzgerald’s attempts to supplement the young core, which made sense at the time, but proved futile. Finding a way to move on from at least one of Dougie Hamilton and Timo Meier could be the first order of business, but it’s not an ideal scenario given their trade protection and contracts which are worth $9MM and $8.8MM, respectively. Hamilton was most recently linked to Utah, back in February, as there’s always a market for a tall righty with high offensive abilities, contract aside.
He’ll also have the opportunity to consider a change behind the bench, as head coach Sheldon Keefe‘s future seems to be up in the air. However, the 33-year-old has a modern approach to the game which has parallels to Mehta’s mindset, and Keefe deserves some leniency from a year so lost to injury.
With their season coming to an end back on Tuesday, Mehta will get right to work, with the 2026 draft just over a month away. As of now, he’s projected to have the 11th overall pick, which could shift slightly after tonight’s final games, or if he is dealt a favorable hand at the draft lottery on May 5.
Panthers’ Aleksander Barkov To Play At World Championship
Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov missed the entirety of the 2025-26 season with a knee injury sustained during training camp. On the other side of a losing year for the Panthers, Barkov is finally nearing a return to game action. The star center is expected to play for Team Finland at the 2026 World Championship, Florida head coach Paul Maurice told George Richards of Florida Hockey Now.
Barkov is a cornerstone piece of every lineup he’s apart of. The 30 year old scored 20 goals and 71 points in 67 games of the 2024-25 NHL season. He capped the year off with 22 points in 23 games en route to a 2025 Stanley Cup championship, the same point total and outcome that he reached in the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Barkov was the first European captain to lead his team to back-to-back Stanley Cups.
Routine playoff appearances have kept Barkov from appearing in many of Finland’s international tournaments as of late. He captained the Finns at the 2025 4-Nations Face-Off and scored two points in three games. Outside of that, his last appearance with Finland was at the 2017 World Cup, where he posted no scoring in three games. Barkov has played in two World Championships – marked by 16 points in 17 games – and the 2014 Winter Olympics where he had one point in two games.
Each of those international appearances were on the other side of Barkov’s ascension towards superstardom. He has won three Selke Trophies as the league’s best defensive-forward and consistently earned votes for the Hart Memorial Trophy and Lady Byng Memorial Trophy since his 2017 World Cup appearance. Barkov also won the 2025 King Clancy Memorial Trophy, awarded on the basis of leadership and humanitarian contribution. He also became a franchise owner of the Liiga’s Tappara, part of Finland’s top pro league, in 2020. Barkov has grown into a face of Finnish hockey in North America and routinely rivals point-per-game scoring in the NHL.
It is with the weight of a missed NHL season – and a missed Olympic Games – that Barkov will now enter the 2026 World Championship. He will be among the Finns’ biggest scoring threats and could challenge the most ice time on the team each game. Finland will also lean on Florida’s Anton Lundell and Seattle Kraken winger Kaapo Kakko to bolster their lineup, with much of the country’s top NHL talent headed towards the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Either way, Barkov’s return will be far more than the addition of one more player. It will also give the reigning Cup captain a chance to get back to full speed before the 2026-27 campaign is underway.
Blue Jackets Sign Rick Bowness To One-Year Extension
1:25 p.m.: It’s a one-year extension for Bowness, the team announced.
10:23 a.m.: The Blue Jackets have agreed to an extension with head coach Rick Bowness that will be announced later today, Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic reports.
The news comes less than 48 hours following the end of Columbus’ season, which ended on the low side of a complete roller coaster. On Tuesday, following a 2-1 home loss to the Capitals in Game 82 – their sixth straight home loss to end the season – Bowness had some choice words for his club (via Joe Nugent of NBC4 Columbus):
All you gotta do is look at the stat sheet. Three hits, 23 giveaways. I don’t know if I’m back, but if I’m back, I’m changing this culture. These guys, they don’t care – losing is not important enough to them. It doesn’t bother them. Like, how can you go out and play like that?
The Jackets’ season ended as disappointing as it began. On Jan. 12, they had a 19-19-7 record through 45 games and were last in the Eastern Conference. That prompted them to make a change behind the bench, bringing in Bowness out of retirement while firing Dean Evason, who was midway through his second season with the club after pulling them just short of a playoff berth last season. By March 23, their record under Bowness was 19-3-4, and they had pulled ahead of the Penguins for second place in the Metropolitan Division. Even just going .500 from there likely would have shored up the franchise’s first playoff trip since 2020.
It just wasn’t in the cards. The Blue Jackets won just two of their final 11 games and had eight regulation losses, bringing them down to 40-30-12. They ultimately finished a full six points back of the surging Flyers for the Metropolitan Division playoff cutoff and seven points back of the Senators for the second wild-card spot.
Now, Bowness will get the chance he wanted to change that culture. On the whole, his 21-11-5 record in 37 games was strong. The veteran of 840 games as a head coach and countless more as an assistant had stepped away from the game in 2024 following a two-year run with the Jets, leading that franchise back to the postseason after a 2021-22 campaign that fell far short of expectations.
Bowness, 71, has now been a head coach in parts of 15 NHL seasons. He has a Western Conference championship under his belt with the Stars in 2021 and has amassed a lifetime record of 331-419-90 (.448 points percentage), although that’s dragged down significantly by his time spent coaching the expansion Senators in the early 1990s.
Columbus’ advanced numbers this season suggest a team that could and should be a playoff competitor next spring. While they do have several notable unrestricted free agents pending, their core still revolves around several 25-or-younger players like Kirill Marchenko, Adam Fantilli, Kent Johnson, Cole Sillinger, Denton Mateychuk, and Jet Greaves. Since Bowness took over on Jan. 12, the Jackets ranked 10th in the league in Corsi share (51.5%), sixth in the league in shot share (53.1%), eighth in the league in expected goals share (53.0%), and sixth in the league in scoring chance share (53.2%) at 5-on-5.
The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline was first to report things were trending toward a Bowness extension.
Blackhawks Sign GM Kyle Davidson To Contract Extension
It hasn’t been a successful last few seasons in the win-loss column for the Blackhawks as the team is set to miss the postseason for the sixth straight year and eighth time in the last nine seasons. However, the general consensus is that the team is on the way up as their rebuild continues.
Someone who feels that way is Team Chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz. He revealed on CHSN during tonight’s pregame show (Twitter link) that the team has signed GM Kyle Davidson to a contract extension. Terms of the deal were not revealed. Minutes after that, the team officially announced the extension, noting it’s a multi-year agreement. Wirtz released the following statement:
Kyle’s exceptional body of work to date has set us down the path of bringing sustainable, championship-caliber hockey back to Chicago. In a short amount of time, he’s rebuilt the team through strong drafting and player development, delivering a league-leading prospect pool and the beginnings of our future core. He alongside Head Coach Jeff Blashill have redefined our locker room’s culture and mentality, and we are seeing improvements in all of the underlying areas that make winning possible. We believe in Kyle’s vision for this team and remain fully committed to his plan to return the Blackhawks to the top of our sport.
Davidson is in his fourth season at the helm in Chicago after taking on the job in the 2022-23 season. Initially promoted as an interim GM, the interim tag was taken off in March 2022. As Wirtz indicated in his announcement, Davidson was tasked with restocking a prospect pool that, at the time, was one of the weaker ones in the NHL.
To accomplish that objective, Davidson embarked on a full-scale rebuild, trading away several key veterans and even some younger core pieces that didn’t fit in the plans. In doing so, the team dropped sharply in the standings, but doing so allowed them to secure several key cogs, including centers Connor Bedard and Anton Frondell and defenseman Artyom Levshunov. Additionally, moving out Kirby Dach allowed them to add the draft pick that secured them Frank Nazar, who has quickly become a core piece as well.
But while Davidson has indeed put together a very strong prospect pool that’s set to graduate some more youngsters in short order, that’s only one part of getting this team back to playoff contention. He has brought in quite a few veterans in recent years to either act as bridge players to the prospects or, more recently, serve as pieces to help the team’s floor. Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teravainen were signed in free agency while Andre Burakovsky was added via trade to try to help push the team forward while also bringing in a more established head coach in Blashill. Instead, while they’ve added nine points from a year ago in the standings, they’re actually scoring even less than a year ago, despite better than a point-per-game showing from Bedard.
For the Blackhawks to truly take that next step forward, they will need to find a way to add more prominent veterans to help bring the team along while their youngsters continuing to improve will also aid in that objective. Davidson has a little more than $40MM in cap space for next season as things stand, per PuckPedia, so they certainly have the flexibility needed to add more core pieces to their roster. With this vote of confidence, Wirtz is banking on Davidson being able to do just that.
Stars Expect Miro Heiskanen Back For Game 1, Roope Hintz Questionable For First Round
The Stars have received a mixed bag of injury news over the last several hours. In an interview with The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun published this morning, general manager Jim Nill said the results of star defenseman Miro Heiskanen‘s recent imaging indicate he should be available this weekend as the puck drops on Game 1 of their first-round series against the Wild. On the flip side, head coach Glen Gulutzan said yesterday that they’ve ruled out center Roope Hintz for Games 1 and 2 and still aren’t sure if he’ll be an option in the first round at all (via Robert Tiffin of D Magazine).
Heiskanen has missed Dallas’ last two games with a lower-body injury. He left their game against the Wild on April 9 in the first period after falling awkwardly on his leg following a check from Minnesota’s Ryan Hartman. Nill said last weekend that he needed an MRI to complete his evaluation, and he was quickly ruled out for the Stars’ remaining regular-season schedule, including tonight’s finale against the Sabres. That’s of zero consequence with Dallas locked into the second seed in the Central, though.
No further missed time results in a huge sigh of relief from the entire state of Texas. There’s a strong case to be made for Heiskanen as the Stars’ most valuable player this season. After they managed to eke out a first-round win without him last year, he’s had one of the better offensive performances of his career with a 9-54–63 scoring line in 77 games while averaging 25:28 of ice time per contest with a career-high 132 blocks. But behind him, he doesn’t have the depth of support he’s had in recent years. Esa Lindell remains a shutdown extraordinaire with his +30 rating, but Thomas Harley has taken a considerable step back in both zones from last year, while Tyler Myers has had universally negative possession impacts since his acquisition from the Canucks at the trade deadline.
In the league’s most taxing first-round matchup, the Stars’ missing Heiskanen against a fully healthy Minnesota offense could have been the difference. Hintz, while still a relative household name, is a more stomachable loss given Dallas’ scoring depth. He’s played just once since the Olympic break. He dealt with an illness upon his return from representing Team Finland and then sustained a lower-body injury in his first game back that’s kept him out since the trade deadline. Still listed as week-to-week, it stands to reason he should be a second-round option if Dallas makes it there.
Hintz missed some time earlier in the year, too, with an undisclosed issue, so his regular season ends with only 53 appearances – 65% of the Stars’ schedule. One of the league’s better two-way middlemen, his 15-29–44 scoring line gave him a 0.83 points per game rate that’s right around his career average. He’s no longer the goal-scoring threat he displayed when he rattled off three straight 30-goal campaigns from 2021-24, in part due to an unusually low (for him) 11.9% shooting rate this year. He’s had a career year in the faceoff department, though, winning 59.1% of his draws.
He’s now the Stars’ #2 center in terms of production and ice time behind Wyatt Johnston, though. They’re also 18-6-4 without Hintz in the lineup this year for a .714 points percentage, better than their .660 mark with him dressed. It’s worth noting there’s a significant drop-off in their goal-scoring without him, though. Dallas has averaged 3.43 goals per game with Hintz dressed and only 3.14 without him.
At least for their first set of home games, Matt Duchene will stay down the middle in Hintz’s usual second-line slot between Jason Robertson and Mavrik Bourque. With Hintz healthy, Gulutzan has usually opted to deploy Duchene as quite the high-powered third-line option with Jamie Benn and Sam Steel. Being able to elevate Duchene into that second-line slot with his 45 points in 56 games is a testament to their wealth of scoring depth, though.
Image courtesy of Jerome Miron-Imagn Images.
Islanders Recall Victor Eklund, Liam Foudy
April 14: The Islanders announced Tuesday that they’ve recalled both Eklund and forward Liam Foudy from Bridgeport. If Foudy plays, it’ll be his first contest since making his Isles debut back in October 2024. The former Blue Jackets first-rounder is now 26 years old and is amid a career year in Bridgeport, where he’s amassed a 25-21–46 scoring line in 58 games for the playoff-bound Baby Isles.
He’s a pending restricted free agent, so today’s bump could indicate they intend to issue him a qualifying offer. They didn’t let him get to restricted free agency last summer, signing him to a two-way extension on June 29. He was initially signed in the 2024 offseason after a non-tender by the Predators, who had claimed him off waivers from Columbus the prior season.
April 13: The New York Islanders are expected to recall top prospect and 2025 draft pick Victor Eklund from the AHL’s Bridgeport Islanders, per NHL.com’s Stefen Rosner. Eklund, the younger brother of San Jose Sharks forward William Eklund, made his AHL debut on March 27 following the end of Djugården’s season in Sweden’s SHL. He has been red-hot ever since, scoring seven assists and nine points in his first seven AHL games.
On the heels of that strong start, Eklund could make his NHL debut in the Islanders’ season finale on Tuesday. New head coach Peter DeBoer spoke about his hopes of incorporating future impact into the lineup for the Islanders’ final game, after the team was eliminated from playoff contention. Eklund will certainly be a part of that group after being drafted by the Islanders with the 16th overall pick last year.
Eklund has a long history of success at the pro level. He scored 19 goals and 31 points in 42 games in the HockeyAllsvenskan, Sweden’s second-tier pro league, as a rookie in 2024-25. He formed a formidable tandem with Chicago Blackhawks prospect Anton Frondell, enough to earn Djurgården a promotion to the SHL in 2025.
The duo stayed hot – Eklund by scoring 24 points in 43 SHL games – to help Djurgården avoid relegation this season. Now, the aggressive forechecker and strong shooter could test his talents in the Islanders’ lineup. His debut may come at the expense of one of the Islanders’ short-term forwards, like Ondrej Palat or Marc Gatcomb. Eklund enters the NHL already boasting a World Juniors gold medal and HockeyAllsvenskan championship.
Brad Treliving, Jason Spezza To Manage Team Canada At 2026 World Championships
Hockey Canada has announced the management team for the 2026 World Championships. The group will be led by Brad Treliving and Jason Spezza. Treliving was recently ousted from his role as the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager while Spezza serves as an assistant GM for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The duo will be supported by Penguins GM Kyle Dubas and Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s senior vice-president of hockey operations. Dubas served as the GM of Canada’s 2025 World Championship squad, with support from Salmond.
This news will most notably represent another step up in Spezza’s managerial career. He is a veteran of 19 seasons and 1,248 games in the NHL. His career concluded with three seasons under Dubas’ management with the Toronto Maple Leafs, after Dubas signed Spezza to a one-year contract in 2019. Spezza retired in 2022 and joined Toronto as a special assistant to the GM on the same day. Dubas was let go from his role with Toronto one year later and brought Spezza with him through a move to Pittsburgh. Now, Dubas will hand off international, managerial duties to his protege after leading Canada to a quarterfinal loss at the 2025 World Championship.
Spezza will be supported by Treliving, who brings 11 years of NHL GM experience to the tournament. Treliving last supported the World Championships in 2016, when he served as a co-GM alongside George McPhee. Canada took home the Gold Medal that year, completing back-to-back championship wins thanks to a strong tournament from forward Derick Brassard. Treliving also supported the World Championships as an assistant GM in 2014, the summer before his first promotion to an NHL GM chair.
Together, the experienced Team Canada managerial group will be tasked with putting together a strong roster in a year where many World Championship stars will be in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Canada will likely not be able to bring Sidney Crosby, Travis Konecny, Tyson Foerster, or Noah Dobson to the start of this year’s tournament. They will have access to budding stars Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard, and Matthew Schaefer – though how ready the trio will be for even more games is yet to be seen. Canada could also bring John Tavares, Bo Horvat, Ryan O’Reilly, Brandon Montour, and Jordan Binnington back for another tournament. Horvat and Binnington joined Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics, alongside Tom Wilson and Sam Reinhart – who also sit outside of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The roster could boast a lot of NHL talent, though without as much World Championship experience, under their new management this summer.
Jonathan Quick To Retire Following Season
As speculated, tonight will be Jonathan Quick‘s last start of his NHL career. Getting the nod against the Florida Panthers, Quick told reporters (via Vince Z. Mercogliano) that he is retiring after the 2025-26 season.
Quick’s professional career began back in 2005, when he was selected 72nd overall by the Los Angeles Kings. After a pair of quality years at the University of Massachusetts, the Kings felt it was time to bring Quick to the professional level.
Unfortunately, his first season didn’t go as well as he had hoped. He was disappointing in a few games with Los Angeles and spent much of the year split between the AHL’s Manchester Monarchs and ECHL’s Reading Royals.
Still, despite again beginning the year in the AHL, Quick was called up when netminder Erik Ersberg went down with an injury, and never looked back.
Throughout the next decade, Quick became one of the most dominant goalies of his era. From his call-up during the 2008-09 season through the 2017-18 season, Quick won 292 out of 553 games (.528 W%) with a .917 SV% and 2.27 GAA. Although he never won the Vezina Trophy, he took home a pair of William M. Jennings trophies in 2014 and 2018.
Additionally, one cannot bring up Quick’s dominant run in Los Angeles without mentioning his playoff performances. In that same decade, Quick backstopped the Kings to two Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014, winning 46 of 85 games (.541 W%) with a .922 SV% and 2.23 GAA. His performance was impressive during the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, and he was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the postseason’s MVP.
If they hadn’t already, Quick’s performance in 2012 certified that he was the Kings’ goaltender of the future, and they rewarded him with a 10-year, $58MM ($5.8MM AAV) extension.
As it does so often, injuries and age crept up on Quick, and his stability in the crease began to wane during the 2018-19 season. Finishing out his 10-year extension with Los Angeles, Quick found his way to the Vegas Golden Knights after the Kings traded him to Columbus, and the Blue Jackets shipped him to Vegas.
While he didn’t have an integral role with the team, nor did he get his name on the Stanley Cup, Quick won the trophy for the third time with the Golden Knights in 2023. Knowing that his career was coming to an end, Quick signed with the New York Rangers, a team he had grown up idolizing, ahead of the 2023-24 season.
Far removed from being a quality starter, Quick has still managed to be a productive backup for the Rangers. In three years with the club, Quick has managed a 35-29-6 record in 75 games, with a .900 SV% and 2.94 GAA.
Before tonight’s contest, Quick owns a 410-306-90 record throughout his 828-game NHL career. His 410 wins stand as the 12th-most all-time in the NHL, though he won’t have a chance to crack Tony Esposito‘s record with a win tonight. Additionally, his career .910 SV% ranks 59th all-time, just a few points shy of Patrick Roy.
We at PHR congratulate Quick on a Hall of Fame career and wish him the best of luck in his next chapter.
Photo courtesy of Jerry Lai of USA TODAY Sports.