Snapshots: Karlsson, Senators, Schedule
The hockey hot stove has been abuzz ever since San Jose Sharks general manager Mike Grier explained that he would listen to calls about star defenseman Erik Karlsson, but there’s one thing that much of the speculation seems to overlook. Karlsson has a full no-trade clause all the way through his contract, which keeps him wrapped up through 2026-27. He would need to sign off on any deal, so Corey Masisak of The Athletic asked him whether he would:
No, I mean, if that question ever arises, you know, it’s going to be between me and [Grier]. It has not. So there’s no point for me to think about that or speculate about that. I’m fully invested here at the moment. We are in a situation where we need to win a few games. I’m just worried about the next one. That’s all I can control. All that other stuff, it is nice for you guys to have something to talk about. I’ll let you have at it.
Suffice it to say, the 32-year-old isn’t interested in throwing any more gas onto the fire. Instead, he’ll just continue to rack up points in a resurgent year for the Sharks. Karlsson has 24 points in 18 games and played a whopping 34:12 on Sunday against the Minnesota Wild. Averaging the most ice time since he arrived in San Jose, he looks poised for a vintage season near the top of the defenseman scoring list.
- The Ottawa Senators, who happen to be brought up every time a Karlsson trade is discussed, will honor a different former defenseman next month. Wade Redden will be the second person and first player inducted into the team’s Ring of Honour, joining the late Bryan Murray. Redden, originally selected second overall by the New York Islanders in 1995, made his NHL debut in 1996 for the Senators after being part of a three-team trade and would go on to play 838 games for the franchise. That’s good for fourth all-time in franchise history, behind only Chris Phillips, Daniel Alfredsson, and Chris Neil. Phillips and Alfredsson have already been honored by the team with a jersey retirement.
- The league has announced several schedule changes for upcoming games, moving around start times and broadcast rights. These include some exclusive ESPN broadcasts, like the Tampa Bay Lightning and Edmonton Oilers on January 19. For all of the changes, check out the NHL press release.
Vancouver Canucks Loan Karel Plasek To HC Olomouc
Last month, the Vancouver Canucks activated Karel Plasek from the season-opening injured reserve and sent him to the minor leagues. In the time since he hasn’t played a single game for the Abbotsford Canucks. Now, the team has announced that Plasek will be loaned to HC Olomouc of the Czech league for the rest of the season.
Plasek, 22, signed a three-year entry-level contract with the team in 2021 and has just eight games played in North America – with zero points. He missed almost all of last season due to injury and is now heading back overseas. That makes for a tough few years since being a sixth-round pick in the 2019 draft, though perhaps with increased ice time at home he’ll be able to get his development back on track.
Selected 175th overall, it was somewhat surprising that Plasek even earned an entry-level deal with the Canucks, given how little he showed at the professional level in Czechia. The forward had just ten points in 44 games during his final season with Brno Kometa and hasn’t stood out at either of the World Juniors that he took part in. While offensive production isn’t everything, there’s a long way to go before he’s pushing for a spot with the Canucks at this point.
Signed through 2023-24, perhaps he’ll be back with Abbotsford next season. For now, he can focus on getting back in game shape overseas.
Buffalo Sabres Recall Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen
After allowing 33 goals in their last seven games, losing all of them, the Buffalo Sabres look like they will also be without their starting goaltender for a little while. After Eric Comrie was injured against the Ottawa Senators, the team recalled Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen from the minor leagues.
While there has been no update yet on Comrie’s status, the recall of Luukkonen suggests that he’ll be out for a little while. The Sabres don’t play again until Saturday, meaning a decision wouldn’t have been necessary yet if it was a day-to-day issue. The Sabres are on the road, but rather close to home in Toronto for a match with the Maple Leafs this weekend.
Luukkonen, who has been a top prospect in the Sabres system for several years now, had a chance to play a handful of games in each of the last two seasons. His .913 save percentage during those 13 games is encouraging, even if his minor league performance hasn’t been quite as strong.
If he can come anywhere close to that number for the Sabres this time around, they’ll be overjoyed. The team is getting absolutely caved in of late, and Comrie now has an .887 save percentage on the year. After starting the season extremely strong, the Sabres are now 7-10 overall and have allowed by far the most goals in the Atlantic Division.
While Craig Anderson has done fine in his backup role, it’s hard to expect the 41-year-old goaltender to really carry the load at this point in his career. If Comrie is out for a while, that means Luukkonen will be used and relied on to turn things around in Buffalo.
Jake Bean Placed On Injured Reserve
The hits keep coming for the Columbus Blue Jackets. While they still haven’t given an exact timeline for defenseman Jake Bean, he has been moved to injured reserve and is out indefinitely with a shoulder injury.
Bean, 24, had just recently set a season-high with more than 26 minutes against the Philadelphia Flyers and was poised to take on a much bigger role for the Blue Jackets with Zach Werenski (and Nick Blankenburg and Adam Boqvist) sidelined. Instead, he hits the shelf along with nearly half of the Columbus roster and won’t get a chance to step into a top position on the team’s blue line.
In the second season of a three-year, $7MM deal, Bean is coming off a career year with 25 points in 67 games. This time around had six through 13, before leaving early in a rematch with the Flyers on Tuesday.
With head coach Brad Larsen saying it doesn’t look good for Bean earlier today, it seems like this will be more than just a short stint on the injured reserve list. The team is at least at home for the next five games, meaning they can probably operate with a 22-man roster for the time being.
It will be interesting to see if these injuries lead to another opportunity for top prospect David Jiricek, who has played two games with the Blue Jackets so far. The sixth-overall pick has five assists in seven minor league games.
Philadelphia Flyers Activate Patrick Brown
The Philadelphia Flyers are getting some forward help back, activating Patrick Brown off long-term injured reserve. Brown had been loaned to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms on a conditioning stint but didn’t actually play a game with the team before re-joining the Flyers today.
Now 30, Brown has been an interesting player to follow over the years. Signed by the Carolina Hurricanes out of Boston College as an undrafted free agent in 2014, he had only really found success in his senior year at the program. It seemed at first as though that success may have been a mirage, as Brown struggled to contribute at the professional level. In seven games with Carolina he was held scoreless while adding just two goals and ten points in 60 games with the Charlotte Checkers.
Slowly, though, and with the help of several one-year deals with the Hurricanes, he carved out a niche for himself as a useful minor leaguer and regular call-up. There was still almost no consistency to his NHL playing time, but that changed, somewhat, in 2021 with the Vegas Golden Knights when he played in 12 of the team’s playoff games. Last season was his best opportunity at the highest level, suiting up 44 times with the Flyers – more than he had in his entire career prior.
He racked up 100 hits during those 44 games while winning nearly 59% of his 400+ faceoffs, showing he could be relied on as a fourth-line, penalty-killing option. Now, with the Flyers dealing with several injuries, he’ll likely get a chance to reclaim that role on a regular basis.
Elvis Merzlikins Out With Lower-Body Injury
It’s Joonas Korpisalo and Daniil Tarasov for at least the next little while, as Columbus Blue Jackets head coach Brad Larsen updated Elvis Merzlikins‘ timeline today. The netminder will be out for 1-2 weeks with a lower-body injury. Jake Bean, who was also being evaluated yesterday, still doesn’t have a firm recovery timeline but it is “not looking good,” according to Larsen, who spoke with reporters including Brian Hedger of the Columbus Dispatch.
Merzlikins hadn’t been doing well this season anyway, posting a .864 save percentage in nine appearances behind one of the worst teams in the league. The 28-year-old goaltender allowed two goals on 17 shots before leaving on Tuesday, and has a whopping 4.74 goals-against average on the year.
Korpisalo, who has been the better of the two goaltenders so far, will take the lion’s share of the starts while Merzlikins is out. Now 28, Korpisalo’s current .910 save percentage would rank as his best since 2019-20, should he maintain it all season. Tarasov, called up yesterday under emergency conditions, has a .893 in five appearances for the Blue Jackets tonight.
Emil Bemstrom, who is also dealing with an injury, is a game-time decision for tonight’s match against the Montreal Canadiens.
Winnipeg Jets Recall Ville Heinola
Earlier this month, the agent for Ville Heinola told The Hockey News that his client deserved “a shot to play a run of games to show he can do it” at the NHL level. The young defenseman has been bounced up and down between leagues for his whole career so far, failing to get much consistency from the Winnipeg Jets organization. Perhaps now the squeaky wheel will get some grease. Heinola has been recalled to the Jets roster after they moved Mason Appleton to injured reserve.
Of course, given that Appleton is a forward, this could just be more time in the press box for Heinola. The Jets have allowed the fewest goals in the league so far this season and already had seven defensemen on the roster. If he does get in, there’s certainly no guarantee he stays there, though his play in the minor leagues once again suggests he’s ready for a bigger role in the organization.
Since almost the moment he was drafted 20th overall in 2019, Heinola has been on the fringe of the NHL. He made the team out of camp just a few months after being picked, and recorded five points in eight games with the Jets as a rookie. He played another five games the year following, and 12 last season. Interspersed with those short NHL stints have been stretches in the AHL, where he has 45 points in 74 games, but that is sort of where the problem lies. Now in his fourth season in the organization, he has played just 99 regular season games in North America (plus 19 in Finland while leagues here were shut down).
It’s hard to know exactly what Heinola is at this point with such little playing time, though one thing you can be sure of is that he’s not a big, physical presence. As the league moves more and more toward length and reach on defense, some players like Heinola are left on the outside. None of the other seven Jets defensemen are under 6’0″, and the smallest one, Neal Pionk, might be the most physical.
There is definitely NHL upside in the 5’11” Heinola, but it remains to be seen whether the Jets will give him that “shot” he is looking for. At least he’ll be making the NHL portion of his contract for the duration of this latest recall.
What Your Team Is Thankful For: Boston Bruins
As Thanksgiving and the holiday season approaches, PHR will be taking a look at what teams are thankful for in 2022-23. There also might be a few things your team would like down the road. We’ll examine what’s gone well in the early going and what could improve as the season rolls on for the Boston Bruins
Who are the Bruins thankful for?
Jim Montgomery.
The Bruins made one of the most controversial moves of this past offseason when they fired head coach Bruce Cassidy. Cassidy had taken the Bruins to within one win of a Stanley Cup championship in 2019 and had not missed the playoffs in any of his seasons coaching the Bruins. But after a disappointing first-round loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, with rumors of friction between Cassidy and the organization generating buzz, GM Don Sweeney made the choice to initiate a coaching change.
Out went Cassidy, and in came Montgomery. The 53-year-old Montgomery was the former head coach of the Dallas Stars and was hired off of Craig Berube’s St. Louis Blues staff having helped the Blues orchestrate one of their best offensive seasons in team history.
More than anything else, Montogomery represented a complete stylistic departure from Cassidy. While Cassidy was known to be a demanding coach whose style could sometimes wear players thin, Montgomery was a more laid-back, player-friendly option who was viewed as a breath of fresh air for their locker room.
At this point in the season, it’s safe to say that despite Cassidy’s initial disappointment at his Bruins exit, this seems to be a coaching move that has worked out well for all parties involved. Montgomery has the Bruins at the top of the NHL standings at this early stage, and their locker room is seemingly in great shape.
As for Cassidy, he moved on to take a role as head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights, and he has the NHL’s 31st team sitting first in the Western Conference. While it’s definitely a major risk to fire a clearly talented coach like Cassidy, the risk seems to have paid off for Boston, as they look to have a new coach who is giving them many reasons to be thankful.
What are the Bruins thankful for?
Their training staff.
A team’s training staff is an extremely important part of an NHL organization, but they often don’t receive the attention or praise they deserve. A training staff is responsible for managing the injury situations of a team’s players, and the Bruins this year have heavily leaned on theirs. Star players such as Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy, and Jeremy Swayman have all missed time, and yet the Bruins’ haven’t missed a beat.
In fact, both Marchand and McAvoy have returned earlier than when many may have expected them to return when their injuries were first revealed. Their recovery processes for their respective injuries seem to have gone extraordinarily well, and now the Bruins are near full health as they look to continue their scorching hot start.
While the players themselves undoubtedly deserve credit for the quick turnaround in the face of their injuries, the Bruins have to be thankful for their medical and training staff at this point in their season.
The team has capably navigated the challenge posed by the significant injuries they were hit with and the roster has returned to close to full health faster than anyone could have reasonably expected.
Injuries are inevitable over the course of an NHL season, but the Bruins’ staff has ensured that they are prepared to weather any storm injuries could force them through. That’s not something many teams can boast, and it means the Bruins’ training staff is definitely something for the team to be thankful for.
What would the Bruins be even more thankful for?
Progress in their prospect pool.
The Bruins have been a competitive team for the better part of a decade and were in the Stanley Cup Final in 2019. The cost of the team’s pursuit of another Stanley Cup championship has been that their prospect pool has suffered significantly. The Athletic’s Corey Pronman ranked the Bruins’ prospect pool last in the NHL, while EliteProspects.com ranked them 30th.
Winning games, of course, is far more important than winning prospect pool rankings. No fan would sacrifice the record of success the Bruins have had since 2011 for better placement in farm system rankings.
But that being said, a lackluster player development pipeline does hurt the Bruins’ ability to maximize their current competitive window. Their ability to win a trade deadline bidding war for a top player is limited, and the Bruins’ lack of young, cheap, developed talent may have forced their hand and led them to sign some relatively expensive contracts (Nick Foligno, Mike Reilly) to fill spots lower in their lineup.
With so much going right so far in the Bruins’ season, there aren’t many things that could happen that would make the team even more thankful. But if there’s one thing they could hope to add to what has already been a magical start to their season, it would be some accelerated progress for the team’s top prospects.
A few of Boston’s top offensive prospects, namely Georgii Merkulov and Fabian Lysell, are playing above expectations, but some, such as 2019 first-rounder John Beecher, have disappointed.
If players such as 2022 second-rounder Matthew Poitras or 2021 third-rounder Brett Harrison could take emphatic steps forward in their development, the Bruins would have that much more to be thankful for this season.
What should be on the Bruins’ holiday wish list?
Trade interest in Mike Reilly.
The Bruins don’t have any major immediate need to trade Reilly, such a trade would pose some major benefits. Sure, they would lose their top depth defenseman who they can shuffle between the NHL and AHL based on need, but in exchange, they would be rid of the $1.875MM cap hit Reilly currently costs when his salary is buried in the AHL.
Reilly is clearly no longer in the Bruins’ long-term plans and is reportedly hoping for a trade in order to resolve his current situation. Reilly’s $3MM base cap hit for this season and next complicates things and is likely the reason that he hasn’t been moved to this point, especially considering he cleared waivers.
If a team were to suddenly have interest in acquiring Reilly with limited retention required on Boston’s part, that would certainly ease the Bruins’ precarious current cap position. Reilly had 17 points in 70 games last season and could be a bounce-back possibility for some teams.
But given his $3MM cap hit and the overall shortage of cap space around the league, it seems a potential Reilly trade that doesn’t require the Bruins to attach sweetener assets is more in the “wish list” territory than the realm of realistic possibility.
Photo Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Boston Bruins Activate Jeremy Swayman
After missing the last two weeks with an injury, Boston Bruins goaltender Jeremy Swayman is back in the fold. Per a team announcement, Swayman has been activated off of injured reserve.
In a corresponding move, the Bruins have sent Keith Kinkaid to their AHL affiliate, the Providence Bruins. Swayman, 23, has been out with a lower-body injury, an injury that was originally classified as week-to-week.
The Bruins haven’t lost a step in Swayman’s absence. Backstopped by Linus Ullmark, who is off to a hot start with a .936 save percentage, and Kinkaid (who contributed one start, a 3-1 win over the Buffalo Sabres) the Bruins boast a 9-1 record in their last ten games and sit top of the NHL with 28 points.
Swayman has been just a small part of the Bruins’ early success, having gotten into just four games with a .878 save percentage. That being said, though, Swayman is sure to be an important part of the Bruins’ season moving forward. Swayman went 23-14-3 last season with a .914 save percentage and a 2.41 goals-against-average.
Swayman is part of a tandem setup with Ullmark and should help ease the load the Bruins place on Ullmark’s shoulders moving forward now that he’s back to full health.
As for Kinkaid, he heads back to Providence having put a quality NHL start on his resume. At the AHL level, Kinkaid has played in four games and has a .922 save percentage. The P-Bruins have gotten elite goaltending so far this season from Kinkaid, Kyle Keyser, and Brandon Bussi, meaning a player may need to be shuffled to the ECHL level without his performance truly meriting the demotion.
With Kinkaid back in Providence, it looks like that will be Bussi, who will head back to the ECHL’s Maine Mariners having gone 4-0 in four AHL starts with a .947 save percentage.
Nikita Soshnikov Clears Waivers, Assigned To AHL
Nov 16, 5:15 PM: The Islanders have announced that Soshnikov has been assigned to their AHL affiliate, the Bridgeport Islanders.
Nov 16, 1:05 PM: Soshnikov has cleared waivers and can be assigned to the minor leagues.
Nov 15: The New York Islanders have placed Nikita Soshnikov on waivers, according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Should he clear, the team could assign him to the minor leagues, completely burying his $750K cap hit.
Soshnikov, 29, came back to North America after spending the last three seasons in the KHL, and it seemed as though he might find some new life on this side of the ocean. After all, the undrafted forward had been great in his time back home, scoring 98 points in 137 regular season games. Things haven’t gone so well though, with the Islanders only icing him three times this season.
If he does clear, one has to wonder whether Soshnikov will request a contract termination to go back to the KHL instead of reporting to the minor leagues. It’s been years since he played in the AHL on a regular basis, and there would certainly be interest in him by some of the better programs in Russia. We’ll have to wait and see what the Islanders have planned for him and the roster spot he currently occupies, but it might be close to the end of Soshnikov in the NHL.
In those three appearances this season he has not registered a point, meaning his career total is now 16 in 90 games played.