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Penguins Notes: Jarry, Karlsson, Power Play

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Rob Rossi of The Athletic tweeted that Pittsburgh Penguins netminder Tristan Jarry missed practice today due to a medical appointment. Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also tweeted about Jarry’s appointment saying that Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan wouldn’t go into detail about the nature of Jarry’s appointment but did tell the media that Jarry should be back on the ice tomorrow.

Jarry hopes to have a bounce-back season as he enters the second year of his five-year contract. He reportedly showed up in terrific shape for training camp according to Sullivan and is likely hoping to have a better second half of the season after fading down the stretch in each of the previous two years. Jarry lost the net late last season and didn’t start in the Penguins’ final 13 games to conclude the regular season.

In other Penguins notes:

  • Penguins’ defenseman Erik Karlsson remains day-to-day with an upper-body injury (as per Rossi of The Athletic). Karlsson skated before practice today, and the team didn’t provide an update on the status of the 34-year-old. Karlsson has been skating on his own for the past few days as he tries to recover and neither he nor the team appear worried about his health status going forward. Karlsson had an uneven first season with Pittsburgh last year, posting 11 goals and 45 assists in 82 games, and will be counted on heavily to try and get the Penguins back to the postseason for the first time since 2022.
  • Dan Kingerski of Pittsburgh Hockey Now writes that the Penguins have begun work on overhauling the power play that cost them a playoff spot last season. Pittsburgh finished with an abysmal 15.3% success rate with the man advantage last season, placing them 30th in the NHL. The team brought in assistant coach David Quinn during the offseason to make changes to the unit, and it appears that work has started. The Penguins have eliminated the firm bumper position and are instead using that forward in the slot to create traffic in front of the net, as well as puck support. The team will be hoping to create more chaos around the crease this season, something they weren’t able to do much of last season.

Avalanche Sign Logan O’Connor To Six-Year Extension

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The Colorado Avalanche have gotten to work early on one of their key secondary scorers by announcing a six-year contract extension for forward Logan O’Connor. O’Connor was set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer with his three-year, $3.15MM contract expiring. TSN’s Pierre LeBrun reports O’Connor will earn $2.5MM each year of the deal.

Although he was raised in Calgary after his father, Myles O’Connor, retired from professional hockey in 1998, O’Connor has spent much of his adult life in Denver, CO. He spent three years just south of Ball Arena at the University of Denver from 2015-18 collecting 16 goals and 43 points in 108 games while helping his team to a National Championship in 2017. He signed a two-year entry-level contract with the Avalanche after his junior season in 2018 and made his NHL debut with the club the following season.

O’Connor performed admirably in his first two years with the AHL’s Colorado Eagles but struggled to find his footing in the NHL. He registered only two goals in 21 games in his first two years with Colorado before injuries limited him to only three goals and five points in 22 games during the 2020-21 regular season.

He finally came into his current role during the 2021-22 NHL season scoring eight goals and 24 points in 81 games while averaging just under 14 minutes of ice time per game. He became a physical player and an effective penalty killer becoming an all-out annoying presence for the opposition. He helped the Avalanche to their first Stanley Cup championship since 2001 that spring scoring one goal in game three of Colorado’s semi-final matchup against the St. Louis Blues while registering three more assists throughout the postseason.

O’Connor played similarly for the Avalanche the following season scoring nine goals and 26 points in 82 contests but failed to register any points in Colorado’s seven-game loss to the Seattle Kraken in the opening round of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.

The 2023-24 season was a breakout season for O’Connor before a hip injury ended his year early. He scored 13 goals and 25 points in 57 games including three goals on the penalty kill which was good for a share of fifth amongst the NHL by season’s end. His shooting percentage more than doubled to 15.3% and Colorado’s third line was noticeably weaker after O’Connor went down with injury.

O’Connor is once again expected to be a major bottom-six piece for the Avalanche as they look to regain their footing in a tough Western Conference. The team hasn’t advanced beyond Round Two of the playoffs since winning the Stanley Cup in 2022 largely because of their lack of depth. His $2.5MM salary should be more than digestible for a cash-strapped team such as the Avalanche as they hope O’Connor will be a focal point of their third line for years to come.

Meghan Angley of Guerilla Sports shared a quote from Avalanche general manager Chris MacFarland surmising O’Connor’s importance to the team by saying, “He is a relentless worker and competitor who brings energy and grit to the lineup every night. His speed and skating ability makes him a dangerous two-way player and he is one of our top penalty killers. Logan is also a great teammate and takes pride in being a part of the Denver community“. 

Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports images. 

Central Notes: Minnesota Injuries, Perfetti, Ohgren

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The Minnesota Wild are nursing a few injuries up-and-down the roster in addition to star forward Matt Boldy missing the next few weeks due to a lower-body injury. Michael Russo of The Athletic reports Reese Johnson, Pavel Novak, and Michael Milne are all out with mild upper-body injuries with the latter having yet to practice with the team during training camp.

None of the three were expected to be impact players for the Wild this season with Johnson having the highest odds of the trio to crack the opening night roster. Johnson joined Minnesota this offseason on a one-year league minimum contract and already has seven goals and 17 points in 141 games with the Chicago Blackhawks from 2021-2024. Johnson would be isolated to a bottom-six role with the Wild but will likely start in a ’first man up’ role with AHL Iowa.

Novak and Milne are starting their third seasons with the Wild organization but have exclusively played in the minor leagues. Novak is coming off a 2023-24 season in which he primarily played for the ECHL’s Iowa Heartlanders scoring 14 goals and 27 points in 44 contests. Milne has yet to be demoted to the ECHL as he scored eight goals and 21 points in 40 games for the AHL Wild last year in a bottom-six role when healthy.

Other Central notes:

  • The Winnipeg Jets and forward Cole Perfetti made zero progress on an extension over the weekend reports Scott Billeck of the Winnipeg Sun. The negotiations appear to be a classic case of the player asking too much from the organization’s perspective and the team offering too low from the player’s perspective. Billeck also reported the Jets are unwilling to consider the recent short-term deal for Dawson Mercer and the long-term deal for Dylan Guenther as comparables to Perfetti. He’s still staying on the ice to prepare for the regular season but he and the team have a little over two weeks to get an extension done befor the start of the regular season on October 9th.
  • Back in Minnesota, the organization is eager about the first full season for forward prospect Liam Ohgren. General manager Bill Guerin believes Ohgren can be a flexible winger for the team this season by saying, “The thing I like about Liam, he can play on all four lines. I really feel like Liam can complement any of the four lines he plays on, which is good for him. That brings a value at a young age, and the fact we could fit him in the top six or he can play a different role, that’s a benefit” (Subscription Article). Ohgren scored one goal and two points over four games in his NHL debut last season after scoring 12 goals and 19 points in 26 games for the SHL’s Färjestad BK.

Shesterkin Won’t Negotiate Extension During Season

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Mollie Walker of the New York Post confirmed today that All-Star netminder for the New York Rangers, Igor Shesterkin, would not negotiate an extension with the organization during the regular season. There hasn’t been any major news regarding a potential extension for Shesterkin which means the Rangers have a lot of ground to gain before their season opener in just over two weeks.

Walker also confirmed Shesterkin was seeking a $12MM AAV on his next contract, indicating New York would not be getting any hometown discount. It’s reasonable to assume the Rangers are content with making Shesterkin the highest-paid goaltender in NHL history. Still, other players need contracts for next season which may affect Shesterkin’s negotiations. New York will have roughly $33.8MM in cap space next summer if the salary cap reaches $92MM according to PuckPedia but will need to re-sign Shesterkin, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere, William Cuylle, Ryan Lindgren, and K’Andre Miller.

Many industry experts expect the Rangers to move on from the last year of captain Jacob Trouba’s contract by next offseason which should open up another $8MM in salary cap space. Even assuming the team clears Trouba’s $8MM salary for next season there may be too many question marks remaining to commit $12MM a year to Shesterkin.

It’s difficult to argue from the standpoint of New York that Shesterkin hasn’t earned $12MM a year either. Over the last five years, he’s recorded a 135-59-17 record in 208 starts while posting a .921 save percentage and 2.43 goals-against average including one of the greatest individual seasons in goaltending history in 2021-22. He’s still only 28 years old meaning a max-term extension would take him through his prime into his age 37 season.

Shesterkin was outspoken about his desire to stay with the organization a few days ago when he said, “I love the organization. I love the team. I love the fans. So, of course, it would be great to stay here, but you never know what can happen“. The Rangers’ murky cap situation for next summer will certainly cut to their disadvantage if they can’t come to terms before October 9th.

Since Shesterkin and his camp are committed to earning the largest payday for any netminder in NHL history, the Rangers will have plenty of competition for his services if he makes it to free agency. There are currently only six teams projected to have lower than $12MM in cap space heading into the 2025-26 offseason which means any team with a long-term need for help in the net will be calling on Shesterkin.

New York still has 16 days from today to negotiate with Shesterkin before he blocks out any distraction for the 2024-25 NHL season. They will also have a small window between the last possible day of the Stanley Cup Final (June 23, 2025) and the opening of free agency (July 1, 2025) to sign Shesterkin to a long-term contract.

Golden Knights Sign Viliam Kmec To Entry-Level Contract

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The Golden Knights have signed defenseman Viliam Kmec to a three-year, entry-level contract, general manager Kelly McCrimmon announced Monday.

Kmec, 20, lands his first professional contract after being passed over for the third straight draft in June. He’s been in the Vegas organization unofficially for the past few months, receiving invites to their July development camp and this month’s rookie camp before being extended an amateur tryout for training camp.

The right-shot defender checks in at 6’3″ and 209 lbs, already boasting pro-ready size. That’s an appealing package when combined with his strong all-around performance for the WHL’s Prince George Cougars. Over the past two seasons, Kmec – a stay-at-home defender by trade – still managed 66 points in 118 games with a combined +63 rating.

Prince George’s three 20-year-old slots are full, so Kmec won’t be heading back to juniors for a fourth season. Instead, all signs point to the Golden Knights assigning him to their AHL affiliate, the Henderson Silver Knights, when they decide to cut him from their training camp roster.

The Slovakia native is a nice under-the-radar add to a Golden Knights prospect pool that ranked 27th in the league in Elite Prospects’ 2024 rankings. He’s suited up for Slovakia at the past three World Junior Championships, totaling six points and a -1 rating in 14 games.

Matt Boldy Out Week-To-Week With Lower-Body Injury

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Wild winger Matt Boldy is listed as week-to-week with a lower-body injury, the team announced Monday. He was an unexpected absence from today’s practice and there’s no clarity on when he sustained the injury. He’s expected to return by the end of training camp and should be ready for opening night, head coach John Hynes said (via Sarah McLellan of the Minnesota Star Tribune).

It’s tough news for Minnesota, which missed out on the playoffs last season for just the second time since 2012. Their poor record was largely due to injuries. Captain Jared Spurgeon was limited to just 16 games, while core pieces Jonas Brodin and Mats Zuccarello also missed significant chunks of the campaign.

Boldy, the No. 12 pick in the 2019 draft, has quickly grown into a core piece for the Wild in his own right. The 23-year-old set career highs last season with 40 assists and 69 points in 75 games, finishing second on the team in scoring behind Kirill Kaprizov.

He shoots the puck with aplomb – his 595 shots on goal rank 40th in the league since he made his NHL debut on Jan. 6, 2022. His strong offensive showing has been backed up by good possession metrics. The Wild have controlled 53.2% of shot attempts and 56.1% of expected goals with Boldy on the ice at even strength over the past three seasons, per Hockey Reference.

Boldy’s importance is magnified on a Wild roster that doesn’t have a ton of other high-skill scoring threats. A potential season-opening absence puts even more pressure on the likes of Kaprizov and the aging Zuccarello to put up points.

There will be a few options to take Boldy’s place in Minnesota’s top six if he’s not ready for opening night. The most intriguing is certainly Liam Ohgren, Minnesota’s first-rounder in 2022. The sharp-shooting Swede made his NHL debut at the tail end of last season, posting a goal and an assist in four games. He’s a likely candidate for a roster spot for no other reason than his cheap entry-level cap hit, but a short-term vacancy higher up in the lineup could be his to fill, at least to start. The 20-year-old had 12 goals and 19 points in 26 games while on loan to Sweden’s Färjestad BK last season.

Boldy is entering the second year of a seven-year, $49MM extension he signed in January 2023.

Antti Raanta Signs In Switzerland

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Veteran netminder Antti Raanta has signed a one-year contract with Genève-Servette HC of the Swiss National League, per a club announcement. The move comes after Raanta indicated last week his next deal would come in Europe, effectively announcing his retirement from NHL play.

The Geneva-based club moved to sign Raanta after backup netminder Gauthier Descloux sustained an injury last weekend that will keep him out indefinitely, the team said. Raanta will support 34-year-old incumbent starter Robert Mayer, who was the NL’s Goalie of the Year in 2023 and has a sparkling .923 SV% through Geneva’s first two regular-season contests.

It wasn’t surprising to see Raanta, now 35, put an end to his NHL career due to a lack of interest in him for full-time roles. Interested parties were looking at keeping Raanta in the organization as a third-string option, an understandable assumption after he posted a crater-like .872 SV% in 24 games behind the defensively stout Hurricanes last season. Instead, he’ll now land a full-time tandem role with one of Europe’s better teams. Geneva won the NL title in 2023 and won the Champions Hockey League last season and boasts NHL-experienced talent such as Markus Granlund and Sami Vatanen.

An undrafted free agent signing by the Blackhawks in 2013 out of Finland’s Ässät, Raanta went on to make 277 NHL appearances in parts of 11 seasons. Despite how last season ended, he was an extremely serviceable, if not above-average, netminder when healthy. He owns a career record of 139-80-29 with 20 shutouts, a 2.48 GAA, and .915 SV%.

Chris Tierney Signs With Dinamo Minsk

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Free agent center Chris Tierney has signed a one-year deal in the Kontinental Hockey League with Belarus’ Dinamo Minsk, the team announced Monday on Telegram.

Tierney, 30, was one of three UFA centers remaining who logged significant NHL time last season and the only one who wasn’t in an NHL training camp on a professional tryout. He was a serviceable fourth-line piece for the Devils last season, recording 12 points in 52 games with a +3 rating while averaging a career-low 9:02 per game, winning 57.2% of his draws.

A second-round pick of the Sharks back in 2012, Tierney grew into a full-time NHLer down the stretch of his first professional season two years later and never looked back. Within a few years, he was one of the league’s premier third-line centers, capping off his tenure in San Jose with a career-high 17 goals and 40 points in 2017-18.

The Sharks traded Tierney to the Senators the following offseason in the blockbuster swap that sent Erik Karlsson to the Bay Area. Early on, Tierney was a serviceable middle-six piece for Ottawa, averaging north of 17 minutes per game during his first two seasons in the Canadian capital and averaging 0.56 points per game.

But after the pandemic hit, Tierney’s offense dropped off. He was limited to only 12 goals and 37 points in 125 contests over the 2020-21 and 2021-22 campaigns while seeing his ice time drop accordingly. Following the expiry of a two-year, $7MM contract, Tierney had to settle for a two-way deal with the Panthers for 2022-23. He split his brief tenure in Florida between the Panthers and their AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, before he was claimed off waivers by the Canadiens in February. He finished out the year with seven points in 23 games for Montreal, doing well to rebuild his stock somewhat and stick in the NHL with New Jersey last season.

He wasn’t so lucky this summer, though. With presumably no NHL offers, the Ontario native lands in Minsk to continue his career. He becomes the eighth player with NHL experience on Dinamo’s roster, joining Dillon Dubé, Jordan Gross, Dmitry Korobov, Nicolas Meloche, Xavier Ouellet, Vadim Shipachyov, and Alexander Volkov.

If this marks the end of Tierney’s NHL career, he finishes with 80 goals, 168 assists, 248 points, and a -70 rating in 649 regular-season games.

Predators Sign Hiroki Gojsic To Entry-Level Deal

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The Predators have signed forward prospect Hiroki Gojsic to a three-year, entry-level contract, general manager Barry Trotz announced Monday. Financial terms were not disclosed.

It’s a nice reward for Gojsic, who will now likely receive a signing bonus this season after making his preseason debut for Nashville against the Panthers on Sunday. The Predators selected the 18-year-old right winger in the third round of this year’s draft (No. 94 overall).

Gojsic, a British Columbia native, checks in at 6’3″ and 198 lbs. He made his major junior debut for the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets last season, finishing fifth on the team in scoring with 50 points (21 G, 29 A) in 68 games with 51 PIMs and a +5 rating.

Elite Prospects called Gojsic a “powerful winger with an NHL shot” in their 2024 draft guide. While that’s true, his overall defensive awareness and skating don’t yet match the profile of an NHL-projectable power forward. His early showings this season are decent, though – he had two goals and two assists in three games during Nashville’s rookie camp tournament earlier this month.

Gojsic will likely be cut from the Preds’ training camp roster in the next few days and returned to the Rockets, where he’ll likely play the next two seasons in full before turning pro in the Preds organization in 2026. He’s a May birthday, so his deal is eligible for an entry-level slide twice. As long as he plays fewer than 10 NHL games in each of the next two seasons, his ELC won’t go into effect until 2026-27, making him a restricted free agent after the 2028-29 campaign.

Morning Notes: Red Wings, Lardis, Offer Sheets

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Expect the Red Wings to open the season once again with three goalies on their opening night roster, writes Max Bultman of The Athletic.

As general manager Steve Yzerman has said this offseason, there’s a lot of waiver math that will factor into what Detroit’s 23-player list looks like when rosters are due Oct. 7. Unless a prospect forces their hand, they’ll turn in the combination of players that requires exposing the least amount of talent to the wire – likely resulting in three goalies and eight defensemen opening night without an extra forward.

“There was no indication in [rookie camp in] Traverse City” that fringe forward prospects Nate Danielson, Marco Kasper, or Carter Mazur were close to winning out a roster spot, Bultman said, although they’ll still get some looks during the preseason. If they do make a waiver placement to free up a roster spot for one of the three or PTO candidate Austin Watson, though, expect it to be netminder Ville Husso, he added. The 29-year-old is coming off an injury-plagued season that limited him to 19 games played with a .892 SV% and a 9-5-2 record. That would allow them to avoid placing defense prospect Albert Johansson on waivers, who’ll likely start the season in the NHL now that he’s no longer waiver-exempt.

More from around the league this morning:

  • While not a candidate for a roster spot just yet, Blackhawks prospect Nick Lardis is impressing this month, The Athletic’s Scott Powers writes. “…When it comes to the future, no player may have done as much to build expectations as Lardis in recent weeks,” said Powers. “What Lardis has shown with his shot, quickness and hockey IQ in the last two weeks has Chicago management even more excited for his eventual NHL arrival.” Lardis, a 19-year-old left winger, will return to the OHL’s Brantford Bulldogs for his fourth season of junior hockey after recording 29 goals and 50 points in only 37 games there last year. He was a third-round pick (No. 67 overall) by Chicago in 2023.
  • Opinions around the league are mixed on whether the Blues’ successful acquisition of Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway will lead to an uptick in future summers, reports Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic. Player agents were far more optimistic, with Octagon’s Allan Walsh telling LeBrun that “the barn door has been opened” and that “we’ll certainly be seeing more of them going forward.” GMs Tom Fitzgerald (Devils), Bill Guerin (Wild), Ron Francis (Kraken), and Jim Nill (Stars) all countered with “it’s part of the business”-type sentiments, saying not to expect a material change in how often offer sheets are levied.

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