Kraken To Explore Trade Market For Mark Giordano
In recent weeks, Seattle hadn’t finalized their plans for veteran defenseman Mark Giordano as they wanted to meet with him first to see if he’d be open to extending his stay with them. In the end, however, Pierre LeBrun reported in the latest TSN Insider Trading segment (video link) that after meeting with the blueliner, the Kraken have shifted their focus towards finding a trade for their captain.
The 38-year-old has had a decent season with the expansion franchise, leading their rearguards in scoring with 22 points in 44 games while logging more than 21 minutes a night. While he’s no longer the top-pairing fixture he was in Calgary for a large chunk of his career, he’s still a capable top-four option that should garner some interest on a rental blueline market that projects to be a strong one between now and next month’s trade deadline.
Giordano is in the final year of a six-year, $40.5MM contract that carries some trade protection in the form of a 12-team no-trade clause. While that means GM Ron Francis has 19 teams to trade the veteran to, it seems likely that they’ll try to work with Giordano to get him to one of his preferred destinations.
In order to do so, Seattle will almost certainly have to retain the maximum of 50% of Giordano’s AAV which works out to $3.375MM. LeBrun notes that they’re willing to get creative to fully utilize their cap space – more than $21MM currently, per CapFriendly – so it stands to reason that they’ll be willing to retain on Giordano to maximize their return.
At that price tag, several contending teams should be interested in Giordano’s services so Francis should be able to generate a strong return. Back in expansion, their reported asking price was a first-round pick along with a third-rounder for them not to take him, a price Calgary clearly wasn’t willing to pay. Considering that type of return was what David Savard yielded a year ago as a rental, there’s a chance Seattle could get close to that in a move. Now that it’s known that he’ll be traded, the Kraken should be fielding several phone calls about their captain if they haven’t been in touch with other teams already which makes Giordano someone to keep an eye on over the coming weeks.
PHR Live Chat Transcript: 02/24/22
Click here to read the transcript for this week’s live chat with PHR’s Gavin Lee.
Snapshots: Blackhawks, Laval, Bunting
The Chicago Blackhawks have concluded the interview phase of their general manager search, with CEO Danny Wirtz announcing that the leadership team will move to the next step in the process. The Blackhawks are known to have interviewed Kyle Davidson, Eric Tulsky, Scott Mellanby, Peter Chiarelli, Jeff Greenberg, and Mathieu Darche for the position, and were also linked to Toronto Raptors executive Teresa Resch.
Davidson has been operating as the team’s interim GM since late October when Stan Bowman left the organization. The team has been transparent throughout the process, though today’s announcement certainly doesn’t provide much of an update on when the next front office leader will actually be hired.
- The AHL will head to Laval for the 2023 All-Star Classic, returning three years after they were supposed to originally host the event. The Rocket were picked to host the 2021 All-Star festivities, which were ultimately canceled. The 2022 event was also going to go back to Laval, before eventually being canceled in December. Hopefully, things will work out this time, and the Rocket will be able to host the best of the minor leagues.
- Toronto Maple Leafs forward Michael Bunting has been fined $2,000 for diving/embellishment, meaning it was the second time he has been flagged this season. The first incident, which the league says occurred on November 16, results in a warning from the league. The latest, February 17 against the Penguins, results in a fine for the player. While embellishment fines never reach more than $5,000 for a player, after the fourth team violation a head coach starts to receive financial penalties. No player wants to be the reason why his coach is out money, meaning Bunting and the rest of the Maple Leafs will have to be a little more cautious when trying to draw penalties down the stretch.
Columbus Blue Jackets Taking Calls On Alexandre Texier
In the Eastern Conference, the playoff picture has looked set in stone for quite some time. Even now, with the Columbus Blue Jackets on an 8-2 run in their last ten, they’re still nine points behind the Boston Bruins for the last wild card position. That’s an impressive feat after struggling to find any consistency through the first half but it still might end up in a missed postseason, regardless of what they do in the coming weeks.
You can understand then, why teams may be calling the Blue Jackets to inquire about some of their players. Today, Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reports that the team has been taking calls on Alexandre Texier for the last little while, though the asking price is still quite high. Seravalli notes that to pry Texier out of Columbus, it would take a first-round pick and a roster player.
Selected 45th overall in 2017, Texier is something of an enigma. After lighting up the Finnish league as a teenager, the French forward made the jump to North America and quickly forced his way into the Blue Jackets lineup. In 2019, he played in eight of the team’s ten playoff games at age-19, including the entire four-game sweep of the powerhouse Tampa Bay Lightning. In that deciding game four, Texier opened the scoring on the powerplay and added an empty-net goal to help seal it. He was still 19 at the time.
Since then, things haven’t gone quite as smoothly. Since the start of the 2019-20 season, Texier has ended up on injured reserve three times and has just 48 points in 121 games. There is so much obvious skill in his 6’1″ frame, but his play has been inconsistent even when he’s healthy enough to contribute.
This season, he has doubled his career goal total with 11 tallies in 36 games, but once again finds himself on the shelf due to injury. He has been out since January 26 with a broken finger, and even before that had been held scoreless in his last five games.
The key to any team’s interest in Texier–to go along with oodles of potential–is that he’s also signed for next season at a very reasonable $1.525MM cap hit. If you could add him to a talented lineup and keep him healthy, there’s a very good chance that the 22-year-old vastly outperforms that number. After this contract is finished, Texier will still be an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent, meaning it’s not anywhere near the kind of trade that will see rentals swap teams at the deadline.
Again though, the Blue Jackets are in no rush here. Just as they don’t have to make a decision about Patrik Laine until the offseason–the star sniper is a restricted free agent just one year away from the open market–they also won’t be pressured into a deal for the even-younger Texier. If the asking price is actually as high as Seravalli reports, Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen is making it very clear that he isn’t desperate to move the young forward.
Jared McCann Placed On Injured Reserve
If there’s a player the Seattle Kraken couldn’t afford to lose for an extended period of time, it’s Jared McCann. The 25-year-old forward has been the team’s best offensive player all season, leading the squad in both goals and points so far. Unfortunately, McCann has now landed on injured reserve with an undisclosed injury, with the Kraken recalling Kole Lind from the AHL to replace him on the roster.
McCann is an interesting case study for those who want to know how the Kraken will approach the next few years. A restricted free agent at the end of this season, he’s put himself in prime position for a substantial raise, either through a long-term extension or the arbitration process. The question now becomes whether it’s the Kraken that are the other signatory on that next contract, or if McCann will be sold off for future assets at some point. That could come at the trade deadline or the offseason, depending on what kind of offers come in the next few weeks (and what kind of injury he’s currently dealing with).
There’s a real argument to be made that any extension with McCann would cover years when the Kraken are still not competitive in the Pacific Division, though the same might have been said during the unrestricted free agent period last summer. Instead of holding onto their cap space and building through the draft, general manager Ron Francis signed multi-year contracts with free agents like Philipp Grubauer, Jaden Schwartz, Jamie Oleksiak, Adam Larsson, and Alexander Wennberg, players that were already in their late-twenties and likely aren’t going to experience much improvement over the production they had already shown. It seemed, at least at the time, like the Kraken were targeting a playoff spot in year one, something that hasn’t come to fruition.
So a long-term deal with McCann would certainly be following their previous path, though the wisdom in that strategy is still up for debate. Alternatively, selling him off at some point before UFA status–he’ll reach the open market in the summer of 2023 if not signed–would signal that perhaps those initial moves were mistakes and that it will take quite a bit longer for the Kraken to reach playoff contender status.
There is of course also the possibility that McCann doesn’t want to stay in Seattle at all and an extension isn’t even possible, though with 21 goals and 33 points through 48 games, he’s already having the best season of his career with the improved offensive deployment.
Tony DeAngelo Out Weeks With Upper-Body Injury
The Carolina Hurricanes have had one of the most valuable defensive contracts in the league this season with Tony DeAngelo, signing him to a one-year, $1MM deal after his public exit from the New York Rangers. DeAngelo has been brilliant for the Hurricanes, racking up 40 points in 43 games while averaging close to 20 minutes a night. One of the most effective powerplay quarterbacks in the league, 15 of his 31 assists have come with the man advantage. Carolina will have to find a new player to run PP1, though, as DeAngelo will miss about a month with an injury according to head coach Rod Brind’Amour, who spoke with reporters including Chip Alexander of the Raleigh News & Observer.
For now, DeAngelo’s regular partner Jaccob Slavin has taken over the quarterback duties on the top unit, with Ethan Bear joining the second group. Slavin is a capable player but there should be at least some concern about him taking over the majority of the powerplay time, given how important he is in other areas. There’s no one in the league that has logged more short-handed ice time than Slavin, who has close to 170 minutes on the penalty kill through 48 games this season. Teams have scored just seven goals against the Hurricanes during that time, showing just how effective he is at it.
With that in mind, losing DeAngelo could have a sort of cascade effect on the Carolina blue line, putting players in spots that they aren’t perfectly suited for, or taxing the best defensive players even further. Brett Pesce has joined Slavin on the first pair, while Jalen Chatfield slides in beside Brady Skjei on the second. That’s certainly not a perfect situation, and one that will likely lead to more speculation as the trade deadline approaches. If DeAngelo is out for a month he might miss up to 14 of the team’s remaining 32 games, meaning a defensive addition may be necessary just to shore up the depth.
Of course, Carolina is one of many teams operating in long-term injured reserve relief space–this time afforded by Jake Gardiner‘s chronic back issues–meaning any addition would have to be carefully determined.
AHL Shuffle: 02/24/22
The NHL has eight games on the schedule for this evening, including a battle between Bill Zito’s Florida Panthers and his former employees from the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Panthers lost their last game but still sit atop the Atlantic Division with a 35-11-5 record, while the Blue Jackets are making some noise in the Metropolitan Division with three straight wins and an 8-2 record over their last ten games. It’ll be hard for Patrik Laine and the Blue Jackets to climb all the way up, but they have passed the Detroit Red Wings and are now the closest team to that final wild card spot in the east.
Atlantic Division
- Now that they have some cap space because of Jake Muzzin‘s long-term injured reserve stint, the Toronto Maple Leafs have recalled Kyle Clifford, and–according to CapFriendly—Rasmus Sandin. The team has sent Brennan Menell and Kristians Rubins, two players that were up solely for cap purposes, back to the AHL.
Metropolitan Division
- By moving Elvis Merzlikins onto injured reserve retroactive to February 17, the Blue Jackets were able to add two players to the roster today. Emil Bemstrom and Jake Christiansen have both been recalled from the minor leagues. The team will not have Zach Werenski on this road trip as he deals with an upper-body injury, meaning Gabriel Carlsson will enter the lineup tonight.
- The New York Rangers have recalled Zac Jones to the NHL. Larry Brooks of the New York Post reports that Patrik Nemeth is away from the team expecting the birth of a child. Morgan Barron will also enter the lineup in the place of Filip Chytil, who is ill.
Central Division
Pacific Division
This page will be updated throughout the day
West Notes: Golden Knights, Forsberg, Blackhawks
Much has been made of the Vegas Golden Knights’ salary cap management, with the team playing with fire ever since acquiring Jack Eichel. Now, with the team potentially in a bind if they don’t have enough room to activate healthy players off long-term injured reserve prior to the playoffs, The Athletic’s Jesse Granger suggests a post-Trade Deadline cap-clearing move could potentially be in play. The return dates of Alec Martinez and Mark Stone aren’t certain, and it’s possible both could be healthy before May. If that’s the case, the Golden Knights could potentially move a player after the deadline to a non-playoff team in order to become cap-compliant. There’s no rule preventing this, as the Trade Deadline is legally only relevant because players moved after that date aren’t eligible for playoff games. However, as Granger notes, this could likely significantly reduce the trade value of any player Vegas is looking to move out, considering they’d have no other option to become compliant.
Other rumblings from the Wild West:
- Bally Sports Midwest’s Andy Strickland reports that he’s hearing the Nashville Predators are “actively shopping” Filip Forsberg ahead of the deadline. While the team is a likely playoff lock in the Western Conference at this point, they’re likely not in the Stanley Cup conversation, and Forsberg is a free agent at season’s end. The NHL’s leader in even-strength goals would likely become the deadline’s biggest prize, and any Forsberg deal could reap considerable rewards for Nashville’s future and help replenish a prospect pool that, while it has some nice names, isn’t the strongest. He’s carrying an extremely reasonable $6MM cap hit that most contenders can stomach with some retention.
- According to Scott Powers and Mark Lazerus at The Athletic, if the Chicago Blackhawks and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury agree on a trade, it could potentially net the team a first-round pick. While they do say a second- or third-round selection is probably more realistic, some do believe teams will pay up for last year’s Vezina winner. The team does not have their first-round pick this year after including it in the Seth Jones trade.
Jake Muzzin Placed On Long-Term Injured Reserve
After a series of complicated roster moves earlier in the day, the Toronto Maple Leafs have now placed defenseman Jake Muzzin on long-term injured reserve.
The team made a series of recalls and re-assignments today to get as close to the salary cap as possible, including briefly sending Rasmus Sandin back to the AHL and recalling defensemen Brennan Menell and Kristians Rubins. This permits them to get as much LTIR relief from Muzzin’s $5.625MM cap hit as possible.
Muzzin will be out for at least 10 games and 24 days. But after suffering his second concussion in a short timeframe, Toronto is expected to be cautious with his return.
If Muzzin is healthy before the end of the regular season, Toronto would need to be cap-compliant in order to return him to the active roster. But if Muzzin won’t return until the beginning of the postseason or sometime during it, the Maple Leafs have roughly an additional $5.6MM to throw around at the trade deadline and have those players for the playoffs.
In the meantime, look for Sandin and Timothy Liljegren to see an increased role.
Blue Jackets’ Daniil Tarasov Out For Remainder Of Season
Columbus Blue Jackets netminder Daniil Tarasov will miss the remainder of the season as he recovers from right hip surgery, the team announced today. Tarasov’s recovery timeline is six months.
The news isn’t entirely unexpected. Tarasov has been on the shelf for a little while now, last playing for the Blue Jackets on New Years’ Day after a three-game string in early December.
The 22-year-old, who was drafted 86th overall in 2017 by the team, had a strong showing this year, posting a .937 save percentage despite only being credited with two losses and no wins.
Columbus, for the time being, will need to continue to rely on NHL/AHL tweener veteran Jean-Francois Berube between the pipes. He’s recorded two wins in his past two starts, his first such victories in the NHL since 2018. Their NHL tandem in Elvis Merzlikins and Joonas Korpisalo are both day-to-day with lower-body injuries.
Tarasov should be ready to go for training camp for 2022-23 and stands a chance to win an NHL spot, especially considering Korpisalo’s pending unrestricted free agent status.