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Mathew Barzal

New York Islanders Recall Samuel Bolduc

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The New York Islanders have announced a couple of roster moves ahead of tomorrow night’s matchup against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Islanders announced that defenseman Samuel Bolduc has been recalled from Bridgeport and in a subsequent move Otto Koivula has been sent back to Bridgeport on loan.

Bolduc was the Islanders 2019 second round pick and was an AHL all-star this season with 35 points in 56 games. He’s dressed in six games with the Islanders notching a single goal while averaging over 15 minutes of ice time per game. Bolduc will likely replace Sebastian Aho after Aho was injured in Saturday’s 4-1 win over San Jose with an apparent upper body injury.

Bolduc has had quite the bounce back after struggling through most of last season. In 57 games last year he managed only 7 points and looked lost at times. Now a year later the Laval native has found his game and will get another opportunity at the NHL level.

For Otto Koivula he once again finds himself shuttled back to Bridgeport in what is now his fifth season in the AHL. Koivula managed two assists in eight games while with the big club which brings his NHL point total to four assists in 26 career NHL games. Koivula has been a dependable scorer in the AHL in previous seasons but has struggled this year with just 25 points in 45 AHL games. Koivula still hasn’t been able to use his 6’5” frame to turn into the power forward the Islanders hoped he would become when they drafted him in the fourth round of the 2016 NHL entry draft. At 24 years of age time could be running out for the young Finn to establish himself as an everyday NHL forward.

The Islanders currently sit in the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference two points up on the Pittsburgh Penguins and three points up on the Florida Panthers, although both teams have games in hand on the Islanders. They are still without the services of Mathew Barzal who has been out of their lineup for over a month with a lower body injury. This has further depleted the offense for a team that already struggled to score goals this season. With very little margin for error, Bolduc will likely be expected to come into the Islanders lineup to provide them with sound defensive hockey.

Islanders Activate Cal Clutterbuck Off IR

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The Islanders enter tonight’s action with a four-point advantage on a Wild Card spot and will welcome back one of their long-time veterans tonight as the team announced (Twitter link) that they’ve activated winger Cal Clutterbuck off injured reserve.

He had missed close to two months with an upper-body injury, his third upper-body issue of the season.  In between missing those contests, the 35-year-old has put up four goals and four assists along with 130 hits in 34 games while averaging 12:09 per night, primarily on the fourth line.

It appears that Clutterbuck will be taking the place of Otto Koivula in the lineup tonight against Washington as Newsday’s Andrew Gross relays (Twitter link) that Koivula is listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury.  The 24-year-old is averaging less than seven minutes per game in his first eight NHL appearances of the season but still has a pair of assists, matching his output from 2021-22.

Meanwhile, New York will still be waiting at least a little longer for two of their key injured forwards to return.  Gross adds (Twitter link) that there remains no timetable for center Mathew Barzal to resume skating as he tries to work his way back from a lower-body injury.  However, the expectation is that Jean-Gabriel Pageau should accompany the team on their upcoming West Coast road trip; the veteran has missed the last month with an upper-body injury.

Mathew Barzal Out Week-To-Week With Lower-Body Injury

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11:40am: The Islanders have clarified, explaining to reporters, including Kevin Kurz of The Athletic, that Barzal is “week-to-week” and is expected to return at some point this season.

10:30am: The New York Islanders will be without one of their most dangerous offensive players, as Mathew Barzal is out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. The star forward suffered it over the weekend against the Boston Bruins, playing just three shifts before leaving the game.

New York would end up losing badly without him, and now may have to find a way to stay in the race without him for a long stretch. Indefinitely, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean Barzal will be out long-term but is usually the terminology used when a player has been ruled out but is still being evaluated for potential surgery. Hopefully, in this case that won’t be required, and the Islanders will have the smooth-skating forward back in the lineup before long. If not, their offense is going to take a significant hit.

Barzal, 25, has 51 points in 58 games this season and is part of a trio with Brock Nelson and Anders Lee that drives almost all of the Islanders forward offensive production. Jean-Gabriel Pageau (who is also injured) is the next highest-scoring forward with 29 points in 56 games, while Zach Parise is the only other forward with more than ten goals.

Luckily, the Islanders did just add Bo Horvat, who will likely be given even more responsibility than he already has. Horvat is averaging more than 21 minutes a night with the Islanders so far, and has three goals and four points in seven games since coming over from the Vancouver Canucks. If Barzal misses significant time, he will need to continue his outstanding season to help New York reach the playoffs.

Metropolitan Notes: Hallander, Barzal, Noesen

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Penguins prospect Filip Hallander was stretchered off the ice late in yesterday’s AHL game between Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and Charlotte, relays Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  The injury occurred off a faceoff with his legs getting tied up with a Charlotte player, causing him to fall to the ice, landing on the side of his head.  Play was quickly whistled down as the 22-year-old was motionless on the ice and the game was called at that point.  The team released a brief statement this morning (Twitter link) indicating that he has been released from the hospital and is resting at home.  They will not be providing any further information about the injury at this time.

More from the Metropolitan:

  • Islanders center Mathew Barzal was a late scratch in Friday’s loss to Calgary due to what was termed a tweak, notes Newsday’s Andrew Gross (Twitter link). It’s likely that the issue was sustained the night before in Edmonton.  Barzal took part in the pregame warmup so it’s likely his absence will be a short-term one.  The 25-year-old has had a bit of a bounce-back season offensively and is on pace for numbers comparable to his rookie season when he had 22 goals and 85 points.
  • Hurricanes winger Stefan Noesen isn’t expected to play today against Columbus, reports team reporter Walt Ruff (Twitter link). After playing sparingly with Carolina last season, the 29-year-old is on pace for a career year with eight goals and a dozen assists through his first 37 games played which is pretty strong production for someone averaging just over 12 minutes a game in ice time.  While there’s no word on how long Noesen will be out, it doesn’t appear that this will be a long-term absence.

New York Islanders Extend Mathew Barzal

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6:33 pm: According to CapFriendly, Barzal will receive exactly $9.15MM in base salary across all eight seasons. A 22-team no-trade clause will kick in for the 2024-25 season and continue for the duration of the contract.

11:44 am: The New York Islanders have signed Mathew Barzal to an eight-year extension worth a total of $73.2MM. The deal will start in 2023-24 and carries an average annual value of $9.15MM.

Barzal, 25, is heading into the third season of a three-year, $21MM bridge contract he signed in 2021 and would have been due a qualifying offer of $8.4MM next summer. That also would have been his final year as a restricted free agent, he would have had arbitration rights, and could have potentially walked himself right to unrestricted free agency by agreeing to a one-year deal. With all of that in mind, the Islanders had to pay up to keep Barzal in the fold long-term, buying out a very expensive RFA season and seven more UFA years.

At $9.15MM, he will become the team’s highest-paid player by quite a bit, blowing by the previous $7MM cap that Anders Lee carries through 2025-26. While the last couple of seasons hasn’t been quite as impressive as Barzal’s incredible 85-point rookie campaign in 2017-18, his dynamic offensive skill is something that is difficult to come by. There’s little doubt that Barzal is the most talented forward on the team, and now with a contract like this in hand, he becomes the pillar to build the rest of the offensive group around.

The question, of course, is whether the Islanders will be able to support Barzal with enough skill once he’s earning so much. A $9.15MM cap hit makes him the 21st highest-paid forward in the league, ahead of some very consistent goal scorers like Filip Forsberg and Mika Zibanejad, and some young up-and-coming talents like Brady Tkachuk and Robert Thomas. The contract that CapFriendly notes as most comparable is Brayden Point’s $76MM extension, which kicks in this year, but that is a pretty high bar for Barzal to reach on a consistent basis.

With more than $71MM now committed to next season, with a roster of just 17 players, Islanders management will need to make some tough decisions in the years to come. Ilya Sorokin, Josh Bailey, and Anthony Beauvillier are all scheduled for unrestricted free agency after 2023-24. The team is likely betting on the salary cap taking the sharp increase that has been reported, or else things are going to get tight, quick.

Either way, this locks a fan favorite in for the better part of his career, and allows Islanders fans to breathe easy about Barzal’s future. The 16th overall pick from 2015 is now under contract through 2030-31 and now has no negotiations to distract him from getting back to the point-per-game player he has proven capable of being.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Latest On Mathew Barzal

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There’s a strong class of restricted free agents next offseason, headlined by young wingers like Timo Meier, Jesper Bratt (again), and Alex DeBrincat, to name a few. There’s also New York Islanders cornerstone Mathew Barzal, who said today during the first day of camp that he wants to get an extension done prior to the start of the regular season. However, in true Islanders fashion, little is known on how close the team and Barzal are on an extension, according to The Athletic’s Kevin Kurz.

Barzal added that it’s not a hard deadline he’s imposing, rather, it’s just a desire to get it out of the way.

If [it’s not done before the start of the season], I’m not really worried about it just because my heart’s here and I know that we’ll get something fair and something both sides will be happy about.

Given precedence with the Islanders, we likely won’t know about the extension until it’s already signed. Barzal is entering the final season of a three-year, $21MM bridge deal signed days prior to the 2020-21 season.

Over the course of the past two years, Barzal’s scored 32 goals, 74 assists, and 104 points in 128 games while averaging 18:20 per night. While all of those figures have cooled off from the pace he set for himself during his Calder-winning 2017-18 campaign, he remains a vital young piece in an otherwise aging forward core.

His importance to the team, now and in the future, is something general manager Lou Lamoriello is keenly aware of, saying “without question” that he’d like to see Barzal in an Islanders jersey long-term. Depending on which rumors one listens to, Lamoriello demonstrated that commitment to Barzal by making a head coaching change this past offseason.

In any event, it seems likely at this point that Barzal will avoid another uncertain situation as a restricted free agent holdout as he did in 2020.

Hockey Canada Announces 2022 IIHF World Championship Roster

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The roster is set, with just a few days to go before things kick off for Hockey Canada at the 2022 IIHF World Championship. The defending gold medalists will be icing a rather youthful roster this season, highlighted by some of the league’s up-and-coming stars, along with some established top-end youngsters.

The full roster will be:

G Chris Driedger
G Logan Thompson
G Matt Tomkins

D Thomas Chabot
D Ryan Graves
D Nick Holden
D Dysin Mayo
D Travis Sanheim
D Damon Severson
D Zach Whitecloud

F Josh Anderson
F Mathew Barzal
F Drake Batherson
F Max Comtois
F Dylan Cozens
F Pierre-Luc Dubois
F Morgan Geekie
F Noah Gregor
F Kent Johnson
F Adam Lowry
F Dawson Mercer
F Eric O’Dell
F Nicolas Roy
F Cole Sillinger

For a player like Mayo, this selection truly solidifies the hard work he has put in over years of grinding in the minor leagues. The fifth-round pick spent parts of seven seasons in the AHL before arriving this year with the Arizona Coyotes and becoming one of the team’s most reliable options. Now 25, he’ll be suiting up for his country for the first time at a major international tournament.

Meanwhile, someone like Cozens is taking the next step in representing his country, after last captaining Team Canada at the 2021 World Juniors (where he scored an incredible 16 points in seven games). The Buffalo Sabres forward had 38 points in his first full-length NHL season and has huge upside as a potential franchise cornerstone. The same could be said for players like Johnson and Sillinger, two names that will likely drive the offense for years to come in Columbus.

Perhaps the most interesting name in the group is Dubois, given the Winnipeg Jets center doesn’t have a contract for next season. Pending restricted free agents, especially ones as important as Dubois, usually skip the tournament because of insurance issues and the risk of injury. Instead, he’ll head overseas to play in a tournament he’s already attended twice previously, despite still just being 23 years old.

Mathew Barzal To Play At World Championship

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The New York Islanders don’t have any playoff games to suit up for this year, so one of their young stars will get a chance to represent his country for the first time in a while. Darren Dreger of TSN reports that Mathew Barzal will suit up for Team Canada at the upcoming IIHF World Championship, held later this month in Finland.

Barzal, 24, participated in the event in 2018 after his outstanding rookie season, and actually had seven assists for Canada in ten games. Before that, he’d taken up medals at both the U20 and U18 World Juniors, but neither one was gold. Barzal has only reached that level at the Hlinka-Gretzky, quite a few years ago now.

One of the most enigmatic players in the league, there’s no doubt that Barzal’s skill level is among the best in the world. But the results have been middling after that 85-point rookie season, which earned him the Calder Trophy. He hasn’t hit 20 goals in the four years since, and had just 59 points in 73 games this season for an Islanders team that struggled right from the beginning of the season.

While he still is an obvious leader on the team, Barzal’s name is starting to come up a bit because of his contract situation. Signed only through next season and a restricted free agent for the final time in the summer of 2023, the Islanders could sign him to a long-term extension as soon as this summer. His performance at these Worlds won’t change things one way or the other, but decision time is coming for Lou Lamoriello and the rest of the front office at some point.

Canada will likely release the full roster in the coming days, as the tournament kicks off just a week from now. They’ll take on Germany on May 13.

Morning Notes: Barzal, Sabres, Yelesin

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After the now-infamous departure of John Tavares from the New York Islanders via free agency, all eyes on Long Island turned to promising young center Mathew Barzal to fill the void and lead the team’s offense to continued success. Needless to say, he’s succeeded, notching 311 points in 362 games so far in his young career. This season is the first time the team won’t win a playoff round since Barzal took over the no. 1 center role, and it’ll also be the first time they won’t make the playoffs at all.

As all eyes turn toward the future, though, fans will notice Barzal has one season left on his three-year, $21MM bridge deal he signed prior to 2020-21. With him once again being a restricted free agent, Barzal left the door open on a long-term extension after exit interviews, via James Nichols of The Fourth Period. While he’s yet to replicate his 85-point rookie season, he’s still chugged along at a 60+ point pace every season since then. Knowing general manager Lou Lamoriello, a long-term extension is likely something he’s interested in as well. But it’s unclear how much Barzal’s cap hit will change, considering the lack of significant offensive development during his bridge deal – does he still project to hit the 80-90 point plateau again, or is he an extremely strong no. 2 center on a Cup winner as his recent point totals suggest?

  • A report out of Sweden via HockeyNews.se today says that Buffalo Sabres forward Rasmus Asplund plans to join the team for the upcoming 2022 IIHF World Championship. Asplund played in 80 out of 82 games this season in Buffalo, setting new career highs with eight goals, 19 assists, and 27 points. He also took leaps and bounds defensively this season, showing signs he can develop into a true shutdown forward for the Sabres. Defenseman Henri Jokiharju also announced he’ll be joining Finland at the same tournament.
  • A former Calgary Flames prospect is staying in Russia for two more seasons. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl of the KHL announced today they’ve reached a two-year extension with defenseman Alexander Yelesin, who appeared in four games with the Flames during 2019-20, recording no points. An undrafted free agent, the defensive defenseman played just two seasons in North America before the Flames opted to leave him unsigned. The team still retains his rights if he ever decides to return to the NHL, but that won’t come until 2024-25 at the soonest when he’ll be 28 years old.

East Notes: Bruins Injuries, Barzal, Matthews, Kotkaniemi

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The Bruins have had a bit of tough luck on the injury front lately with several key regulars going down.  Today, the team provided a handful of updates on those players.  Winger David Pastrnak and defenseman Hampus Lindholm skated today but won’t be with the team for their two-game road trip.  Head coach Bruce Cassidy indicated he expects both will be back before the end of the season and could play this weekend.  Meanwhile, goaltender Linus Ullmark didn’t skate today but they believe he’ll be able to return over the weekend.  Winger Jesper Froden suffered a lower-body injury on Saturday and won’t be on the road trip either with no word yet on how long he might be out.

Elsewhere in the Eastern Conference:

  • The Department of Player Safety issued a fine of $2.5K to Islanders center Mathew Barzal for unsportsmanlike conduct. The incident occurred late in the third period on Sunday when he grabbed onto Mitch Marner’s jersey from the bench.  No penalty was issued on the play.
  • While Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews is still a couple of years away from hitting the open market, pondering what his next deal could cost has already become a discussion point. In his latest column for the Toronto Star, Chris Johnston opines that the 24-year-old could reach the $15MM mark, one that would significantly surpass Connor McDavid’s record-setting $12.5MM AAV.  Matthews is in the midst of a career year with a league-high 58 goals along with 44 assists in 70 games this season.
  • On top of updating the injury situation for goaltender Frederik Andersen, the Hurricanes also revealed that forward Jesperi Kotkaniemi has been nicked up again and is listed as day-to-day. The 21-year-old had just come back from missing eight games with a lower-body injury so it’s possible this absence is related to that one.  Head coach Rod Brind’Amour stated that he doesn’t expect Kotkaniemi to be out for long.

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