Snapshots: Moses, Couture, Nassau
In an odd bit of news, the Rochester Americans announced that minor league forward Steve Moses has been suspended indefinitely for breach of contract. The team made clear to indicate that it will not comment again on the matter, leaving a bit of mystery left behind.
This isn’t the first sort of story like this for Moses, who signed a one-year, $1MM deal with the Nashville Predators in 2015-16 only to agree to terminate it after he was relegated to the minor leagues. He returned to the KHL last year where he won a Gagarin Cup with SKA St. Petersburg, but came back to North America again this season. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with his contract this time around.
- Logan Couture isn’t going to be back anytime soon for the San Jose Sharks, at least not without significant improvement from his latest concussion. That’s what he told Kevin Kurz of The Athletic, bluntly stating “I’m not playing if I don’t feel good. It could be one game, it could be 10 games, it could be a whole season.” That’s not what Sharks fans want to hear while the team finds themselves in third place in the Pacific Division and in striking distance of the Los Angeles Kings and Vegas Golden Knights.
- Now that the New York Islanders have a new arena set to be ready for the 2020-21 season, they now have to focus on where to play for the next few years. They won’t be leaving Barclays Center until 2019 at the earliest, but the NHL had previously been against them returning to Nassau Coliseum. Now, with a new building on the horizon, that stance may have softened a bit. According to Brett Cyrgalis of Newsday, the NHL won’t rule out the Islanders playing the 2019-20 season in their old home, before jumping to the brand new Belmont Park location.
Snapshots: Blues, Hertl, Moses
St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock may be heading into his final season behind an NHL bench but he’s certainly not being complacent, writes Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Hitchcock along with coach-in-waiting Mike Yeo and the rest of the coaching staff have put the finishing touches on their new system in advance of training camp later this month. In particular, the team is changing the way it plays in its own end, something that should keep both the players and the coaching staff on their toes; Hitchcock added his thoughts about the decision to change:
“For a coach, when you’re secure in the way you play and then all of a sudden you’re going to make changes, it’s pretty dramatic. Coaches don’t view offensive changes as dramatic, but when you’re changing things defensively most coaches view that as pretty dramatic.”
With their plans in place, the coaches are now in the process of presenting it to their leadership core, including new captain Alex Pietrangelo. Assuming the players are all on board with the changes, then the new system will be unveiled to the rest of the team in training camp. While it may seem odd to seek approval from the players on the system, Hitchcock added that “There’s no point in putting it together if the players don’t buy into it”.
More from around the league:
- While Sharks forward Tomas Hertl won’t play at the World Cup, he doesn’t appear likely to miss any NHL action. In a statement from GM Doug Wilson (courtesy of CSN Bay Area’s Kevin Kurz), he noted that Hertl is on track to be ready to start the year and doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. Wilson also praised Hertl for choosing “to put his commitment to the Sharks and his teammates first”.
- While his most recent return to North America didn’t go well, left winger Steve Moses hasn’t ruled out giving the NHL another shot down the road, writes Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe. Moses signed a one year, $1MM deal with Nashville last year but didn’t make the team out of camp and was assigned to their AHL affiliate. After 16 games with that team, his deal was terminated and he returned to the KHL where he remains under contract through 2017-18. He has flirted with the point-per-game mark in each of his last two years in Russia and if he keeps that up, he should stay on the NHL radar. However, Moses acknowledges that it will take a richer contract for him to try again as he is making more than the $1MM he was set to earn last season.