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Blackhawks Recall Drew Commesso, Reassign Isaak Phillips

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The Chicago Blackhawks have made a surprising roster move calling up goaltender Drew Commesso while sending Isaak Phillips to the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs. Multiple outlets indicated that backup netminder Arvid Soderblom will be out of tonight’s action with an illness giving context to the transaction.

It’ll likely be a short-term stay for Commesso in Chicago given that Soderblom is only out with an illness. There’s no expectation he’ll get the first start of his career this evening but could feature in the game should Petr Mrazek’s night not go according to plan.

It wouldn’t be the worst idea for the Blackhawks to give Commesso a tryout, especially against a struggling Nashville Predators offense. He’s arguably the top goaltending prospect for the Blackhawks after managing an 18-16-4 record with the IceHogs last year with a .906 save percentage and 2.65 goals against average including two shutouts. Unfortunately for Commesso, there’s a narrow pathway to getting the full-time callup in Chicago with Mrazek and Soderblom providing solid play in the crease to start the season and Laurent Brossoit recovering from an injury.

Phillips finds himself on the other side of this transaction for the third time this season. He hasn’t suited up for the Blackhawks yet this season as the team’s seventh defenseman and has only featured in one game for Rockford. He may no longer have a long-term spot on the Blackhawks blue line but it would be best for his development if he could spend a decent chunk of time in a consistent role.

Atlantic Notes: Liljegren, Compher, Motte, Pacioretty, Vinik

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It’s no surprise that defenseman Timothy Liljegren’s time with the Toronto Maple Leafs may be coming to an end. The former 17th overall pick of the 2017 NHL Draft has only suited up in one game for the Maple Leafs up to this point in the regular season and it doesn’t appear that the organization is willing to expand much upon that total.

As an obvious trade candidate, Harman Dayal and James Mirtle of The Athletic (Subscription Required) offered three potential suitors for Liljegren’s services. The pair lists the Utah Hockey Club, San Jose Sharks, and Los Angeles Kings as three teams needing a right-handed shot puck-moving blue liner.

All three make sense for several reasons. Utah is out Sean Durzi and John Marino for much of the 2024-25 regular season due to surgery and could use a short-term stopgap for their top four. The Kings are facing a similar dilemma with the departure of Matt Roy over the offseason and a long-term preseason injury to All-Star Drew Doughty. The Sharks don’t strike as desperate as the other two options but carry three right-shot defensemen past their primes.

Liljegren’s departure from Toronto seems less about “if” and more about “when” at this stage of the game. He’s shown flashes of top-four capabilities throughout his time in Toronto but hasn’t been trusted by multiple coaches to play in important situations.

Other Atlantic notes:

  • Ansar Khan of MLive provided a few updates on a pair of forwards from the Detroit Red Wings. J.T. Compher, who missed yesterday’s game against the New Jersey Devils with an illness, is designated as a game-time decision for tomorrow night’s contest against the Buffalo Sabres. Khan shares that forward Tyler Motte is still considered day-to-day with an upper-body injury but did participate in practice earlier today. Motte suffered the injury after receiving a solid body check from New York Rangers’ rookie defenseman, Vittorio Mancini, on October 17th.
  • Back to Toronto — veteran forward Max Pacioretty missed the team’s game last night due to a lower-body injury. He’s not expected to be out much longer with TSN’s Mark Masters reporting Pacioretty was a full participant in the team’s practice earlier today. Pacioretty already has two goals through his first five games as a Maple Leaf but the team will likely slowplay his recovery due to his multiple Achilles tears a few years ago.
  • In one of the best feel-good stories in recent memories, Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik is leaving the organization with quite the parting gift. Alex Silverman of the Sports Business Journal reports Vinik is paying nearly $20MM in bonuses to the 300+ employees for the Lightning organization. It will amount to approximately $50K-$66K for each full-time employee and is reminiscent of former owner Mark Cuban’s bonus payouts to the staff of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

Calgary Flames Reassign Matthew Coronato

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The Calgary Flames are reducing their roster to 22 players, with a pair of forwards eligible to be activated off the team’s injured reserve. The organization announced they’ve reassigned forward Matthew Coronato to their AHL affiliate, the Calgary Wranglers.

Yegor Sharangovich and Samuel Honzek are expected back relatively shortly with the latter likely headed to AHL Calgary upon activation. Sharangovich has yet to play a game for the Flames this season but should immediately be relied upon as one of the team’s best offensive weapons. He’s coming off a debut season in Calgary scoring 31 goals and 59 points in 82 contests.

Honzek surprisingly made the Flames’ roster out of training camp but doesn’t have a comfortable spot in the lineup, especially with Sharangovich expected back. The 19-year-old rookie skated in four games for Calgary before succumbing to an upper-body injury and failed to put himself on the scoresheet while averaging just under 13 minutes of ice time per game.

Coronato found himself in a similar situation. As the former 13th overall pick of the 2021 NHL Draft, Coronato brought a level of skill to his game that doesn’t typically mix well in any team’s bottom six. He has brought up his level of physicality to start the campaign with 10 hits in five games but doesn’t carry the proper level of defensive awareness required for regular minutes on the third or fourth line.

Coronato could find himself back in the NHL on a more consistent basis depending on Calgary’s contention status during the trade deadline season. The Flames have a pair of potential trade chips in Anthony Mantha and Andrei Kuzmenko which could open up the necessary roster spot for Coronato should a trade happen. He’s coming off a solid rookie season with the Wranglers last year scoring 15 goals and 42 points in 41 contests.

Rangers Sign Alexis Lafrenière To Seven-Year Extension

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1:37 p.m.: Lafrenière’s deal has a front-loaded structure that includes an $8MM signing bonus when the deal goes into effect next season, Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports reports. He’ll have a no-movement and a modified no-trade clause go into effect when he’s eligible for it beginning in 2027-28, he adds. PuckPedia has the full breakdown of the deal, adding it’s an eight-team no-trade list for the modified NTC:

2025-26: $2MM base salary, $8MM signing bonus
2026-27: $5.5MM base, $2MM SB
2027-28: $8.5MM base, $1MM SB
2028-29: $7.15MM base
2029-30: $6MM base
2030-31: $6MM base
2031-32: $6MM base

12:42 p.m.: The deal will come in at an actual AAV of $7.45MM, per PuckPedia. That’s a total value of $52.15MM.

11:54 a.m.: The Rangers are closing in on a seven-year extension with winger Alexis Lafrenière worth just under $7.6MM per season, sources tell Larry Brooks of the New York Post. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said earlier Friday that talks between the Rangers and the pending RFA had “intensified.”

That means the deal’s total value will be in the $50-53MM range. It’s a contract that would have been inconceivable for the 2020 first-overall pick less than two years ago, a clear demonstration of how much he’s improved since the beginning of last season.

Trade rumors swirled around Lafrenière after his third season in New York. During that time, he’d failed to average over half a point per game at any stage – not an acceptable performance from a first-overall forward, even that early into their career. However, a coaching change brought Peter Laviolette behind the Rangers bench, who got Lafrenière more ice time by shifting him to right-wing after years of sticking on his natural left side.

In essence, he’s been stapled on a line with Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck, a pair with which he’s developed undeniable chemistry. Lafrenière played all 82 games in 2022-23, recording a career-high 28 goals and 29 assists for 57 points while averaging over 17 minutes per night. The trio formed the Rangers’ best two-way line last season that suited up together on a regular basis, controlling 55.6% of expected goals, per MoneyPuck.

The playoffs saw Lafrenière up his per-game production even further. While the President’s Trophy winners were bounced in the Eastern Conference Final by the eventual champion Panthers, Lafrenière tied Trocheck and Chris Kreider for the team lead in goals with eight and added six assists for 14 points in 16 games. He’s carried that momentum into 2024-25, lighting the lamp four times and adding three assists for seven points in seven games, still skating with Panarin and Trocheck and averaging nearly 18 minutes per game.

Lafrenière has now converted that production into a long-term commitment from the Blueshirts, who lock him up at an extremely affordable price through the 2031-32 campaign if he keeps up his recent offensive output. His deal will go into effect next season, keeping him from reaching restricted free agency for the second time in his career. The forward inked a two-year bridge deal worth a total of $4.65MM in August 2023, far less than what he’ll be making in a single season on his new contract.

He’ll be 30 when the deal expires – he turned 23 earlier this month. That allows him to cash in again on a long-term deal while being UFA eligible, although likely not as much as he could’ve garnered if he inked a five- or six-year extension with the Rangers. For New York, signing Lafrenière now likely provides a more affordable outcome than waiting until the end of the season, especially if he keeps up his point-per-game pace from the early going.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Rangers Reassign Chad Ruhwedel

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Oct. 25: Ruhwedel cleared waivers today, per Friedman. He was assigned to Hartford shortly thereafter, per the team.

Oct. 24: The Rangers have placed defenseman Chad Ruhwedel on waivers for assignment to AHL Hartford, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports.

If Ruhwedel clears and is assigned to Hartford, it will be his first AHL action since the 2018-19 campaign. The 34-year-old has been on NHL rosters as a bottom-pairing/press box option for the better part of the last nine years, spending most of his professional career with the Penguins. Ruhwedel was initially an undrafted free agent signing out of UMass-Lowell by the Sabres in 2013 but spent most of his time with Buffalo in the minors before signing with the Pens in 2016.

Ruhwedel logged some AHL time with the Penguins, making 33 appearances for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton across a pair of seasons, but was otherwise an NHL fixture. A serviceable, physical right-shot defender, Ruhwedel posted 47 points and 90 PIMs with a -7 rating in 326 games for Pittsburgh, averaging 1.73 hits per game. But with the Pens slipping out of the playoff picture and his contract set to expire last summer, they traded him to the Rangers on deadline day for a 2027 fourth-round pick.

The San Diego native mostly sat in the press box down the stretch of the 2023-24 campaign. He logged five appearances for the Blueshirts, posting a -2 rating and 15 hits with one takeaway, averaging 14:08 per game. He didn’t suit up at all in the postseason.

While he was a UFA for nearly two weeks last summer, the Rangers brought Ruhwedel back on a one-year, two-way deal ($775K/$400K). He was expected to compete for a roster spot as a No. 7 defenseman, a pathway that became quite clear after Ryan Lindgren began the season on injured reserve. But with Lindgren back in the lineup and rookie Victor Mancini catching the team’s attention in a bottom-pairing role with three points in his last three games, Ruhwedel finds himself on the outside looking in.

Ruhwedel had played once in the Rangers’ six games to start the year, serving as a healthy scratch for the other five. He skated 14:04 against the Maple Leafs on Oct. 19, recording a +2 rating with four blocks and two hits.

Devils Reassign Daniil Misyul

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The Devils have assigned defenseman Daniil Misyul to AHL Utica, per a team release.

Misyul earned his first NHL call-up on Monday, a day before his 24th birthday. The Russian-born left-shot made his NHL debut the following night, posting a -1 rating in 12:23 of ice time against the Lightning.

With Luke Hughes and Brett Pesce coming off injured reserve and returning to the lineup in last night’s loss to the Red Wings, it’s no surprise to see the Devils shed a defender from the active roster. Misyul was initially summoned to give New Jersey a much-needed left-shot option, allowing rookie Seamus Casey to go from playing his off-side in limited NHL minutes to playing his natural right side in top-pairing duties with Utica. But with Hughes back in the fold, Misyul wouldn’t get NHL playing time ahead of him, Brenden Dillon, or Jonas Siegenthaler, so he naturally heads back to the minors.

The Devils selected Misyul 70th overall in the 2019 draft. He played the following four seasons in the Kontinental Hockey League with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl before arriving in North America for the 2023-24 campaign. Over his brief stint with Utica over the past year, he’s got 14 points (4 G, 10 A) in 47 appearances with 55 PIMs and a -1 rating. The strong, stay-at-home defender will be an RFA with arbitration rights at the end of the season.

Canucks Recall Erik Brännström, Arshdeep Bains

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Oct. 25: Both Brännström and Bains are back on the NHL roster today, according to Allvin. The moves were solely a paper transaction to accrue cap space, although Forbort could still be good to return for their next game.

Oct. 24: The Canucks sent defenseman Erik Brännström and winger Arshdeep Bains to AHL Abbotsford today, per general manager Patrik Allvin.

Brännström heads back to the minors with fellow defender Derek Forbort, who’s ready to return from a brief personal leave, Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK reports. Forbort never landed on the non-roster list, so the Canucks’ active roster is now at 21 players with the two reassignments.

The Canucks had three games over the past week with Forbort out and Brännström on the roster. The 25-year-old Swede played in all of them, recording an assist and a +2 rating while averaging 13:23 per game. The 2017 first-round pick struggled to control possession quality in his limited and sheltered minutes, posting a 33.3 xGF%. It was quantity over quality for Brännström, who controlled total shot attempts at even strength with a 52.1 CF%.

It was an okay showing for the recent trade pickup from the Avalanche, but not enough to keep him in the NHL. On Oct. 6, Vancouver acquired Brännström, who signed a one-year, $900K deal with Colorado over the summer, via trade, sending defenseman Tucker Poolman the other way to give the Avs some long-term injured reserve flexibility. He was placed on waivers that same day and cleared without incident. He had three assists and a +3 rating in two games for Abbotsford before getting the call-up to replace Forbort.

Bains, meanwhile, was left off the Canucks’ opening night roster but was recalled ahead of their second game of the season. The 23-year-old has made three appearances and scratched twice since. He’s still looking for his first NHL point after going scoreless this year and also in an eight-game trial last season. The hometown kid posted a -1 rating and had just one shot on goal while in the lineup this season, averaging 12:38 per game.

However, the pending RFA is still an intriguing prospect. An undrafted free agent signing out of WHL Red Deer in 2022, he’s far from a finished product and will get a lengthy runway to continue to build confidence in Abbotsford. He posted 55 points (16 G, 39 A) in 59 games for them last year, earning a spot on the AHL All-Star Game roster.

Sabres To Activate Nicolas Aubé-Kubel From Injured Reserve

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The Sabres will activate right-winger Nicolas Aubé-Kubel from injured reserve in the coming days, head coach Lindy Ruff told reporters today, including Heather Engel of NHL.com. He’s medically cleared to play but may not be in the lineup tomorrow against the Red Wings with only one full practice under his belt, Ruff said. He’ll return to the lineup no later than Monday against the Panthers.

Aubé-Kubel, 28, sustained a lower-body injury in the season opener against the Devils in Prague back on Oct. 4. He was placed on IR a few days later, after which Ruff said he’d miss the next three to six weeks. Today marks exactly three weeks since he sustained the initial injury, so this marks the best-case scenario for his return to the lineup.

Buffalo landed Aubé-Kubel over the summer as a free agent, inking him to a one-year, $1.5MM deal. The high-energy fourth-line piece had spent most of the last two seasons with the Capitals after they claimed him off waivers from the Maple Leafs early in the 2022-23 campaign. Aubé-Kubel shined as a depth piece in D.C., posting 16 points in 60 games last year while averaging a career-high 12:12 per game. He finished fifth on the team in hits with 159, and his +4 rating was tied for second. He also recorded 32 takeaways compared to 19 giveaways, one of the better differentials on the team.

The Alberta native was also part of the Avalanche team that won the Stanley Cup in 2022. Claimed off waivers from the Flyers early in the season, Aubé-Kubel went on to post a career-high 11 goals and 12 assists for 23 points in 74 regular-season games.

The Sabres can recreate two-thirds of what was an extremely effective fourth line for Washington last year after also acquiring left-winger Beck Malenstyn via trade. They had the duo centered by Sam Lafferty for under six minutes on opening night before Aubé-Kubel sustained the injury.

Buffalo has a full 23-man roster and will need to make a corresponding transaction to activate Aubé-Kubel. That could be returning 2022 first-round pick Jiri Kulich, who’s been scratched twice and has been limited to a goal in six appearances despite averaging over 15 minutes per game, to AHL Rochester. It could also be placing winger Zach Benson on IR – the sophomore is day-to-day with a lower-body injury that’s kept him out of two games this season. He wasn’t at practice today, relays Lance Lysowski of The Buffalo News.

Utah Signs Owen Allard To Entry-Level Deal

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Utah has signed forward prospect Owen Allard to a three-year, entry-level contract, per Belle Fraser of The Salt Lake Tribune.

Allard, 20, was passed over twice in the draft but was finally selected by Utah in the fifth round earlier this year. The 6’2″, 190-lb forward can play both center and left wing. Last year, he put his name on the map with 44 points in 55 games for the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds.

Amid his career-best offensive season at the junior level, he was a surprise inclusion on Canada’s roster for the 2024 World Juniors. He had two goals and an assist in five games, but Canada failed to medal at the event for the first time since 2019.

If he ever cracks an NHL roster, whether with Utah or somewhere else, it’ll likely be in a bottom-six energy role. His delayed offensive outbreak doesn’t bode well for his chances of being a significant impact player at the NHL level, at least on the scoresheet. But scouting reports from Elite Prospects praise his “never-ending motor” and his strength in puck and net-front battles.

Allard, who turns 21 early next year, had a goal and an assist in his first season appearance for the Greyhounds earlier this week. Due to his age, his entry-level contract isn’t eligible for a slide and will go into effect immediately. He’ll be an RFA after the conclusion of the 2026-27 season.

Kraken Reassign Cale Fleury

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Oct. 25: Seattle has returned Fleury to Coachella Valley today. Expect them to recall him again tomorrow ahead of their game against the Hurricanes.

Oct. 24: Fleury is back on the Kraken roster today as expected, per a team announcement. He was sent down only to accrue cap space and prolong his waiver exemption.

Oct. 23: The Kraken have sent defenseman Cale Fleury back to the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds, per a team announcement. He was just recalled Monday in a corresponding move that saw star defender Vince Dunn land on long-term injured reserve.

Fleury, 26 next month, has been ferried between the Kraken and their AHL affiliate almost constantly over the past few years. Initially acquired from the Canadiens in their 2021 expansion draft, Fleury was waived at the beginning of their inaugural season but did spend some time on the taxi squad and active roster later in the year. He spent all of 2022-23 on the NHL roster but barely played, spending all but 12 games as a healthy scratch. He then cleared waivers again to begin last season and was papered between leagues seemingly nonstop after the trade deadline, as he was recalled and reassigned eight times in six weeks to end the year.

Amid all those transactions, the right-shot defender has spent most of his time in the minors. He’s played in parts of four NHL seasons, three with Seattle and one with Montreal, but only has 63 games to his name at the game’s top level. Only one of them came last year, but he did rack up 36 points and a +29 rating in 65 games for the Firebirds. He’s been a fine possession player at the NHL level, logging a 50.9 CF% and a 49.3 xGF%, but he’s been limited to just a goal and an assist offensively while averaging 14:10 per game.

He led last year’s AHL playoffs in points by a defenseman with 14 in 18 appearances, and he’s carried that momentum into the early going of 2024-25. He’s got three goals in three games, leading the Firebirds in scoring as they look to make it three straight Calder Cup Final appearances to begin their existence.

Fleury has now burned two days toward his temporary waiver exemption. He can be on Seattle’s roster for 28 more days or play 10 NHL games before he needs waivers again to return to the minors.

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