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James Neal

Thomas Hickey, James Neal Released From PTOs

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With training camps starting to wrap up and the regular season about to begin, some professional tryouts are coming to an end. Thomas Hickey and James Neal have been released by the New Jersey Devils and Columbus Blue Jackets respectively, the latter according to Aaron Portzline of The Athletic.

Neal, 35, did a bit in the preseason of what he has always done – score goals – but it wasn’t enough to earn an NHL contract with the Blue Jackets. The veteran forward embraced a minor league role with the Springfield Thunderbirds last season and seems likely to do the same this year, if he wants to continue his career.

Over parts of 14 seasons in the league, Neal has 296 goals and 559 points in 869 games, reaching the 20-goal mark in each of his first ten years. While that NHL production has vanished recently, he did score 14 goals and 26 points in 28 games for the Thunderbirds and helped them reach the Calder Cup finals (which they ultimately lost).

Hickey, meanwhile, was also playing the minor league game last season, spending most of the year with the Bridgeport Islanders and Ontario Reign. The 33-year-old defenseman has more than 450 games played at the NHL level but quickly fell out of favor after signing a hefty contract with the New York Islanders.

With just seven NHL appearances since the start of the 2019-20 season, it seems unlikely that Hickey will get another full-time role at this point. If he wants to continue, perhaps another team will give him a chance on a two-way deal for minor league depth.

Columbus Blue Jackets Sign James Neal To Professional Tryout

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The Columbus Blue Jackets have added some big names to their roster this summer, and now they’re going to be giving another big-name player a chance to earn a spot on their team. Per CapFriendly, unrestricted free agent winger and former 40-goal scorer James Neal has signed a professional tryout (PTO) with the Blue Jackets.

Neal, 34, split time last season between the St. Louis Blues and their AHL affiliate, the Springfield Thunderbirds. In 19 games for the Blues, Neal registered two goals and four points. At the AHL level, Neal fared better, scoring 14 goals and 26 points in 28 games to go along with 12 points in 17 games during the Thunderbirds’ run to the Calder Cup Final.

Neal’s game has declined since his prime, and he isn’t the goal-scoring offensive force he once was. But he has had time over the past two seasons to adjust his game in order to fit lower on a team’s lineup, and now he’ll have a chance to impress coach Brad Larsen and earn a spot on the Blue Jackets’ roster.

On paper, this signing seems to be a way for the Blue Jackets to add an experienced, veteran NHLer to compete with the young players Columbus would ideally like to see make their NHL team. As with any professional sports team, the Blue Jackets are a competitive outfit. They’re not going to hand roster spots to any young player, no matter how talented. Adding Neal on a PTO gives up-and-coming wingers such as Kent Johnson, Kirill Marchenko, Liam Foudy, and Yegor Chinakhov a big-name veteran to compete with for a lineup spot.

Additionally, Neal’s presence could also push players such as Mathieu Olivier or Justin Danforth to defend the NHL jobs they’re currently penciled into. While he might not make the team given the competition he’ll face, this PTO gives Neal an opportunity to show the Blue Jackets organization what he can do. If he performs well, he could potentially earn another two-way deal and serve as useful depth for a Blue Jackets club looking to make some noise next season.

James Neal Hopes To Play Next Season

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Because of his performances the last few seasons, it’s easy to forget that at one point, James Neal was among the most consistent offensive players in the league. For ten straight seasons, starting when he entered the league in 2008, Neal recorded at least 21 goals. He has 296 all-time, over a near 900-game NHL career. For a player with so much success at the highest level, a demotion to the minor leagues might mean it was time to call it quits. Not so for Neal, who has rediscovered his passion for the game while helping the Springfield Thunderbirds chase a Calder Cup.

In Elliotte Friedman’s latest column for Sportsnet, Neal explains that it’s not just this year that he is playing out, but hopes to keep going in 2022-23. The veteran winger will be 35 by the time next season begins and is scheduled to hit unrestricted free agency when his one-year, $750K contract expires this summer. Whether he’ll be able to land another NHL deal remains to be seen but he might not even need it, given how he has embraced the Thunderbirds, scoring 26 points in 28 regular season games and five more in five postseason matches so far.

It’s uncommon, but not entirely unprecedented for a successful NHL player to end up signing an AHL contract at the end of his career. Matt Moulson, for instance, has been playing on minor league contracts for three seasons, despite his history as a three-time 30-goal scorer in the NHL. While he didn’t have quite the same consistency as Neal, Moulson similarly embraced his transition to the AHL.

That’s not to say there won’t be a market for Neal this summer, especially if he’s willing to stay stashed in the minor leagues. A contender may want to keep him on an NHL contract in case they need a call-up, perhaps one that can play the net front on the powerplay or add some scoring punch in a limited role.

If not, and Neal doesn’t score another goal at the NHL level, it’s still been quite a career. His 296 goals put him just outside the top-200 all-time and his 33 postseason tallies have him quite a bit higher than that.

Springfield, meanwhile, will kick off the AHL’s Eastern Conference Finals against the Laval Rocket tomorrow night.

James Neal Clears Waivers

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Jan 3: Neal has cleared waivers according to Friedman meaning he can now be sent to the taxi squad or minor leagues.

Jan 2: The St. Louis Blues placed forward James Neal on waivers today, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.

Neal did have an impressive training camp with the Blues which led to a one-year, league-minimum contract, but he hasn’t retained that same magic in the regular season. The embattled former 40-goal scorer has just two goals and two assists through 17 games this season.

With the Blues continuing to get back to full health, there’s no clear spot for Neal at the NHL level anymore. He’s been surpassed on the depth chart by names like Logan Brown and Klim Kostin, making him expendable.

Teams have until 1 p.m. CT tomorrow to put in a claim for Neal.

Four St. Louis Blues Enter COVID Protocol

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Four St. Louis Blues — forwards Dakota Joshua, James Neal, Ivan Barbashev, and defenseman Robert Bortuzzo — have entered the NHL’s COVID-19 protocols, per a team release.

There are now five Blues on the protocol list, joining Oskar Sundqvist on the list.

Barbashev’s been a shocking producer to start the year, going on a tear with 11 goals and 14 assists for 25 points in 31 games. He’d been averaging over 17 minutes a game, too, so his absence can’t be taken lightly.

Joshua, Neal, and Bortuzzo had combined for just 11 points this year, but it’s just more depth missing from a Blues roster that’s been rocked by absences all year.

Barbashev entered protocol on December 23, so he’s eligible to return three days earlier than the other three players. However, due to an open schedule, all four could come back into action on January 5 against Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, it seems like all four will be unavailable for the Winter Classic on New Years Day.

Blues Place James Neal On Injured Reserve

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For a brief moment, it looked as if the Blues were finally going to have a fully healthy roster at their disposal but that isn’t the case now.  With a few players banged up, they’ve been forced to make a move as the team announced that winger James Neal has been placed on injured reserve with an undisclosed injury.  Center Dakota Joshua has been recalled from AHL Springfield to take Neal’s place on the roster.

Neal had a strong showing with St. Louis on a training camp PTO which led to him receiving a one-year, $750K contract just before the regular season started.  His preseason production hasn’t quite carried over to the regular season, however, as the 34-year-old has managed just two goals and two assists in 17 games while averaging just 11:54 per game, a career-low.

As for Joshua, this is already his third recall of the season.  He has played in six games with the Blues this season, logging just shy of eight minutes per game on the fourth line.  He also has suited up in 11 games with the Thunderbirds, notching a goal and four assists.

What’s notable here is that St. Louis doesn’t have the cap space to add Joshua to the roster; per CapFriendly, they have less than $100K in room right now and Joshua, like Neal, makes $750K, the league minimum.  David Perron and Klim Kostin are the other injured forwards and one of them (or Neal) could be shifted to LTIR to create the cap space for Joshua’s addition but that means they’d be missing ten games and 24 days.  Otherwise, the cap space would need to come from removing a defenseman from the roster; only Scott Perunovich is waiver-exempt.  While this move was needed to get a healthy forward up, it looks as if there will need to be another one coming to make the money work.

Blues Sign James Neal

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It was a successful tryout for winger James Neal in St. Louis as the Blues announced that they’ve inked the veteran to a one-year contract.  The deal is worth the league minimum of $750K.

In his prime, the 34-year-old was one of the more consistent scorers in the NHL, scoring more than 20 goals in ten straight seasons.  However, as he has gotten older, his production has started to slow down.  He had a bounce-back year in 2019-20 in Edmonton with 19 goals in 55 games but he wasn’t able to maintain that same level of production last season.  Instead, he had just five goals and five assists in 29 games while clearing waivers and spending time on the taxi squad.  Rather than keep him on their roster for the remaining two years of his contract, the Oilers decided to buy him out, paying him $1.916MM over each of the next four years for him to go elsewhere.

After being unable to secure a guaranteed contract in free agency, Neal accepted a PTO offer from the Blues who have a need for some cheap role players given their salary cap situation as they’re going to be quite close to the cap ceiling when fully healthy.  He made the most of his exhibition action, scoring four goals in five games to lead the team in that department while sitting one off the league-wide lead in the preseason.

While his best days are behind him now, Neal represents a low-risk pickup for St. Louis.  If he’s able to contribute some offense in the bottom six, they’ll be content with that and if he winds up struggling, they can send him to the minors (he’d have to clear waivers first) and clear the entire cap hit off their books.  Neal sits six goals away from 300 for his NHL career and he should have a chance to get to that milestone at some point this season.

St. Louis Blues Sign James Neal, Michael Frolik To PTOs

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The St. Louis Blues have brought in a ton of veteran experience in one day, signing James Neal and Michael Frolik to professional tryouts. Both players will join the Blues for training camp as they look for NHL contracts.

Neal, 34, was once one of the most consistent goal scorers in the league, posting seasons of at least 21 goals for the first ten years of his career. Things changed in 2018-19 when he signed a five-year, $28.75MM contract with the Calgary Flames, as suddenly his goal scoring dried up and he was pushed further and further down the lineup.

After two up and down years with the Edmonton Oilers, Neal’s contract was bought out in July. He will still earn nearly $2MM from the Oilers in each of the next four years, meaning whatever he was to make on another NHL contract would just be a bonus. Though his overall play has obviously declined, Neal did actually score 24 goals in 84 games for the Oilers over those two seasons, 13 of them coming on the powerplay. If there’s any of that juice left, perhaps the Blues could use him as a sort of specialist to replace some of the scoring that left in the offseason, or that which could still be moved out.

Frolik, 33, is a bit of a different story. He was never a pure goal scorer, far from it in fact as he hasn’t recorded a 20-goal season since his sophomore year in 2009-10. Instead, he grew into a defensively capable support player who could be relied on for somewhere around 40 points a year. That offense disappeared over the last few years though and Frolik was limited almost entirely to the taxi squad for the Montreal Canadiens in 2020-21. In eight games, he failed to record a single point.

It’s hard to believe he’ll ever be an impact player again, but you could certainly do worse than Frolik if you’re looking for depth to keep on hand in case of injury. Having a player like him in camp prepares for that situation, given the Blues don’t have a huge number of young players pushing (or ready) for playing time.

As with any tryout agreement, it’s also important to remember that this does not mean the Blues have exclusive rights to these players. Any NHL team can still sign them if they wish, meaning this is a showcase to the whole league.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Poll: Best Available PTO Candidate

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There were some hints that the PTO market was about to open up. Within the first week of September, the Colorado Avalanche penciled in Artem Anisimov and Jack Johnson and the Pittsburgh Penguins brought in local product Matt Bartkowski. However, with the New Jersey Devils announcing three PTO’s today, including two forwards who played in 45+ games this season in Jimmy Vesey and Mark Jankowski, the floodgates have officially opened on the tryout market. Once the PTO ball starts rolling, it usually only picks up steam. With plenty of talent still available among unsigned unrestricted free agents, this season should be no different. Rather than who will be next to sign, as many names could shortly come off the market (at least temporarily), who would you want your favorite team to bring to camp?

What makes a PTO different than a signing is the lack of commitment. Sure, a low-salary contract that can be buried in the minors is reasonably similar, but even that is a commitment to using up a limited number of roster slots and taking play time from prospects in the AHL. A PTO is merely a training camp invitation to see whether an available player could be a fit for your team. Perhaps it is a veteran who may have gas left in the tank – or may not. Or perhaps it is a young player who has hit a rough patch in his development but just needs a chance to show his upside. It could also be a role player in his prime who just needs a chance to prove he can be useful to the organization.

It’s hard to ignore some of the future Hall of Famers who fit the first description. 44-year-old Zdeno Chara, 41-year-old Patrick Marleau, and 36-year-old Eric Staal each played more games this past season than any other player still available. The question is, can they do it again? Fortunately, a PTO doesn’t require that question to be answered without getting an early look. All three of Chara, Marleau, and Staal have seemingly done more than enough in their respective careers to earn a contract if they want one, but after each had a down year entering a tight, flat-cap market, could they settle for a PTO? Travis Zajac may not be headed for the Hall, but the respected veteran is coming off of a better year than anyone else still unsigned and was expected to command a contract. Could he too end up on a tryout?

Other veterans who might be more likely to take a tryout to extend their careers could include Jason Demers, Bobby Ryan, James Neal, Frans Nielsen, or Devan Dubnyk. Demers and Dubnyk are both arguably the best players still available at their respective position, but that isn’t saying much for an early-September market. It still may not hurt for a team to try to lock up that security on a PTO in case depth is needed. Ryan was playing very well with the Red Wings last season before his season was derailed by injury. At 34, coming back from a long-term ailment could be difficult, but a PTO would allow teams to check on his health. Neal and Nielsen have fallen far from their spots as elite NHLers in the past few years, but could they still have a resurgence left?

Among young players looking for another chance is Alex Galchenyuk, 27, who had the makings of a breakout season brewing after a move to the Toronto Maple Leafs last season and could be ready to build on that momentum. Galchenyuk can be a tough system fit, but a PTO would allow for a team to test his abilities with their personnel. At just 25, Michael Dal Colle may actually be the best young hidden gem among unsigned players. In fact, it is surprising to 2014 top-five pick still available, especially given that he showed signs of improvement in 2019-20 before the Islanders’ depth forced him to take a back seat role last season. Dal Colle could be worth the look, but could a team glean enough in camp without much NHL experience to rely upon as supporting evidence. The same could be said for Frederik Gauthier. One of the biggest forwards in the NHL and good defensive forward, Gauthier’s played sparingly last season within the Coyotes organization and was limited exclusively to fourth line minutes prior in Toronto. Could a brief training camp appearance prove to a team that he is not one-dimensional?

As for those players in their prime who don’t have to prove that they can play in the NHL or can still play in the NHL, it is more about showing that they possess the tools to fill a specific role for a team. Those looking for some stability and minutes on the blue line should show interest in Sami Vatanen, Erik Gustafsson, or Ben Hutton, who have both shown that they can still play. However, are they a better option than what most teams already have on their bottom pair or waiting for opportunity in the AHL? Up front, a team in need of skill could eye Nikita Gusev or Alex Chiasson while those seeking defense have options such as Colton Sceviour and Tobias Rieder. Like the defensemen, all of these forwards surely could play in the NHL this season, but are they superior options to what teams already have? And can a PTO prove otherwise?

There are strengths and weaknesses to all of these players, as well as to what they would be able to prove on a training camp tryout. At the end of the day, at this point in the season value is subjective based on what each team feels could be an area of need in the coming season and who they feel could prove themselves worthy of a contract with just a short PTO. So what say you? Who would you most like to see your favorite team bring in on a PTO?

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Buffalo Sabres Limited By Salary Cap Floor

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The Buffalo Sabres will be over the NHL’s salary cap floor by the start of the season, that much is obvious. While CapFriendly currently has the club sitting $2.3MM below the $60.2MM benchmark, that is with a 22-man roster that does not include unsigned RFA defenseman Rasmus Dahlin. While the 2018 first overall pick is not quite yet proven himself worthy of the considerable long-term deals signed by other top defenseman this off-season, he will surely make more than $2.3MM AAV on his next contract.

Yet, that does not end the Sabres’ battle with the cap floor. Just because they begin the season over the floor, does not mean that they will remain as such all season – or at least not if they wish to have flexibility with their transactions. Buffalo is again expected to be among the NHL’s worst teams this season and will be open to selling current members of the roster. Of course, Jack Eichel is the biggest name who could be available. However, at $10MM AAV it has been brought up numerous times that an Eichel trade is not as easy as it may seem. A team may offer a plethora of top picks, prospects, and entry-level players, but the Sabres would not be able to make that deal alone, as it would leave the team well below the salary cap floor regardless of Dahlin’s contract. Buffalo would have to acquire a nearly equal amount of salary back in the deal or else be prepared to quickly turn and add that salary in another deal. As a rebuilding team, the Sabres also won’t eager to add high-priced veterans who serve little purpose to a team with no title hopes. It makes an already difficult situation with Eichel all that much more tricky.

Even if Eichel begins the season with Buffalo, which seems increasingly likely, and even plays out the year with the team, the cap floor will still come into play. As the trade deadline approaches, the Sabres want to be in position to take full advantage of their valuable trade assets. The team has four forwards, four defensemen, and two goalies who are impending UFA’s and whose expiring contracts would be worth far more to another team. Colin Miller ($3.875MM), Will Butcher ($2.823MM), Cody Eakin ($2.25MM) and Vinnie Hinostroza ($1.05MM) stand out as potentially popular trade candidates at the deadline. Depending on Dahlin’s contract, could they move Hinostroza or maybe even Eakin or Butcher without going below the floor? Probably. But Miller? Or multiple moves? Likely not. The deadline is also not a place that is likely to offer even salary swaps.

If GM Kevyn Adams and the Sabres want to enter the 2021-22 season with the confidence that they can make any move they want without limitation, they need to find a way to sensibly add salary to the roster. For a rebuilding team, it may be difficult to think about adding salary to a team that won’t contend, but it would be a short-term sacrifice to ensure their long-term plans are not affected. The team could explore the trade market for a veteran or two that can help to develop the young roster or perhaps a young, but overpaid reclamation project. Or maybe they could entertain adding a legitimate starting goalie. They could also explore the free agent market which, even late in the summer, still has some attractive names available. With the Sabres pegged to give roster spots to minimum-salary fourth-liners like Drake Caggiula and John Hayden, it might make more sense to give those slots and more importantly more salary to a high-upside project like Ryan Donato, Alex Galchenyuk, or Nikita Gusev or a veteran leader like Tyler Bozak, James Neal, or Jason Demers. 

The Sabres have plenty of options to solve their salary cap floor conundrum beyond just re-signing Dahlin. However, those options could disappear if they don’t act quickly, and with it their transactional flexibility this season.

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