San Jose Sharks Re-Sign Nikolai Knyzhov
The San Jose Sharks announced today that the team has re-signed defenseman Nikolai Knyzhov to a one-year contract. PuckPedia reports the deal is one-way in nature, with a cap hit of $850,000 ($750,000 salary, $100,000 signing bonus).
Knyzhov, 24, was a pending restricted free agent. If his name doesn’t sound familiar, it would be because Knyzhov has been out of the lineup for the entire 2021-22 season with a lower-body injury sustained during training camp. However, this contract suggests that the team expects him to make a recovery for next year.
Knyzhov broke into the league as a regular in 2020-21, playing in all of the team’s 56 games that year, oftentimes finding a role in the team’s top-four alongside Erik Karlsson. He recorded two goals and eight assists for 10 points and finished the year with a -9 rating. He played his first 3 NHL games the season prior, earning a call-up from the AHL’s Barracuda in his first North American professional season.
The undrafted defenseman was in the final season of his three-year entry-level deal that carried a cap hit of $796,667. He’ll likely return next season to fill out the team’s left defense, forming a group with Mario Ferraro and Marc-Edouard Vlasic.
New York Rangers Sign Bobby Trivigno
2:10 PM: The Rangers have now made the signing official.
10:53 AM: After meeting with him last month, the New York Rangers are expected to sign Bobby Trivigno, according to Corey Pronman of The Athletic. Wherever he does sign, the 23-year-old will be limited to a two-year, entry-level contract following his four-year stint at UMass-Amherst. Undrafted, Trivigno drew interest from several other teams including the New York Islanders, Florida Panthers, and Nashville Predators.
Pronman rated Trivigno as the fourth-best undrafted college free agent available this year, noting that he has a good package of skills but some question marks around his skating ability. That lack of true breakaway mobility didn’t hamper him this year for the Minutemen, where he scored 20 goals and 49 points in 37 games. That performance made him a top-ten finalist for the Hobey Baker, though he won’t win it, as he wasn’t included in the final three.
Undersized but always working, the young forward will have a long climb if he wants to make that kind of impact at the NHL level. Perhaps some inspiration can come from within the family. Dana Trivigno, his sister, competed twice for the U.S. at the World Championships, earning a gold medal each time. If Bobby can make it to the NHL with the Rangers, it will be quite a formidable duo–even signing his entry-level deal is an impressive step.
In 2016, even though he was performing well at Shattuck St. Mary’s, his future at the professional level was completely uncertain. He fell all the way to the 17th round in the USHL draft, picked 272nd overall. He was passed over in the NHL draft several times. Now he has won a national championship (and the tournament MVP), wore the captain’s “C” for a top program, and has earned an NHL contract. Not bad for someone who turned 23 just a few months ago.
Coaching Notes: Boudreau, Woodcroft, St. Louis
Despite the resurgence of the team since his hiring, it does not look as though Vancouver Canucks head coach Bruce Boudreau is a lock to return for a second season. In a media appearance on Sportsnet 650 radio after the trade deadline, Canucks GM Patrik Allvin was asked about Boudreau’s future, and he gave a relatively non-committal answer, mentioning how the team will “look at” Boudreau’s contract situation after the season. It is believed that Boudreau is on a one-year contract with a team option for next season, meaning Vancouver does have the option to move on if they so choose. Given the recovery of the team’s form since Boudreau replaced Travis Green, it should raise some eyebrows that the Canucks’ brass has not been more definitive in their backing of their head coach.
The Canucks are 24-13-7 under Boudreau, a vast improvement from the team’s 8-15-2 record this season under Green. While the team is unlikely to make the playoffs at this point, Boudreau has breathed new life into their season and allowed the team to recover optimism about its long-term future. The performances of many key players such as Elias Pettersson have improved under Boudreau, and it looks as though with their current form the Canucks could indeed compete for a playoff spot next season. But based on Allvin’s comments and the overall sentiment (outside the fanbase) towards Boudreau’s future in Vancouver, it seems there is a chance that it could be another coach who is guiding the Canucks next season.
- Speaking about a conversation he had with Edmonton Oilers GM Ken Holland, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman adds an update to the situation of Oilers interim head coach Jay Woodcroft. Woodcroft has compiled a 15-7-2 record with the team so far and has them comfortably placed as the third seed in the Pacific Division’s playoff race. The Oilers’ season was spiraling out of control in the late days of former coach Dave Tippett’s tenure, but Woodcroft has seemingly righted the ship. Woodcroft, 45, has a 116-79-24 record as an AHL coach and oversaw the development of players like Ethan Bear, Evan Bouchard, and Ryan McLeod who now find themselves in the NHL. According to Holland, (through Friedman) the Oilers will evaluate Woodcroft’s situation after the season, which may sound similar to Allvin’s comments on Boudreau. But Holland went further, indicating that with the way things are going for Woodcroft, at this moment his future as the Oilers’ coach “looks really good.”
- One other interim coach who has overseen a resurgence in his team’s form is Montreal’s interim head coach Martin St. Louis. The Hall of Fame player has a 10-9-4 record, which is not an incredible run on its own but a massive improvement over the state of the team under former head coach Dominique Ducharme. St. Louis has deep connections with the two heads of the new Canadiens’ front office, Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes, and according to Friedman “unless he doesn’t want to do it, [St. Louis] is coming back.” The Canadiens’ future looks set to revolve around the duo of Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, and those two have been playing significantly better under St. Louis than they were under Ducharme. Specifically, the biggest improvement has come from Caufield, who was just named the NHL’s “Rookie of the Month“. Given the turnaround of the team overall under St. Louis and his recovery of Caufield’s highly anticipated rookie season, it makes sense that St. Louis would continue as Canadiens head coach beyond this season.
Submit Your Questions For The #PHRMailbag
It has certainly been an eventful past few weeks around the NHL with a very busy trade deadline plus a rare trade that was approved and later invalidated by the league. On top of that, the push for the playoffs is heating up with battles for seeding in the Eastern Conference and several spots up for grabs in the very tight Western Conference.
With that in mind, it’s time to run another edition of the PHR Mailbag. If you missed the last one, it was broken into two parts. The first one focused on several trade deadline scenarios while the second looked at how St. Louis can afford to keep pending UFA Ville Husso, the future of Winnipeg’s core forward group, and much more.
You can submit a question by using #PHRMailbag on Twitter or by leaving a comment down below. The mailbag will run on the weekend.
AHL Shuffle: 04/01/22
It’s April, no fooling. The NHL schedule is winding down and playoff races–or, in the case of the Eastern Conference, seeding races–are alive and well. Seven games are on the schedule tonight, including a big matchup between the St. Louis Blues and Edmonton Oilers. Both teams are in third place in their respective divisions, and both teams are being hunted down by a team (or two) right on their heels. In a game that is nearly a must-win for both teams, who will come out disappointed? As those teams and others prepare for action, we’ll keep track of all the minor league shuffling.
Atlantic Division
- The Toronto Maple Leafs have returned Filip Kral to the AHL, after Justin Holl was back in the lineup last night. Ilya Lyubushkin missed the game but also may be returning relatively soon, meaning Kral wasn’t really needed anymore. The 22-year-old is still waiting to make his NHL debut, but has been very good for the Toronto Marlies with 20 points in 51 games.
Metropolitan Division
- The Philadelphia Flyers have sent Felix Sandstrom and Max Willman back to the AHL, as they prepare for a game tomorrow night. It’s something of a curiosity, given the fact that Willman scored in two straight games–but he was left off the lineup card last on Tuesday and now Nate Thompson is healthy enough to return.
- Defenseman Robin Salo is on his way back to the Bridgeport Islanders. The New York Islanders sent him down today after he didn’t get into game action during his emergency recall.
Central Division
- Morgan Barron isn’t headed back to the AHL just yet. His emergency recall has been switched into a regular recall for the Jets, who continue to drift further away from the playoff picture. Remember, teams are allowed four regular recalls after the trade deadline until their AHL affiliate is eliminated. Barron played just a few minutes in his Winnipeg debut last night.
Pacific Division
- Jaret Anderson-Dolan is back up with the big club less than 16 hours after the Los Angeles Kings sent him to the minor leagues. The 22-year-old forward is still looking for his first NHL point of the season, after previously playing in seven games.
This page is updated throughout the day
PHR Chatter: Early Deadline Returns
As we head into the stretch run of the 2021-22 season, PHR is excited to announce a new feature aimed at encouraging discourse between reader and writer. On Friday mornings (and perhaps even more often than that), we’ll post a topic of discussion that we think will draw out varied and interesting perspectives from both our commenters and the other staff writers.
For too long there has only been a couple of outlets for our readers to interact with the PHR staff. Live chats and mailbags offer a chance at some discussion, but also run the risk of being too crowded or even outdated by the time the answer arrives. With this new feature, we’re hoping to get weekly chatter going on a topic that normally would have to be brought into the spotlight by a reader before even being discussed.
Today, for the inaugural post, we’ll be talking about the trade deadline and specifically how the early returns appear at this point. Which team did the best? Which move seems like a big mistake? What pending UFA benefited most? This will be a free-flowing discussion that doesn’t have a lot of guidelines, so make sure you chime in and check regularly to continue the conversation.
Snapshots: Anderson, Struble, Kessel
Going into this NHL season, fans who wanted to accuse the Buffalo Sabres of “tanking,” or intentionally icing a weak roster to lose as many games as possible, could have simply pointed to the team’s goaltending situation and made a decent case. On paper, it looked rough. The Sabres were set to run a tandem featuring 40-year-old Craig Anderson and NHL-AHL tweener Dustin Tokarski, a pairing that inspired very little confidence. While the team has battled injuries in the crease, it’s safe to say that the tandem of Tokarski and Anderson has performed better than expected, and it seems that the Sabres agree. According to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, the Sabres have told Anderson that they “would like to have him back” next season, and are willing to wait for him to decide if he wants to continue playing before seeking a replacement to fill his spot.
While a fan looking just at Anderson’s box score numbers, and specifically his .902 save percentage, might scoff at this development, it is more reasonable than it may seem. Anderson is a beloved veteran whose leadership is likely to be increasingly important in the Sabres’ young locker room. Additionally, his overall performance is more impressive when put into the context of the Sabres’ season in general. Buffalo is not a team that has an abundance of talent on their blueline, and Anderson more frequently faces nights without much help than he does nights where his team makes the game easy for him. More than anything, the stability and poise he has brought to the Sabres’ net has helped them come out on top in some big moments this season, highlighted by the team’s win in an outdoor game versus the Toronto Maple Leafs. For a Sabres organization that hasn’t had many highlights to speak of over the past decade, wanting to re-sign the goalie who led the charge during this season’s best moments is not an unreasonable desire.
- The Montreal Canadiens’ 2019 second-round pick Jayden Struble is one year away from hitting unrestricted free agency as a college graduate, so increased attention has been paid to his thought process on if he wants to turn pro. Sportsnet’s Eric Engels reports that Struble “needs to decide” if he wants to continue his college career at Northeastern University, where he has 36 points in 73 games played over the course of three seasons. If he signs, Struble would be another addition to a Canadiens defense pipeline that has seen the recent additions of Justin Barron (via trade) and Struble’s Northeastern teammate, Jordan Harris.
- Despite some interest and months of his name being mentioned in trade rumors, Arizona Coyotes winger Phil Kessel did not end up traded at this year’s trade deadline. But it seems that was not without some effort by contending teams. In his 32 Thoughts blog, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports that the Nashville Predators were “one of the teams interested” in Kessel at the deadline. The Predators are solidly entrenched as the Western Conference’s top wild card team, and the addition of Kessel would have definitely boosted their attack down the stretch. In our trade deadline primer, we listed the need for additional scoring help as one of the major needs for the Predators heading into the deadline, and it seems that GM David Poile may have agreed given his interest in Kessel. But seeing that Nashville’s powerplay currently ranks 7th in the NHL at 24.2% and Kessel is considered a powerplay specialist at this point in his career, it makes sense that he may not have been an absolute must-have for the team, which could be why the Predators did not ultimately end up with Kessel on their roster, despite their league-leading amount of deadline cap space.
Bowen Byram Sent To AHL On Conditioning Stint
In what must come as great news for Colorado Avalanche fans, 2019 4th overall pick Bowen Byram looks set to return to the ice. The Avalanche have announced that they are sending Byram to the AHL’s Colorado Eagles for a conditioning stint. This is Byram’s third attempt this season to get past the concussion issues that have thus far plagued his professional career, and given Byram’s health struggles since he was drafted, it seems like this is a positive development not only for Byram and the Avalanche but also for hockey as a whole.
Byram, 20, is an incredibly talented defenseman who previously starred for the Vancouver Giants of the WHL. In his draft year, Byram posted 26 goals and 71 points in 67 games, and he was selected by the Avalanche who were undoubtedly salivating at the thought of adding another young blue-chip defender to a long-term blueline corps that already boasted Cale Makar and Samuel Girard.
But despite those great hopes, Byram’s professional career has been rocky, to put it mildly. Since he finished his junior career having played 188 WHL games Byram has played in a total of 37 contests over two seasons with the Avalanche, a number that illustrates the significant health issues Byram has had as a professional. The Athletic’s Peter Baugh went into detail in a story covering Byram’s first year in Colorado, (subscription required) and in it, Byram reveals that he battled a growing worry that “his career was slipping away” and that he would not be able to continue playing hockey. But Byram overcame those challenges and a bout with COVID-19 to get into the lineup for the Avalanche this season. He has been very impressive in his brief time with the big club, posting 11 points in 18 games, but his ability to succeed kept getting undercut by injury woes. There was a head injury in early November that began to derail his campaign, and he was continually in the process of recovering from injuries only to face new issues. In January, Byram left the team for “personal reasons,” reasons clarified via Baugh to be Byram’s need to deal with the “lingering issues” that stemmed from his original concussions.
Since that point, Byram has been working towards an eventual return where he could finally, hopefully, put those issues behind him and truly begin in earnest an NHL career that holds so much promise. That work to get back reached a new checkpoint tonight, as Byram’s loan means that he is ready to resume playing professional hockey. The Avalanche have a strong defense corps, but also one that is not without its injury issues. Girard has been out for an extended period, and Ryan Murray recently was forced out of the lineup with a wrist injury. Getting Byram back (and even potentially acquainting him on a partnership with new acquisition Josh Manson) would be a significant boon for Colorado as they gear up for what the team expects to be a long run in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Jesperi Kotkaniemi Out Two-to-Three Weeks
The Hurricanes are losing their recently-extended young center for a few weeks. Jesperi Kotkaniemi is going to be out of Carolina’s lineup for the next two-to-three weeks, a source revealed to Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic. (subscription required) This development comes after head coach Rod Brind’Amour recently told the media that Kotkaniemi would be out “a few weeks,” meaning LeBrun has now confirmed a more definite timeline for the injury. Kotkaniemi’s lower-body injury stems from a hit by the Capitals’ Lars Eller during the Hurricanes’ win over Washington.
Kotkaniemi, 21, arrived in Carolina as the result of a controversial successful offer sheet, one that pried him away from the Montreal Canadiens, the team that drafted him 3rd overall in 2018. Kotkaniemi’s career thus far has been inconsistent, and he has been unable to establish himself as an NHL difference-maker like the players drafted around his 2018 third-overall draft slot have, such as Brady Tkachuk, Andrei Svechnikov, and Rasmus Dahlin. In 63 games this season Kotkaniemi has 11 goals and 26 points, production that is only a modest improvement over his 2020-21 season where he posted five goals and 20 points in 56 games. But the Hurricanes have made significant investments in Kotkaniemi, clear evidence of their belief in his long-term upside. Given the Hurricanes’ recent run of success in terms of their player development and evaluation, it would be unsurprising to see this most recent gamble of theirs eventually pay off.
In the more immediate term, though, this injury is unfortunate news for the Hurricanes. The team is all but locked into the Eastern Conference’s playoff picture, and is gearing up for what they have to expect will be a long playoff run. Losing Kotkaniemi for this period may impact their ability to figure out their optimal playoff lineup in time for puck drop in game one. Thankfully for the Hurricanes, though, they did make a buzzer-beating trade on deadline day to acquire Max Domi from the Blue Jackets. Given Domi’s experience as a center, he should be able to shoulder much of the burden from Kotkaniemi’s absence if necessary.
Edmonton Oilers Sign Xavier Bourgault
The Edmonton Oilers have inked a top prospect, signing Xavier Bourgault to a three-year entry-level contract. The deal begins in 2022-23 and Bourgault will remain with the Shawinigan Cataractes for the rest of his season in the QMJHL.
Selected 22nd overall in 2021, Bourgault has shown once again why he was regarded as such an interesting NHL prospect, recording 26 goals and 51 points in 31 games for Shawinigan this season. While he has missed multiple chunks of the season with injuries–including a freak eye injury in November–he’s back on the ice now and has scored in each of his last four contests.
Shawinigan is in a good position in the standings and poised to fight for the QMJHL championship, though it certainly would be interesting to see Bourgault join the Bakersfield Condors at some point before the end of the season. The 19-year-old forward won’t be in consideration for the Oilers, but Bakersfield could add him on a tryout contract for their own championship run, after winning the Pacific tournament last year (the Calder Cup was not awarded in 2021).
If you ask his coach, Bourgault is already ready for the professional lifestyle, even if he has yet to suit up for the Oilers organization. Last month, Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic wrote about the young forward, and how Shawinigan general manager Martin Mondou has always been impressed with his training. If “everything he does is in the sense to be playing for the Oilers one day” as Mondou put it, signing this contract is a big step toward that goal.
Given he will turn 20 in October, Bourgault will be eligible to play full-time for the Condors next season–that is if he doesn’t land an NHL role out of camp.