Atlantic Snapshots: Bergevin, Point, Red Wings
Marc Bergevin took a lot of heat this summer after dealing fan-favorite defenseman P.K. Subban to Nashville for Shea Weber. Subban is four yours younger than Weber and while he carries a higher annual cap charge ($9MM versus $7.857MM), his deal expires four years earlier than Weber’s. Nonetheless, as Pat Hickey of the Montreal Gazette writes, Bergevin knows only time will tell how this trade ultimately works out for the Canadiens.
Montreal is clearly banking on the “leadership and stability” Weber provides as a two-time Olympic gold medal winner. Subban is flashier, according to Hickey, and known for being a bit of a risk-taker. At one point last season it did seem as if the Canadiens were growing tired of Subban’s gambling nature and would prefer a more conservative approach on the ice.
With Weber (31) on board and franchise goalie Carey Price set to turn 30 next summer, the belief is the Canadiens window to win may be closing, lending further justification for Bergevin to pull the trigger on the Subban trade. But as Hickey noted, Bergevin doesn’t believe in windows:
“There are too many variables. In today’s NHL, it turns around fast. I look at Buffalo. I know they have injuries, but they came a long way quick. There’s a price to pay. Obviously, the best way (to improve) is the draft and you saw the kid (Maple Leafs rookie Auston) Matthews with four goals in his first game. He’s going to be a very good player, but there was a price to pay to get him.”
It’s an interesting perspective from the Habs GM and Hickey’s piece contains additional tidbits on a couple of the Canadiens’ top young players and Bergevin’s thoughts on those players.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic Division:
- Detroit is off to an 0 – 2 start and much of the blame falls on the back end and their struggles to retrieve the puck and begin the transition from defense to offense efficiently, as Ansar Khan writes. Head coach Jeff Blashill after last night’s loss to Florida: “I thought we were second in all those pucks; their second guy beat our second guy almost all night. Part of that is when you play a long time in your end you get tired playing defense and it’s hard to have enough juice for offense. So, we got to be quicker out of our end.” Blashill singles out Mike Green, Jonathan Ericsson and Xavier Oullet as having been “good” through two games. It stands to reason then that his omissions of Danny DeKeyser, Alexey Marchenko and Brendan Smith, who have also each appeared in the Wings’ first two contests, suggests an indictment of their play from the coach. While it’s still very early in the season it’s clear this Red Wings team may well be in jeopardy of snapping their stretch of 25 consecutive playoff appearances.
- Tampa Bay Lightning GM Steve Yzerman learned much about his craft from Detroit’s Ken Holland. And like Holland, Yzerman has been careful when it comes to promoting his team’s prospects. Since taking over in Tampa Bay, not one first-year pro player with AHL eligibility has made the team coming out of camp; that is, as Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times reports, until Brayden Point. Taking advantage of the training camp absences of Ryan Callahan (injury) and Nikita Kucherov (unsigned RFA), Point earned this opportunity and not only did the 20-year-old forward make his NHL debut, he saw 16 minutes of ice time in the Lightning’s 3 – 2 win over New Jersey, as Smith notes. Smith argues keeping Point after an impressive training camp “sends the right message to the dressing room,” proving to the group that roster spots are earned through performance and not a player’s contract. Time will tell whether Point will keep his spot once Callahan is healthy enough to return but by simply making the team to open the season, he’s already accomplished something Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat and Kucherov did not.
Roster Moves: Rantanen, Price, Harrington, Cramarossa
The Colorado Avalanche have sent prized prospect right winger Mikko Rantanen to San Antonio of the AHL, reports Terry Frei of the Denver Post. Rantanen suffered an ankle injury in a rookie game back in mid-September and the demotion will essentially work as a rehab stint. Head coach Jared Bednar commented on the decision to start him with the Rampage:
“He’s missed a lot of meetings where it comes to our structure of our game and what we want to accomplish. He knows lots of it, but he’s also missed lots of it. They’re playing the same system as us down there, so he’ll get a chance to do that and go through game situations, be an impact player for them. Then we’ll re-evaluate and see how he’s feeling after he’s been down there for some games.”
The Avalanche were hoping that Rantanen would be able to start the season in a top six role after leading San Antonio in scoring with 24 goals and 36 assists in just 52 games despite being one of the youngest players in the league. With this move, it appears that it will be a few more weeks at least before he gets that chance.
Other roster moves on Friday:
- The Montreal Canadiens placed goaltender Carey Price on injured reserve retroactive to Monday, TVA Sports’ Renaud Lavoie reports (Twitter link). Price missed the season opener with the flu and remains at home with no timetable for his return. The move is primarily procedural as the team was utilizing an emergency recall to have prospect Charlie Lindgren serve as the backup goalie in Buffalo. That can only last 48 hours so for him to remain on the roster, Price needed to be moved to injured reserve.
- The Columbus Blue Jackets have loaned defenseman Scott Harrington to Cleveland (AHL) on an injury conditioning stint, the AHL team announced. The Jackets acquired the 23 year old from Toronto this offseason in exchange for former first round pick Kerby Rychel. Harrington will be allowed to spend up to two weeks in the minors on the loan but if Columbus wants to keep him there longer, they must place him on waivers. If that happens and Harrington is claimed, Toronto would then send a 2017 fifth round pick to the Blue Jackets as part of the original trade agreement.
- After clearing waivers, Anaheim assigned center Joseph Cramarossa to the San Diego Gulls, the AHL team announced (Twitter link). Cramarossa had 11 goals and six assists in 61 games with Anaheim’s AHL affiliate in San Diego last season.
Price Not Travelling With Canadiens
The Montreal Canadiens will be without superstar goaltender Carey Price to start the season.
Price is not travelling with the team to Buffalo, where the Canadiens open the season on Thursday night. He’s missed the last few days of practice with the flu. Goalie coach Stéphane Waite had previously told reporters that Price would be ready for Thursday night.
With Price out, expect newly-acquired backup Al Montoya to get the start against the Sabres. The Canadiens have recalled goaltender Charlie Lindgren from St. John’s of the AHL.
The Canadiens will be counting on Price to deliver big-time this season after injury cost him all but 12 games in 2015-16. He was rock-solid for Team Canada in their gold medal-winning performance at the World Cup of Hockey last month.
Montreal will be also be without top-four defenseman Jeff Petry for the first game or two of the season.
Atlantic Division Notes: Sergachev, Redmond, McKenna, Condra
With Shea Weber, Alexei Emelin and Andrei Markov all absent due to their participation in the World Cup, the Montreal Canadiens have had a chance to get long looks at other blue liners during training camp. As the Montreal Gazette’s Pat Hickey writes, several players have taken full advantage of the opportunity and impressed the team’s coaching staff.
Hickey specifically identified Nathan Beaulieu and Greg Pateryn as having “stood out” so far, while 2016 first-round pick Mikhail Sergachev and free agent signing Zach Redmond were both impressive in the team’s recent game against Ottawa.
Redmond has scored a goal in each of his preseason appearances and has shown a physical element. He was added in the offseason to provide depth and a solid camp might earn him a spot on the regular season roster.
Sergachev would have to really impress in order to stick. Montreal likely wishes to see the young Russian defender, who just turned 18 in June, get lots of quality ice time and the best chance for that would be if he was returned to junior.
Beaulieu and Pateryn are both already penciled into the club’s top-six and Montreal has to be pleased at their play so far. The Habs were recently said to be taking calls on the 23-year-old Beaulieu but if he’s been as impressive in camp as Hickey suggests it seems unlikely Montreal would be too keen on moving him. With a healthy Carey Price set to return from injury and an improved defense, it wouldn’t be hard to project a return to the playoffs for Montreal.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic Division:
- When Florida went out and acquired Reto Berra and James Reimer – via trade and free agency respectively – this summer, Mike McKenna‘s prospects of winning the Panthers backup goalie job dried up. But as George Richards of the Miami Herald writes, McKenna has been down this road before and knows all it takes is an injury to give the 33-year-old another opportunity between the pipes in South Florida. McKenna: “No matter what the situation looks like with contracts, you always want to put your best foot forward. You never know what will happen through the course of a season. I’m just trying to go in the right direction.” Last season, McKenna was called up from the AHL when Al Montoya went down with an injury, though he didn’t see any NHL action. As it stands, Roberto Luongo will be the starter with Reimer serving as his understudy. That would seem to put Berra in position to be the starter for the Panther’s AHL affiliate in Springfield but the 29-year-old veteran would have to clear waivers before being sent down and could conceivably be claimed by a team in need of an experienced backup. That would again elevate McKenna to third overall on the organization’s goaltending depth chart and would put him in line for promotion should Luongo or Reimer suffer an injury.
- Tampa Bay is looking for depth scoring and one player who could help address that need is Erik Condra, as Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times writes. Condra had a disappointing first season with the Lightning, scoring just six goals and 11 points in 54 games after signing a three-year, $3.75MM deal with Tampa. Condra twice hit the 20-point plateau as a member of the Senators and the Lightning would likely be content with that level of production. Smith also lists Cedric Paquette and Cory Conacher as two more players who could also offer some scoring punch in the bottom-six. Conacher had by far his best NHL season during the 2012-13 campaign which he began with the Lightning. That season, Conacher tallied 29 points in 47 games – 24 in 35 with the Lightning. Conacher was dealt in-season to Ottawa in a deal that brought Ben Bishop to Tampa Bay in what has turned out to be quite the steal for the Bolts. Paquette saw his goal output decrease from 12 in 2014-15 to just six last season. Tampa would surely benefit from a return to double-figures in goals scored from the grinding Paquette.
Poll: 2005 NHL Draft Take Two: Eighth Overall Pick
Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection is far from an exact science and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams – or players – intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.
We’re looking back at the 2005 NHL Draft, which kicked off the salary cap era and ushered in many of the current NHL superstars. The question we’re looking to answer is knowing now what we didn’t know then, how different would this draft look now with the benefit of hindsight?
Here are the results of our redraft so far:
1st Overall: Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins)
2nd Overall: Carey Price (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim)
3rd Overall: Anze Kopitar (Carolina Hurricanes)
4th Overall: Jonathan Quick (Minnesota Wild)
5th Overall: Kris Letang (Montreal Canadiens)
6th Overall: Tuukka Rask (Columbus Blue Jackets)
7th Overall: Bobby Ryan (Chicago Blackhawks)
Now we move forward to the eighth pick, which was held by the San Jose Sharks.
To recap how this works:
- We will go through the 2005 NHL Draft and have our readers select, through a voting process, who they think should have been taken with the selection.
- The entire first round will be redrafted, spanning picks one through thirty. The new selection is chosen by the majority of votes.
The Sharks selected Devin Setoguchi with the eighth overall pick and at the time, it looked like a solid pick. In 2008-09, Setoguchi had his best season with 65 points (31-34) and it looked like he would only go up from there. Unfortunately, he never came close. Instead, Setoguchi bounced around the league and recently signed a professional tryout with the Kings. In eight NHL seasons, Setoguchi has 249 points (127-122).
With the eighth pick of the 2005 NHL Draft, who should the San Jose Sharks select? Cast your vote below!
Mobile Users click here to vote!
Atlantic Notes: Matthews, Bitten, Brown
After turning heads at the World Cup as the youngest player in the tournament, Auston Matthews is already making an impact at Leafs camp. At the end of his first practice with the blue and white, Matthews fired a one-timer from Mitch Marner into the glass, shattering it. While it’s probably not the last pane that will fall victim to Matthews’ hard shot, it’s just nice for the team to finally have him in their own building with their own jersey.
While Mike Babcock has repeatedly said that Matthews will start on the third line this year for the team, when he hit the ice for the first time he was skating between James van Riemsdyk and Leo Komarov on the first group. The 19-year old centerman will likely be sheltered to start his career, but many believe it won’t last long, just as it hasn’t at both the World Championships and World Cup.
At both tournaments, Matthews opened as one of the final few forwards, but finished among the top two lines. Every coaching staff that has worked with him speaks about his learning curve, and how hard he works. We’ll see if the curve isn’t a bit steeper once the real NHL season begins, and teams bear down on the youngster.
- Montreal prospect Will Bitten has been dealt to the Hamilton Bulldogs, according to Ryan Yessie of HockeyProspect.com. Bitten was selected in the third round of the latest draft, but has flashed enough skill to have gone higher. The undersized center put up 65 points in 67 games last season on an awful Flint Firebirds team (20-42-6) and is expected to make another big development step this season. He’ll now be a little closer to home, playing for a familiar name to Canadiens fans – their former AHL affiliate was also the Hamilton Bulldogs, where players like Carey Price spent time seasoning before making the NHL.
- The Ottawa Senators have sent first round pick Logan Brown back to junior as expected today. Brown, an absolute monster on the ice standing 6’6″, 222 lbs already, is actually incredibly skilled for a player his size. He notched 53 assists last season for the Windsor Spitfires, and showed off his offensive flair more than once. The Senators will hope he can start using that size a bit more as he gets stronger and matures as a player, letting him become a preeminent power forward in the NHL within a few years. For now, he’ll return to junior for his third year, expected somewhere close to 100 points and lead the Spitfires back to another strong season.
Poll: 2005 NHL Draft Take Two: Fifth Overall Pick
Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection is far from an exact science and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams – or players – intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.
We’re looking back at the 2005 NHL Draft, which kicked off the salary cap era and ushered in many of the current NHL superstars. The question we’re looking to answer is knowing now what we didn’t know then, how different would this draft look now with the benefit of hindsight?
Here are the results of our redraft so far:
1st Overall: Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins)
2nd Overall: Carey Price (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim)
3rd Overall: Anze Kopitar (Carolina Hurricanes)
4th Overall: Jonathan Quick (Minnesota Wild)
Now we move forward to the fifth pick, which was held by the Montreal Canadiens.
To recap how this works:
- We will go through the 2005 NHL Draft and have our readers select, through a voting process, who they think should have been taken with the selection.
- The entire first round will be redrafted, spanning picks one through thirty. The new selection is chosen by the majority of votes.
Back in 2005, the Canadiens chose goaltender Carey Price. The pick was a surprise to many and came under criticism since the team already had Jose Theodore between the pipes and Jaroslav Halak in their system. Many figured they would have been better off with a forward like Gilbert Brule or a defenseman like Marc Staal. Of course, the selection has turned out quite well for Montreal as Price has become their franchise player (while Theodore wound up being traded near the 2006 trade deadline).
With the fifth pick of the 2005 NHL Draft, who should the Montreal Canadiens select? Cast your vote below!
For Trade Rumors app users on iOS, click here to vote.
World Cup Notes: USA Loss, Clinching Scenarios, Price
Hours before being eliminated from the World Cup at the hands of their bitter rivals, Team USA forward T.J. Oshie told reporters, “If it comes down to 100 per cent skill, I think they win; 100 per cent grit, I think we win.”
During the first intermission, with Canada up 3-1, smiling Team Canada forward Joe Thornton told Sportsnet, “We have a good mixture of skill and grit on our team.”
While Canada entered the tournament as the favorite thanks to their stacked roster of elite NHLers, the USA entered as underdogs with a roster designed to defeat Canada. Highly skilled forwards like Phil Kessel, Tyler Johnson, and Kyle Okposo were left at home; so were elite offensive defensemen like Keith Yandle, Justin Faulk, and Kevin Shattenkirk. In their places went Justin Abdelkader, Brandon Dubinsky, David Backes, Jack Johnson, and Erik Johnson. Two of those were healthy scratched last night, while the other three combined for six hits, 4 PIM, and a -3 rating.
According to Sportsnet’s Luke Fox, a reporter asked coach John Tortorella after the game if he would “change the makeup” of the team in hindsight, and he received a short answer.
“No.”
NHL MVP and American assistant captain Patrick Kane told reporters “I’ll never say a bad thing about [Tortorella]. He’s just a great coach, and we didn’t show up for him.”
Puck Daddy’s Greg Wyshnyski was a little harsher, calling the game “60 minutes of apathetic Americans flinging shots and Canadians poking a dead carcass with a stick.”
It’s time for USA Hockey to adapt to the new style of international game. They need look no further than the reason behind Team North America’s success in this tournament: fast and skilled. While the Americans didn’t have the choice of taking Johnny Gaudreau, Jack Eichel, Auston Matthews, Dylan Larkin, or Brandon Saad, one has to wonder how many of those would have made the cut of a team based on grinding and physical play. That needs to change, if the Americans want to have a chance to beat the Canadians at future tournaments.
This edition of Team USA was designed to beat Canada; it turns out the only team they’ve been able to beat is themselves.
- The clinching scenarios for tonight’s games are as follows: North America can clinch a berth in the semi-finals with a regulation win over Sweden, or be eliminated if they lose by five goals or more. Finland will be eliminated if North America gets at least one point. Sweden can clinch Group B if they earn at least one point versus the North Americans tonight. Meanwhile in Group A, with the eliminated Americans and Czechs set to play a meaningless game, the winner of Canada and Europe will clinch the Group.
- Incredible stat from Tom Gulitti’s game recap over at the World Cup website: Ryan McDonagh‘s goal in the first period ended Carey Price‘s international shutout streak at 228.41. That dates back to Canada’s semi-final win over Latvia at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Price proceeded to shutout the Americans in the semi-finals, Sweden in the finals, and the Czechs in the World Cup opener.
Poll: 2005 NHL Draft Take Two: Second Overall Pick
Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection isn’t an exact science and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams–or players–intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.
We’re looking back at the 2005 NHL Draft, which kicked off the salary cap era and ushered in many of the current NHL superstars. The question we’re looking to answer is knowing now what we didn’t know then, how different would this draft look now with the benefit of hindsight?
The readers voted already for the first overall pick. and the results were hardly surprising. With nearly 88% of the vote, Sidney Crosby retained his status as the top pick of the 2005 Draft. Now we move forward to the second pick, where there are a number of strong choices as we re-select all of the ’05 Draft.
To recap how this works:
- We will go through the entire 2005 NHL Draft and have our readers select, through a voting process, who they think should have been taken with the selection.
- Every team will be represented, spanning picks one through thirty. The new selection is chosen by the majority of votes. We will continue this all the way through the 30th–and final pick of the draft.
We are now at the second overall pick, which was held by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now the Anaheim Ducks). With their choice, the Ducks selected Bobby Ryan. While Ryan has enjoyed a productive NHL career, there are certainly other names that stand out: Carey Price, Anze Kopitar, Jonathan Quick, Ben Bishop, and Tuukka Rask just to name a few.
With the second pick of the 2005 NHL Draft, who should the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim select? Cast your vote below!
Snapshots: US-Canada Rivalry, Injury Updates
Though the comments were tepid, many top tier Canadian players took exception to some of the late hits by Team USA during the American squad’s 4-2 victory yesterday. Jonathan Toews was careful with his comments, but was blunt about some of the questionable hits doled out by the aggressive Americans. Via the Chicago Tribune, Toews had this to say:
“Without saying too much, I think there were a couple of borderline hits there where our guys were put in some awkward positions and there’s not much you can do there. The one on Weber was the right call there. We just have to try and protect ourselves and expect that the officials are going to do what they have to do. We have no problem with the chippiness and the physical play (but) it doesn’t matter where you’re playing, I think you always have to respect the player when he has his back to you.”
Toews wasn’t the only one making careful comments. Captain Sidney Crosby and netminder Carey Price both agreed that some hits “crossed the line.” Nick Cotsonika writes that Mike Babcock put the onus on the referees to control the rough play during a game between two rivals:
“There were lots of scrums tonight. They were generated by the players. The referees can clean that up in two seconds. All you’ve got to do is put people in the box. No more scrums.”
The US and Canada meet again in exhibition play tonight.
In other hockey news:
- The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Kuc writes about the concern every team has with the injuries as the World Cup begins its tournament play with an exhibition tilt. With injuries to Marian Hossa, and Marcus Kruger, Blackhawks players were understandably concerned when two significant players from their team suffered injuries. Hossa’s, as it turns out, will not limit him and Europe coach Ralph Krueger said it’s “all green lights” for Hossa to play in Saturday’s game. Kruger, Kuc reports, has a more mysterious upper body injury and will be held out of play during Saturday’s Sweden’s exhibition game against Finland. Both Patrick Kane and Toews, when asked about the possibility of injury, shrugged it off and attributed it to a risk that’s always there, regardless of the circumstance.