Snapshots: Vlasic, Ostlund, Sabourin, McCormick
Although he was cut in the leg in a collision on Sunday, it appears the Blackhawks got about the best-case scenario when it comes to defenseman Alex Vlasic. Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times notes that while the blueliner won’t play in Chicago’s remaining three preseason games, he’s on track to be ready for the start of the regular season next week. The 24-year-old was a top-pairing player for the Blackhawks last season, notching a career-high 30 points while playing in every game and logging over 23 minutes per contest for the first time in his career. They’ll be counting on him to play a similar role this season.
Elsewhere around the NHL:
- Sabres center Noah Ostlund is listed as week-to-week with an undisclosed injury, relays Bill Hoppe of the Olean Times Herald. The 21-year-old made his NHL debut last season, getting into eight games with Buffalo while notching 19 goals and 17 assists in 45 games with AHL Rochester. Ostlund will likely be ticketed for a return to the Americans upon being cleared to return. If that doesn’t happen before the start of the regular season, the Sabres will carry a small pro-rated cap charge relative to the number of days that Ostlund was on Buffalo’s roster last season.
- The Lightning announced that they have recalled winger Scott Sabourin from AHL Syracuse. Cut earlier this month, he’ll now get a chance to skate in another preseason game or two and stake his case for a possible in-season recall. Signed to a one-year, two-way deal this summer, the 33-year-old had 25 points and 111 penalty minutes while playing with San Jose’s AHL affiliate last season and has 47 career NHL appearances under his belt. Any time spent on the roster for the rest of the preseason won’t affect his waiver exemption which is 10 games or 30 days during the regular season.
- Veteran center Max McCormick’s season is over before it even began. AHL Coachella Valley, affiliate of the Kraken, announced that the 33-year-old will undergo hip surgery and that he is expected to miss the entire 2025-26 season as a result. McCormick was limited to just 19 games with the Firebirds last season where he had 13 points. He’s in the final season of a two-year pact with Seattle and will be an unrestricted free agent next summer.
Injury Updates: Kraken, Holloway, Hayes, Woo
The Kraken announced (Twitter links) that defenseman Brandon Montour is set to miss the next two weeks after undergoing a procedure to remove a bursa on his ankle. The 31-year-old fit in rather well in his first season with Seattle, notching a career-best 18 goals while his 41 points were the second-most he’d had in a single season. The timeline suggests that he still should be available to start the season but he might not get into any preseason action.
Meanwhile, the team also provided injury updates on several other players. Veteran forward Max McCormick is out indefinitely and won’t participate in training camp. He wasn’t up with the Kraken last season so there won’t be a prorated cap charge while he sits on season-opening IR. Also, winger Lleyton Roed is expected to miss the next two months with an upper-body injury while forward Nathan Villeneuve is out with a lower-body injury that is still pending evaluation. Villeneuve isn’t able to play full-time in the minors this season so he will likely be returned to OHL Sudbury when he’s cleared to return.
Other injury notes from around the NHL:
- Blues winger Dylan Holloway underwent abdominal surgery after sustaining an early in early April that kept him out for the stretch run and playoffs. However, team reporter Chris Pinkert relays that the 23-year-old was a full participant at practice today while Holloway indicated that the injury wound up healing quicker than originally anticipated, allowing him to get a good summer of training in. It’s already a contract year for and after putting up 63 points in a breakout effort last season, Holloway appears to be in line for a significant raise on the $2.29MM he’ll be making this season.
- Penguins center Kevin Hayes left practice early today after taking a hit from Ryan Graves. Seth Rorabaugh of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review relays (Twitter link) that head coach Dan Muse didn’t have an immediate update after practice and that he’s still being evaluated. The 33-year-old is entering the final year of his contract and is coming off a relatively quiet year last season where he scored just 13 goals and 10 assists in 64 games, his first year with Pittsburgh.
- Canucks defenseman Jett Woo underwent surgery to repair an upper-body injury this summer and is listed as out month-to-month, relays Patrick Johnston of the Vancouver Province. He played through the injury to help AHL Abbotsford win the Calder Cup back in the spring. The 25-year-old had 18 points in 67 games in the minors last season but will be waiting a while to make his 2025-26 debut.
Waiver Wire: 10/1/24
28 players hit the waiver wire Tuesday, per PuckPedia. It’s a sharp increase from yesterday’s 12 names as more veterans are assigned to the minors later in camp. All of yesterday’s waived players cleared, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports. Today’s waiver placements are as follows:
Anaheim Ducks
Buffalo Sabres
F Joshua Dunne
F Mason Jobst
F Brett Murray
D Colton Poolman
D Jack Rathbone
G Felix Sandström
Calgary Flames
Edmonton Oilers
G Collin Delia
D Ben Gleason
D Philip Kemp
F Lane Pederson
Los Angeles Kings
Minnesota Wild
New York Rangers
F Anton Blidh
G Louis Domingue
D Casey Fitzgerald
D Brandon Scanlin
Seattle Kraken
F Brandon Biro
F Max McCormick
F Ben Meyers
D Gustav Olofsson
F Mitchell Stephens
G Ales Stezka
Vancouver Canucks
F Phillip Di Giuseppe
G Jiří Patera
F Nathan Smith
D Christian Wolanin
Kraken Sign John Hayden, Others To Extensions
July 1, 6:03 a.m.: The Kraken also re-upped veteran depth winger Max McCormick on a two-year, two-way deal last night with a $775K cap hit. McCormick, 32, has been in the Seattle organization since its inception. He’s spent his time with the Kraken primarily in the minors, where he’s captained the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds to back-to-back Calder Cup Final appearances. The feisty, 5’11”, 187-lb forward has continued to be a solid offensive presence on the farm, coming off a strong 2023-24 campaign with 32 goals and 60 points in 68 games. He’s made 11 NHL appearances with Seattle over the past three years, going without a point.
June 30, 4:00 p.m.: The Seattle Kraken have signed forward John Hayden to a one-year, one-way contract extension (Twitter link). The deal will carry an average annual value of $775K, the league minimum. Seattle has also signed the inaugural Kraken, Luke Henman, to a one-year, two-way extension, also carrying league minimum pricing (Twitter link). Continuing the string of signings, Seattle also inked goaltender Ales Stezka to a one-year, two-way, league-minimum contract (Twitter link).
It will mark Hayden’s third straight year in the Kraken organization as he’s begun seeing his time wane at the NHL level. After playing in 55 contests for the Buffalo Sabres during the 2021-22 NHL season, Hayden has only played in nine games in Seattle since the start of the 2022-23 NHL season. Primarily playing for the AHL affiliate, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, Hayden has been a big part of the young team securing back-to-back Western Conference Final Championships.
The now-veteran forward has appeared in 112 regular season games for the Firebirds as he’s collected 32 goals and 59 points in the process. During the 2024 Calder Cup playoffs, Hayden was one of the more effective players on the roster as he scored nine goals and 13 points over 18 games. Due to his efforts both on and off the ice in Coachella Valley, the Kraken made an easy call of re-upping him for another year.
Seattle also extends the first official player of the Kraken organization in Henman. Since signing his entry-level contract with the team on May 12th, 2021, Henman has played 162 games at the AHL level with Coachella Valley and the Charlotte Checkers. As more of a depth piece even in the AHL, Henman has only put up 20 goals and 43 points throughout his three-year tenure in the Kraken organization.
Lastly, Stezka represents a good bit of organizational depth in the goaltender position as he served in a backup role with the Firebirds last year. In 27 games played, Stezka produced a record of 18-6-2 with a 2.48 goals against average and a .914 save percentage in addition to two shutouts. Unfortunately, Stezka would fail to collect any minutes during the 2024 Calder Cup playoffs as the team elected to run with veteran option Chris Driedger through the spring contest.
Kraken Recall Devin Shore
The Kraken announced they’ve recalled winger Devin Shore from AHL Coachella Valley on Wednesday. To clear space on the 23-man roster, forwards Max McCormick and Marián Studenič were reassigned to Coachella Valley. Freeing up an additional roster spot in the transaction now means the team can activate winger André Burakovsky, who head coach Dave Hakstol said today is close to a return, off injured reserve.
Shore, 29, receives his second recall of the season. A 2012 second-round pick of the Stars and a longtime teammate of Seattle defenseman Jamie Oleksiak, with whom he spent multiple seasons within Dallas, Shore signed a one-year, two-way deal with the Kraken last August. He was coming off a middling season with the Oilers in which he registered nine points in 47 games and earned his first AHL demotion since beginning his pro career in 2015.
The 6-foot-1, 209-pound winger has logged nearly 490 games of pro experience, 431 of which have come in the NHL. He made nine appearances for the Kraken earlier this season, recording a goal and an assist in 7:46 of average ice time, before being returned to Coachella Valley in mid-November. The Kraken have been rotating extra forwards often over the course of the season, giving multiple farmhands in southern California a chance to see NHL ice.
He’s off to a strong start in the minors this year, recording three goals and three assists through nine games. While Coachella Valley is losing his services for now, they certainly aren’t complaining about McCormick and Studenič returning to the farm. McCormick, despite the brief call-up, still leads them in points with 17 through 16 games, while Studenič ranks sixth on the team with 11.
Kraken Recall Max McCormick, Issue Injury Update On Jaden Schwartz
The Kraken have called up veteran winger Max McCormick from AHL Coachella Valley, a team statement released Friday afternoon reads. In a corresponding transaction, another minor-league veteran, Andrew Poturalski, was returned to their minor-league affiliate. Additionally, after placing him on injured reserve yesterday, the team announced that winger Jaden Schwartz‘s upper-body injury is expected to keep him out for approximately six weeks.
This is McCormick’s first recall of the season. He was summoned to the NHL roster on two brief occasions last season without appearing in a game. The 31-year-old cleared waivers during training camp and can be returned to Coachella Valley if he stays on the Kraken roster for less than 30 days and plays less than ten games. McCormick, a veteran of over 450 AHL games, is off to a spectacular start, serving as Coachella Valley’s captain and leading the team with eight goals and 17 points in 16 games.
The 2023 AHL Second Team All-Star has been a frequent recall option for teams ever since making his NHL debut with the Senators in 2015-16. He’s accumulated 93 games of NHL experience across six campaigns, most recently in a ten-game stint with the Kraken in their inaugural season in 2021-22. McCormick has been used exclusively in depth roles, however, averaging just 8:28 per contest while managing a respectable eight goals and 13 points across his career. He’s rarely been a significant defensive liability and is a solid, replacement-level option to fill bottom-six injuries.
McCormick will slide into the lineup Saturday against his former team, the Senators, if Brandon Tanev cannot return from his second lower-body injury of the season. He is expected to skate in a fourth-line role alongside Pierre-Édouard Bellemare and recent fellow call-up Marián Studenič. He would replace Poturalski in the lineup, who now returns to the minors after recording no points and a -1 rating in 6:52 of average ice time across the Kraken’s last two contests.
Missing Schwartz for such a significant period of time is a blow to the Kraken’s depth in no uncertain terms. The veteran winger had 15 points in 23 games on the season, on pace for his best offensive showing since joining the expansion Kraken during free agency in 2021. It’s not great news for a Seattle team that’s now fallen two games below the .500 mark and remains outside of the Western Conference playoff picture.
Waivers: 10/05/23
Another set of familiar and intriguing players are set to hit the waiver wire this afternoon, with the Seattle Kraken containing the most quantity of any organization. Per James Mirtle of The Athletic, the entire list is as follows:
Calgary Flames
D Nick DeSimone
F Mathias Emilio Pettersen
F Martin Pospisil
Pittsburgh Penguins
F Andreas Johnsson
F Joona Koppanen
F Alexander Nylander
Seattle Kraken
D Connor Carrick
F Cameron Hughes
F Kole Lind
F Max McCormick
D Gustav Olofsson
F Andrew Poturalski
D Mitch Reinke
D Jimmy Schuldt
F Devin Shore
F Marian Studenic
Seattle Kraken Re-Assign John Hayden, Max McCormick To AHL
The Seattle Kraken have sent two forwards back to their AHL affiliate, the Coachella Valley Firebirds: John Hayden and Max McCormick. The move opens up two roster spots that are now at GM Ron Francis’ disposal.
Hayden, 27, has played in three games for the Kraken this season. He’s operated in a depth role in each of those three contests, never crossing into double-digit minutes played in any of the three games. In that span, Hayden registered one goal, two blocked shots, and a hit.
Hayden’s made more of an impact this year at the AHL level, scoring 25 points in 34 games. His return to that level should help the Firebirds continue their run as one of the top teams in the American league.
McCormick, 30, has found similar success in the AHL but, unlike Hayden, didn’t manage to get into any NHL games during his time on the Kraken active roster. He got into 10 games for the Kraken last season, though, but he didn’t manage to get onto the score sheet.
In the AHL, McCormick is tied for first place on the Firebirds in scoring with 18 goals and 42 points so far this season. He’ll now head back to Coachella Valley where he will in all likelihood resume his role as one of coach Dan Bylsma’s most relied-upon offensive producers.
Seattle Kraken Recall Max McCormick; Place Justin Schultz On IR
The Seattle Kraken have moved Justin Schultz to injured reserve, as he deals with a week-to-week designation. In his place, Max McCormick has been recalled from the Coachella Valley Firebirds.
McCormick’s recall will cast doubt on the status of Matty Beniers, who was injured last night after Tyler Myers of the Vancouver Canucks threw him to the ice. Kate Shefte of the Seattle Times reports that Beniers wasn’t available for the third period.
That’s not to say the recall is undeserved. McCormick has been outstanding for Coachella, serving as captain and scoring 42 points in 38 games so far. The 30-year-old journeyman minor leaguer has transformed his game over the years, going from a physical instigator to a legitimate top-line AHL talent.
We’ll see if some of his former self appears in the NHL though. In 93 career NHL games, McCormick has 97 penalty minutes, including nine fighting majors. In ten appearances last season for the Kraken he failed to score a point.
Seattle Kraken Extend Max McCormick
The Seattle Kraken have completed a bit of offseason work, signing Max McCormick to a two-year contract extension. The two-way deal carries an average annual value of $762.5K and keeps McCormick from hitting the open market this summer as an unrestricted free agent. Kraken general manager Ron Francis released the following statement:
Max is a valuable part of the leadership group in Charlotte as the Checkers begin their playoff run. He impressed us with his play in Seattle. We are excited that he is returning to our organization for the next two years.
Interestingly enough, McCormick actually returned to an old stomping ground when he joined the Kraken organization this season. Because the team did not yet have their own AHL affiliate up and running, Seattle sent players to the Charlotte Checkers, where McCormick spent most of the year. He’d already spent a season with the Checkers in 2019-200, when he scored 35 points in 56 games while also racking up 120 penalty minutes. While his penalty numbers may have dropped, McCormick was once again a solid player for Charlotte this season, scoring 13 goals and 29 points in 46 games.
Meanwhile, his NHL career is still a big scattershot. Since signing with the Ottawa Senators out of Ohio State University in 2014, McCormick has played 93 games at the highest level, but never more than 30 in a single season. He suited up ten times for Seattle this year but failed to register a single point.
With the Coachella Valley Firebirds set to start play next season as the Kraken affiliate, players like McCormick are the perfect foundation for the AHL roster. He poses little risk of claim on waivers but can serve a role as an injury replacement at the NHL level if needed. There’s even a chance that he ends up as the Firebirds’ first captain, given he wore an “A” as an alternate for the Checkers this year and Zac Dalpe–who has the “C” this year in Charlotte–is signed with the Florida Panthers.