Training Camp Cuts: 10/06/22
Would you believe that NHL regular season hockey is just one sleep away? Things kick off tomorrow in Czechia, while we wait for the North American launch next week. With that in mind, there will be plenty of final cuts over the next few days as the exhibition schedule finishes up. Here are today’s:
Boston Bruins (via team release)
F John Beecher (to Providence, AHL)
F Fabian Lysell (to Providence, AHL)
F Marc McLaughlin (to Providence, AHL)
D Jack Ahcan (to Providence, AHL)
G Kyle Keyser (to Providence, AHL)
F Vinni Lettieri (to Providence, AHL)*
F Joona Koppanen (to Providence, AHL)*
D Dan Renouf (to Providence, AHL)*
G Keith Kinkaid (to Providence, AHL)*
Calgary Flames (via team release)
G Dustin Wolf (to Calgary, AHL)
F Sonny Milano (released from PTO)
F Cody Eakin (released from PTO)
Carolina Hurricanes (via team release)
F Ryan Dzingel (to Chicago, AHL)
F Mackenzie MacEachern (to Chicago, AHL)
F Stelio Mattheos (to Chicago, AHL)
F Lane Pederson (to Chicago, AHL)
D Maxime Lajoie (to Chicago, AHL)
Dallas Stars (via team release)
F Oskar Back (to Texas, AHL)
F Mavrik Bourque (to Texas, AHL)
F Fredrik Karlstrom (to Texas, AHL)
F Fredrik Olofsson (to Texas, AHL)
D Ryan Shea (to Texas, AHL)
New York Rangers (via team release)
F Gustav Rydahl (to Hartford, AHL)
This page will be updated throughout the day
Florida Panthers Recall Zac Dalpe
With a pair of preseason games remaining against their cross-state rivals, the Florida Panthers have recalled Zac Dalpe from the minor leagues. The team plays the Tampa Bay Lightning at home tonight and then on the road on Saturday afternoon, with the regular season just around the corner.
Dalpe, 32, played just a single NHL game for the team last season but was an awesome (if hilarious) contributor in the minor leagues. The veteran forward had 30 goals in 68 games but managed to register just nine assists. That was the opposite stat line of prospect Aleksi Heponiemi, who also had 39 points for the minor Charlotte Checkers.
Bouncing back and forth between the AHL and NHL is nothing new for Dalpe, who has 154 appearances at the highest level over a 12-year career. He has 28 points in those games and likely won’t be playing a regular role for the Panthers this season, even if they suffer several injuries. Instead, he is the kind of player who can jump into a game and quickly understand the team’s system, while posing no risk of claim on waivers when he needs to go back down. Checkers fans will have a much better chance of seeing him, as he continues to serve as the team’s captain this season.
Winnipeg Jets Recall Arvid Holm
Oct 6: Holm has been returned to the minor leagues.
Oct 5: With just two games left in their preseason schedule, the Winnipeg Jets have brought some goaltending back up from the minor leagues. Arvid Holm has been recalled, after being cut a few days ago.
It’s an interesting one, given that Connor Hellebuyck and David Rittich are both still scheduled to dress for tonight’s game against the Calgary Flames. Likely just precautionary, it does highlight the lack of depth at the moment for the Jets. Mikhail Berdin, who would normally be considered the third-string option, is away from the team because of personal reasons. If Hellebuyck or Rittich were to suffer an injury, the 23-year-old Holm certainly doesn’t bring much experience to the table.
A sixth-round pick in 2017, the Swedish netminder has just 24 appearances in North America, all of them in the AHL. He posted an .877 save percentage in that league last year and is still quite a distance from being a legitimate backup option for the Jets. Hopefully, this recall is nothing more than an emergency backup and the two NHL options get through the last two games intact.
Dallas Stars Sign Jason Robertson
There’s nothing like a little nighttime news breaking. The Dallas Stars have reached an agreement with restricted free agent Jason Robertson, signing the breakout star to a four-year contract that carries an average annual value of $7.75MM. The deal ends a standoff that had kept Robertson out of the majority of training camp but should have him ready to go in time for the start of the regular season next week.
Stars general manager Jim Nill released this statement:
Jason is an integral part of the present and future of our team and we’re thrilled to have him for the next four years. Since he was drafted by our organization, he has worked tirelessly to become a better player every day. His knack for scoring goals and seeing plays develop on the ice are just some of the tremendous assets that he brings to our team. He is one of the best young players in the NHL and we look forward to seeing him continue to progress.
PuckPedia provides the full breakdown of the deal, which is heavily back-loaded:
- 2022-23: $1.5MM salary + $3.0MM signing bonus
- 2023-24: $8.0MM salary
- 2024-25: $9.2MM salary
- 2025-26: $9.3MM salary
The contract will leave Robertson a restricted free agent in the summer of 2026 but one with arbitration rights. It will also mean he is due a $9.3MM qualifying offer that offseason, something that could walk him directly to UFA status in 2027.
It’s hard to explain quite how impressive Robertson has been since entering the league in 2020. The second-round pick has 125 points in 128 career games and is coming off a season with 41 goals. He sits 30th among players with over 100 appearances during that period in points-per-game, and he has done it while averaging fewer than 18 minutes a night – a number lower than every single player ahead of him on that list.
That kind of offensive production is rewarded no matter how hard a team tries to avoid it, and Robertson has landed an incredibly lucrative deal with this contract. As Matthew DeFranks of the Dallas Morning News points out, there are only two active RFA contracts in the NHL that are four years or fewer, with an average annual value of at least $7.75MM: Robertson’s new deal and Patrik Laine‘s four-year, $34.8MM deal signed earlier this summer. Laine’s contract of course is buying out mostly UFA years, while Robertson will still be under (some) team control at the expiry of this deal.
The key for Dallas, is that even if Robertson continues his meteoric rise and demands a massive extension in four years, they will have quite a bit of money to work with. Not only is the salary cap expected to rise significantly by then, but Jamie Benn‘s $9.5MM cap hit will also be off the books, along with Ryan Suter‘s $3.65MM. Even Esa Lindell, Mason Marchment, and Radek Faksa could all be gone, leaving the Stars with plenty of flexibility to build a roster around Robertson, Miro Heiskanen, Roope Hintz (who is now eligible for an extension), and Jake Oettinger.
A deal like this cuts into the surplus value that they received from Robertson since his debut but doesn’t limit it entirely. A $7.75MM cap hit is reasonable enough that the team doesn’t need to move out significant pieces to accommodate it, while four years is long enough to really see whether Robertson is a true superstar or just a top-end player. The 23-year-old can now focus entirely on what remains of training camp and getting ready for the regular season in a few days.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Pacific Notes: Oilers, Benson, Wright
The presence of Dylan Holloway is what ultimately might be the final push for the Oilers to part ways with Jesse Puljujarvi, suggests Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic (subscription link). However, when that happens remains to be seen. Nugent-Bowman notes that Edmonton isn’t interested in a futures-based return for Puljujarvi which doesn’t help an already-thin trade market since a lot of teams can’t take on his $3MM AAV. However, while moving Puljujarvi would free up some needed cap space, they’d be taking a risk with promoting Holloway into a prominent role considering he has basically half a pro season under his belt with their AHL affiliate. Long-term, they should take comfort that Holloway could fill Puljujarvi’s spot but it might be a case of later rather than sooner that the youngster pushes Puljujarvi out.
More from the Pacific:
- Still with the Oilers, they’ll be without winger Tyler Benson for a little while with the team not sure how much time he’ll miss, notes Daily Faceoff’s Jason Gregor (Twitter link). On its own, a player on the fringes of the roster missing time isn’t typically notable in itself but as PuckPedia points out (Twitter link), Benson was on Edmonton’s roster long enough last season to have his cap hit count in full instead of being prorated through season-opening IR. With cap space at a premium for Edmonton, having Benson count in full to start the year if he’s only going to miss a couple of weeks certainly won’t help things.
- While it’s not set in stone just yet, Kraken GM Ron Francis told Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic (subscription link) that he believes Shane Wright will spend the full season in the NHL. Seattle took the center fourth overall back in July which came as a surprise to many as he was viewed as the projected top selection for most of the season. With Matthew Beniers, Yanni Gourde, and Jared McCann all ahead of him down the middle on the depth chart, Wright might not get a lot of playing time early on but that will also allow him to be eased in from a development perspective which, in the long run, might be ideal for the 18-year-old.
2008 NHL Draft Take Two: Sixteenth Overall Pick
Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection is far from an exact science, and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams – or players – intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.
We’re looking back at the 2008 NHL Entry Draft and asking how it would shake out knowing what we do now. Will the first round remain the same, or will some late-round picks jump up to the top of the board?
The results of our redraft so far are as follows with their original draft position in parentheses:
1st Overall: Steven Stamkos, Tampa Bay Lightning (1)
2nd Overall: Drew Doughty, Los Angeles Kings (2)
3rd Overall: Roman Josi, Atlanta Thrashers (38)
4th Overall: Alex Pietrangelo, St. Louis Blues (4)
5th Overall: Erik Karlsson, Toronto Maple Leafs (15)
6th Overall: John Carlson, Columbus Blue Jackets (27)
7th Overall: Jacob Markstrom, Nashville Predators (31)
8th Overall: Braden Holtby, Phoenix Coyotes (93)
9th Overall: Jordan Eberle, New York Islanders (22)
10th Overall: Jared Spurgeon, Vancouver Canucks (156)
11th Overall: Cam Atkinson, Chicago Blackhawks (157)
12th Overall: T.J. Brodie, Buffalo Sabres (114)
13th Overall: Josh Bailey, Los Angeles Kings (9)
14th Overall: Adam Henrique, Carolina Hurricanes (82)
15th Overall: Tyler Myers, Ottawa Senators (12)
The drop wound up being a small one for Myers who only goes three spots later than his original draft position. While he has been maligned at times due to some contracts that paid him above market value, he has turned in a solid career thus far.
Throughout his junior days, Myers wasn’t known for his point-producing abilities with his career-high in points checking in at 42 in his final season with Kelowna. Not bad, but players who top out at that level don’t typically become highly-productive players in the pros.
Myers put that theory to the test in his rookie season as he had more goals (11), assists (37), and points (48) than in any of his major junior campaigns. That made him the runaway winner of the Calder Trophy and all of a sudden, it looked like Buffalo had their two-way star defender of the future.
Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned. While Myers’ numbers in his sophomore year were still pretty good (the second-best of his career thus far), he eventually became more of a stay-at-home defender. Eventually, the Sabres decided to shake things up, moving him to Winnipeg in 2015 as part of the Evander Kane trade.
With the Jets, Myers was a capable, albeit pricey blueliner for parts of five seasons. Since then, he has spent three years in Vancouver as a capable, albeit pricey defenseman.
That said, it’s worth looking at some of Myers’ numbers in context. In his 13-year NHL career, he has averaged over 20 minutes a night in every one of them. He’s eighth in all-time games played from this draft class and with a couple of years left on his contract, he’ll have a good chance of staying in the top ten when all is said and done. No, Myers didn’t quite live up to the promise of his rookie year but he has had a very solid career so far.
Now, we move on to the 16th selection which was held by Boston. They opted to take a longer-term project, selecting Joe Colborne out of the AJHL. However, after two very strong college seasons, the Bruins turned him pro in 2019 but he never played a game for them. Instead, they moved him, a first-round pick, and a second-rounder to Toronto to rent Tomas Kaberle at the 2011 trade deadline. (If you’re curious, that first-rounder turned into Rickard Rakell.)
Colborne spent parts of three seasons with Toronto but again, didn’t play much. He was flipped to Calgary in 2013 for a fourth-round pick that eventually was used on Ville Husso.
Colborne saw regular action with Calgary for three years and spent most of another year in Colorado but hung up his skates in 2018 after a seven-year NHL career that spanned 295 games. In the grand scheme of things, Boston could have done much worse with this pick but it’s safe to say in hindsight, there were better options available.
So, who should they have picked with that benefit of hindsight? With the 16th pick in the 2008 redraft, who do they take? Make your choice by voting in the poll below.
2008 Redraft: Sixteenth Overall
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Gustav Nyquist 23% (146)
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Derek Stepan 21% (130)
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Jake Allen 13% (80)
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Zach Bogosian 7% (44)
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Justin Schultz 6% (39)
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Travis Hamonic 6% (35)
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Jake Gardiner 5% (34)
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Marco Scandella 3% (21)
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Luke Schenn 2% (14)
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Tyler Ennis 2% (13)
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Matt Martin 2% (13)
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Michael Del Zotto 2% (11)
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Colin Wilson 1% (9)
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Jason Demers 1% (9)
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Matt Calvert 1% (6)
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Mikkel Boedker 1% (6)
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Luca Sbisa 1% (6)
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Zach Boychuk 1% (4)
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Zack Smith 0% (3)
Total votes: 623
App users, click here to vote.
Central Notes: Khudobin, Reichel, Knak
Stars goaltender Anton Khudobin has been given a clean bill of health, notes Matthew DeFranks of the Dallas Morning News. He underwent hip surgery in the spring and Dallas was very careful with how they used him in the preseason. With a trade market unlikely to materialize, it’s likely that the veteran will be on waivers in the coming days, allowing them to free up $1.125MM of his $3.33MM cap hit. Notably, the return to health takes away any chance of them placing Khudobin on LTIR to start the season which might have aided in terms of freeing up cap flexibility to re-sign Jason Robertson.
Elsewhere in the Central:
- Chicago’s decision to cut top prospect Lukas Reichel raised some eyebrows as the 20-year-old showed plenty of offensive skill in training camp. However, head coach Luke Richardson told reporters, including Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times, that they felt that his defensive game needed considerable improvement and it’s much easier for that development to happen in the minors than in the NHL. Richardson hinted that Reichel would have been battling for a spot on the fourth line had the youngster stayed on the roster and he’ll get considerably more ice time with the IceHogs than being in that role with the Blackhawks.
- The Predators will be waiting a while to sign prospect Simon Knak as HC Davos of the Swiss NLA announced that they’ve signed the winger to a three-year extension that runs through the 2025-26 season. Nashville selected the 20-year-old in the sixth round in 2021 (179th overall) on the heels of a season split between Davos and Portland of the WHL. Knak is off to a solid start this season with four points in his first seven games but he’ll be staying in Switzerland for the foreseeable future.
John Tavares “Not Ruled Out” For Season Opener
Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares isn’t ruled out of next Wednesday’s season opener, said head coach Sheldon Keefe today, but as NHL.com’s Mike Zeisberger notes, the chances of him playing are waning.
Tavares suffered an oblique injury in his preseason debut on September 24. At the time, Tavares was slated to miss three weeks – likely missing the team’s first three games and returning on October 17 against the Arizona Coyotes.
But Tavares began skating again two days ago on Monday, a welcome sign for the team and its fans. Today, Keefe commented on his status:
It’s all going to be (based) on his recovery. I think it was a really positive day for him today, but the way that it would track out in terms of the plan that was set was that he wouldn’t be available. What his body is telling him is going to dictate that.
In the meantime, the Maple Leafs could make some interesting decisions. William Nylander took line rushes at center today during practice, centering a prospective second line between preseason stars Nicholas Robertson and Denis Malgin. It would be the first time Nylander had meaningfully played center at any point since the 2019-20 season.
Regardless, the Leafs are hoping their team’s leader can get back in the room and on the ice in game action as soon as it’s feasible.
Preseason Notes: Carcone, Oilers Injuries, Canadiens Injuries
The NHL Department of Player Safety is getting their preseason’s worth of action in, too. They announced today that Arizona Coyotes forward Michael Carcone was fined the maximum allowable under the CBA ($2,027.03) for roughing Vegas Golden Knights forward Gage Quinney during last night’s game.
Quinney did not return to last night’s game after taking a high hit from Carcone. He immediately left the ice after the hit and went to the team’s dressing room near the end of the second period. Carcone received a penalty on the play. A 26-year-old minor-league veteran, Carcone played his first 21 NHL games last year with the Coyotes, registering six points.
- There’s some good news and bad news on the injury front for the Edmonton Oilers. TSN’s Jason Gregor reports that winger Kailer Yamamoto is banged up, but that his injury is nothing serious and he could be ready for the team’s final preseason game on Friday. However, winger Tyler Benson isn’t so lucky, as Gregor reports he’ll be out “longer” and the team will know more in the coming days. Benson was a candidate to find a spot in the team’s bottom-six out of camp.
- The Montreal Canadiens provided a medical update today, saying captain Nick Suzuki is remaining in Montreal for treatment along with forwards Joel Armia and Emil Heineman. All three have upper-body injuries and, Suzuki is listed as day-to-day. The Canadiens say the trio will be reevaluated on Monday, two days ahead of the season opener.
St. Louis Blues Recall Five Players
Don’t panic, Blues fans, the team didn’t suffer a sweeping wave of injuries. The St. Louis Blues have recalled five players that were previously cut from training camp to fill out the roster for tomorrow’s preseason game. The match is in Columbus against the Blue Jackets, and Will Bitten, Hugh McGing, Mathias Laferriere, Brady Lyle, and Steven Santini have been recalled ahead of it.
St. Louis has just two games left on their exhibition schedule, with Saturday’s home game against the Chicago Blackhawks wrapping up the preseason. Then things kick off, coincidentally, against those same Blue Jackets next weekend, another reason why they might not want to show them the full NHL lineup tomorrow night.
It’s another chance for some of the minor league talent to show what they can do, though none of these five are likely to see extended time with the NHL club this season. Santini is the only one with any experience at the highest level, having played 119 NHL games, but after spending the entire 2021-22 campaign with the Springfield Thunderbirds, he shouldn’t expect much time with the Blues.
There will likely be several moves like this by teams around the league in the coming days, as they try to avoid any injuries to starters before the season begins. A week from now, though, things will be full speed ahead on the 2022-23 season.