NHL General Managers Could Discuss Closing LTIR Playoff “Loophole”
Next week holds in store an NHL general managers’ meeting in Manalapan, Florida, and Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli reports that the agenda may include a discussion around altering the long-term injured reserve “loophole” used by teams to build legal, but non-salary-cap-compliant rosters for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
As it stands, teams are allowed to gain cap relief from players on injured reserve for the end of the regular season before the salary cap disappears for the playoffs, then bringing those players back once healthy for playoff runs. It theoretically allows teams to exceed the hard cap by several millions of dollars during the playoffs due to the salary cap not being in effect at the end of the regular season. Seravalli says at least one general manager has requested that this be included on the meeting’s agenda, with that GM believing “strongly that wasn’t the intended spirit of the CBA when it was written.” It’s a rule that’s been taken advantage of by multiple Stanley Cup-winning teams in the past, including the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2021 with Nikita Kucherov and the Chicago Blackhawks in 2015 with Patrick Kane.
The anonymous general manager cited in the article doesn’t think a complex solution is required to fix this inequity, however. While they don’t advocate for overall financial roster limits, they put forth a proposal that the 20-man roster on the ice for each team during a playoff game can’t exceed the salary cap. This would provide a boost to essentially all playoff teams, considering that during the regular season, any healthy scratches or players on regular injured reserve count against the salary cap as well. It gives teams flexibility, allowing them to make roster decisions freely during the playoffs among healthy players within the constraint of a combined $81.5MM cap hit for the on-ice lineup.
However, as Seravalli notes, any modification to this rule requires negotiation with the NHLPA, as it constitutes a “material change” to the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
While no surefire playoff team this season is taking advantage of this loophole in earnest, it was widely assumed the Vegas Golden Knights’ playoff lineup would benefit from this ability due to captain Mark Stone‘s long-term back injury that’s expected to keep him out through the regular season. Now, with additional injuries continuing to pile up for the Knights, it’s feasible the team misses the playoffs entirely.
Matthew Peca Signs Two-Year Extension
Late last night, CapFriendly reported that the St. Louis Blues signed Matthew Peca to a two-year, two-way contract extension. The deal comes with an NHL cap hit of $762.5K and will keep him in the organization through the 2023-24 season. The Springfield Thunderbirds, who Peca is currently playing for, have now officially announced the contract.
Peca, 28, is having a fantastic season for the Thunderbirds, scoring 20 goals and 51 points in 53 games so far. He’s added just five NHL contests and one point, meaning this is a lot more about organizational depth than making a real impact for the Blues moving forward.
Still, the contract represents some stability for the pending free agent forward and keeps their AHL affiliate happy with a star player in the system. Peca meanwhile is a perfect injury replacement, as he has actually scored 21 points in 83 career NHL games–not bad for someone who has averaged fewer than 11 minutes in those games.
Snapshots: IIHF, Boqvist, Hathaway
The IIHF has referred two cases to their newly-created independent Ethics Board for review, to determine if the actions of an IIHF National Association or an individual associated with the IIHF could constitute an ethical conduct violation. The first case involves the Russian Ice Hockey Federation’s alleged instruction of KHL teams to take demonstrative actions in support of the Russia-Ukraine war.
The second is the involvement of IIHF Life President Rene Fasel with Russia and the KHL, along with public statements about the war. Currently, no disciplinary action has been brought. Earlier this year, the IIHF suspended the Russian and Belarusian teams from several international competitions.
- The Columbus Blue Jackets have activated Adam Boqvist from injured reserve after he missed the last 11 games. The 21-year-old defenseman has had a strong debut in Columbus after a trade from the Chicago Blackhawks, scoring ten goals and 19 points in just 40 games.
- Garnet Hathaway has a little less spending money this month, after earning a $2,000 diving/embellishment fine from the league today. The incident that caused the fine happened on a March 18 game against the Carolina Hurricanes, following a warning that Hathaway received earlier this year.
Christian Jaros Clears Unconditional Waivers
March 24: Jaros has cleared waivers and will now have his contract terminated.
March 23: The New Jersey Devils have placed Christian Jaros on unconditional waivers for the purpose of terminating his contract. Just this week, Jaros already cleared regular waivers and was assigned to the minor leagues. If he clears again, he will become an unrestricted free agent. He would then be able to sign with any club he wanted, though he would not be eligible for the NHL playoffs.
The Devils have also recalled A.J. Greer and Kevin Bahl from the AHL, who will join the team in Toronto when they face the Maple Leafs this evening.
Jaros, 25, has actually not played a single game in the minor leagues this season, suiting up 11 times for the Devils instead. Originally selected 139th overall in 2015, he quickly rose through the ranks and was making his debut by the 2017-18 season with the Ottawa Senators. It looked as though he would quickly establish himself as a full-time NHL option, though after his progression stalled, he’s now bounced around and could be headed back to Europe.
In Bahl, the Devils have the big ticket from the Taylor Hall trade up with the big club, after his successful sophomore AHL campaign. The 6’6″ defenseman has 15 points in 49 games for the Utica Comets and from all accounts has taken a strong step forward in his development. He’s now played 11 games and is still looking for his first goal.
Torey Krug Out Week-To-Week
The St. Louis Blues made a considerable addition to their defense corps by bringing in Nick Leddy at the trade deadline, and it was pretty good timing. Today, the team has announced that Torey Krug will be out on a week-to-week basis after leaving Tuesday’s game against the Washington Capitals.
Krug, 30, ended up playing just 11 minutes in that game, easily his low mark of the season. In his second year in St. Louis, Krug is averaging close to 21 minutes a night and leads all Blues defensemen with 35 points. Taking that out of the lineup is no small thing, and opens up a huge opportunity for the newcomer. With Krug out, Leddy ended up seeing more than three minutes of powerplay time and finished with over 20 overall. That’s despite the team dressing seven defensemen, showing how much the team is going to rely on the former Detroit Red Wing over the last few weeks of the season.
The Blues ended up winning that game, but are still just 3-4-3 in their last ten and find themselves only barely ahead of the Minnesota Wild and Nashville Predators in the Central Division. Even the Dallas Stars are only six points behind them, meaning St. Louis needs to start chugging in the right direction soon. Krug’s absence certainly won’t help that, even if they did add Leddy to the mix.
Of course, Scott Perunovich would have been useful in this case, but he too underwent surgery earlier this month and is still weeks away from a return.
Joonas Korpisalo To Undergo Hip Surgery
When Joonas Korpisalo wasn’t moved at the deadline, a few eyebrows were raised around the league, given his status as a pending unrestricted free agent. The Columbus Blue Jackets have essentially explained why, announcing that Korpisalo will undergo hip surgery and is expected to miss the next six months. Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen released a statement:
This is an injury that Joonas has been dealing with for some time and it has now gotten to the point where surgery is the best option. We are disappointed for him as he has worked extremely hard to be able to play, but this is the best course of action.
Korpisalo, 27, now heads into the offseason with an uncertain future. A six-month timeline would suggest he could be ready for the start of next season but he now will be without a contract, unless he re-ups with the Blue Jackets at some point before hitting the open market. In just 22 appearances this season, Korpisalo has registered a career-worst .877 save percentage and 4.15 goals-against average. He is among the worst in the league at goals saved above average, ahead of only Philipp Grubauer in that category. While this injury explains at least part of that, it also complicates his future, as a return to his previous form is anything but a guarantee.
This isn’t even the first goaltender to require hip surgery for the Blue Jackets this season. Daniil Tarasov, essentially the team’s third-string option, also underwent surgery and was given a six-month timeline in February. That leaves Elvis Merzlikins and Jean-Francois Berube as the NHL options for the rest of the season, while Jet Greaves and Cam Johnson continue in the minor leagues.
Cal Clutterbuck Out Rest Of Season
The New York Islanders rewarded Cal Clutterbuck with a recent contract extension, something that certainly came at the right time for the veteran forward. The team announced today that Clutterbuck will miss the rest of the season with a shoulder injury that will require surgery. Additionally, Scott Mayfield will miss four to six weeks with a lower-body injury.
Clutterbuck, 34, last played on March 19, two days before the trade deadline when he inked a new two-year, $3.5MM extension that keeps him with the Islanders through the 2023-24 season. While his name had surfaced in trade speculation, it seems likely that it was never really in the cards given this injury and the timing of his extension.
Through 59 games this season, Clutterbuck has racked up six goals and 15 points, actually eclipsing the totals from each of the last two years. The last time he posted double-digit goals was 2015-16, and he hasn’t broken 25 points in a single season since he was still with the Minnesota Wild. Despite that lack of offensive output, Clutterbuck has been an important part of the smothering defensive system in New York, racking up almost countless hits in a bottom-six role. This season he sits fourth in the entire league with 229 collisions, trailing only Radko Gudas, Ryan Reaves, and Tanner Jeannot.
Set to turn 35 in November and now coming off shoulder surgery, it’s easy to wonder what kind of impact Clutterbuck can really have moving forward. His $1.75MM cap hit is half of what he’s earned for the last five years, but still seems like a relative overpay, given how uncertain his future contributions are.
Mayfield, who also was included in some pre-deadline speculation, was injured when he blocked a shot on Tuesday against the Ottawa Senators and will now miss a good chunk of what’s left in the regular season. The depth defenseman is already signed through next season and has taken another step forward this season, adding 18 points in 61 games to his already stalwart defensive play. While he’s not a top-pairing option, some believed Mayfield could have been a sought-after addition for contenders at the deadline had he been made available by the Islanders.
With the team sitting 17 points behind the Washington Capitals for the second wild card spot, with the Columbus Blue Jackets in between, it was always going to be an extreme longshot for the Islanders to make a playoff push. Losing two more pieces from their lineup will only make that climb more difficult and could potentially end up giving them some better lottery odds instead.
AHL Shuffle: 03/24/22
The NHL is back in full swing this evening with ten games on the schedule, as teams all across the league enter the home stretch. Ben Chiarot will make his return to Montreal (though he never really left) to face the Canadiens as a member of the Florida Panthers, while Evander Kane welcomes in his old teammates from San Jose when the Sharks face the Edmonton Oilers. As those teams and others prepare, we’ll keep track of all the minor league shuffling.
Atlantic Division
- The Detroit Red Wings have recalled Chase Pearson from the AHL, his first call-up of the season. The 24-year-old forward has yet to play an NHL game since signing out of the University of Maine in 2019 and has 17 points in 47 games for the Grand Rapids Griffins this year.
Metropolitan Division
Central Division
Pacific Division
This page will be updated throughout the day
Snapshots: Dadonov Fallout, Dansk, No Trade Clauses
The cancellation of Monday’s Evgenii Dadonov trade is a decision that could have an impact on the rest of this season and into the future. Because the Golden Knights’ place in the Western Conference’s playoff picture has become significantly more precarious than it was in the earlier months of the season, activating Alec Martinez and captain Mark Stone off of long-term injured reserve has suddenly become far more necessary than the team may have anticipated it would be. But without the cap space that was set to be cleared by Monday’s voided trade, the team is going to have a far more challenging time trying to get their players back from the long-term injured list. So, this means that the Golden Knights could pursue other trades to clear the cap room. In his 32 Thoughts blog, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman details what that could entail. He floats the Arizona Coyotes as a potential suitor for taking on Dadonov’s contract but states that the potential Dadonov-to-Arizona trade would be less appetizing to the Golden Knights than their voided trade to Anaheim was.
Friedman writes that “Arizona will make itself available” should the Golden Knights want to pursue that avenue of a solution, but it could be expensive. Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reports that the cost of a team taking on Dadonov’s contract from the Golden Knights could be “a first-round pick” plus more. For Vegas, that is a steeper price than the second-rounder they were set to send Anaheim. With the trade deadline passed and any trade of Dadonov now making him ineligible to play again this season, what little leverage Vegas did have has likely evaporated. Even worse for the team, Dadonov’s no-trade protection, the center of most of this conversation, could further cut into the number of teams willing to engage with Vegas on this type of deal. So the central question for Vegas will be: if getting rid of Dadonov’s contract to be able to activate Martinez and Stone is essential to reviving the team’s fading playoff hopes, how much is this season worth to GM Kelly McCrimmon? How much is it worth to owner Bill Foley? The Golden Knights have been remarkably aggressive in their young existence as a franchise, with a relentless commitment to maximizing their team’s ability to win a Stanley Cup with their current core of players. This season has been perhaps their most challenging, and the Dadonov situation brings them to a fork in the road. Will they pay what could be an exorbitant price to trade Dadonov and activate some reinforcements? Or could they potentially refuse to pay that price, and end up missing the playoffs for the first time in franchise history?
- Speaking of the Golden Knights, in another nugget of information from his 32 Thoughts blog, Elliotte Friedman brings up a name that Vegas fans should remember. Friedman reports that Oscar Dansk is pondering a return to North America after his first season overseas since he spent 2016-17 tending the pipes in the SHL. Dansk was the 31st overall pick in the 2012 draft and never quite lived up to his potential. After a 2020-21 season where he only got into 12 games across the NHL and AHL levels, Dansk left for the KHL. He played in 17 regular-season games for Spartak Moscow and registered a .910 save percentage. In three games for the team in the KHL playoffs, Dansk is sporting an impressive .932 mark. Given his track record as a solid AHL goalie (he had a .910 save percentage over a 75-game stretch for the AHL’s Chicago Wolves from 2018-19 through 2019-20), it’s possible that he could return to this side of the Atlantic and get a chance as a team’s third netminder similar to the role he played for Vegas when he was last in North America.
- One potential long-term impact of the voided Dadonov trade could be a change in how no-trade protections associated with contracts are tracked. A central issue with the Dadonov trade was that Dadonov’s contractual right to refuse a trade to the Anaheim Ducks was not communicated when the Knights made the trade earlier this week. The specifics of no-trade protection on NHL contracts are information typically only shared between a player, his representation, and the team he is contracted to. But with this Dadonov situation, that could change. In his piece detailing more information about Dadonov’s situation and no-trade clauses in general, the Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun notes (subscription required) that with the annual GM meetings set to be held next week, the creation of a centralized, league-monitored place to store information on no-trade clauses could be an item on discussion. As with any piece of information, the more eyes that get to see it, the more likely it is to leak. So some parties may be opposed to this solution given that an unintended consequence could be more players’ no-trade lists becoming public information. But given the mess that the Dadonov trade situation evolved into, one wonders if that’s a risk the league’s decision-makers are willing to take.
Chicago Blackhawks Sign Jaxson Stauber
The Chicago Blackhawks have landed a coveted NCAA free agent. Providence College’s Jaxson Stauber, an undrafted goaltender, has signed with the team, inking a two-year entry-level contract carrying an $883K cap hit. The signing comes off the heels of the team’s trade of starting goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury to the Minnesota Wild. While it is unlikely that the trade of Fleury had any direct impact on this signing, in a statement Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson emphasized the importance of “making sure there is no drop-off in our goaltender development” for his rebuilding club. As it stands the Blackhawks’ two goalies on their NHL roster combine for under 100 games of NHL experience, so Davidson’s statement indicates that repairing the team’s organizational situation between the pipes will be a priority.
While Stauber was passed over in every NHL draft he was eligible for, that hasn’t stopped him from developing into a viable goaltending prospect in his own right. Stauber is a Hobey Baker nominee this season and his play through two seasons at Providence College has been stellar. In 37 games this season Stauber registered a .921 save percentage, and in 2020-2021 he posted a .916 in 23 games. Stauber also stands six-foot-three, meaning he isn’t tagged with the “undersized” label that has plagued many goaltending prospects across hockey. Should he be able to continue the success he found at Providence College with the Blackhawks organization, it would greatly help a club with far more questions than answers regarding its goaltending situation.
For the Blackhawks, signing Stauber helps add talent to a team in need of some goaltending reinforcements. As previously mentioned, after the trade of Fleury the crease in Chicago is relatively wide open. The current tandem of Delia and Lankinen is unproven and without much recent success. Delia has a .750 save percentage in his 28 minutes of action at the NHL level this season, and Lankinen has a .889 mark through 17 games so far in this campaign. Arvid Soderblom, with a .920 save percentage this season in 23 games for the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs has promise, but otherwise, this is potentially one of the best opportunities for quick advancement should Stauber want to reach the NHL as fast as possible. Should he exceed expectations, he could find himself quickly rising through the organizational ranks in net. He could get the chance sooner rather than later, too, as Charlie Roumeliotis of NBC Sports Chicago reports that although Stauber’s contract “kicks in next season,” if he chooses to start in Rockford he could be able to under an amateur tryout agreement.