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Pacific Notes: Golden Knights, Boeser, Kovalenko, Rutta

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Aside from the Boston Bruins losing Charlie McAvoy, the Vegas Golden Knights are another team that lost an impact player during the 4 Nations Face-Off. According to Jesse Granger of The Athletic, the Golden Knights don’t have any new updates regarding defenseman Shea Theodore’s injury status. However, head coach Bruce Cassidy provided updates on another pair of injured players.

Forwards William Karlsson and Cole Schwindt have resumed regular skating making their returns imminent. Neither Karlsson nor Schwindt has played in a game for Vegas in February as they’re both dealing with lower-body injuries. The former has been impacted by injuries for much of the 2024-25 campaign as he’s only managed seven goals and 18 points in 38 appearances.

Meanwhile, the positive injury updates continue as the team is expected to activate (X Link) forward Tanner Pearson for tonight’s contest against the Vancouver Canucks. Pearson missed the Golden Knights’ final two games before the break due to an undisclosed injury. The former 20-goal scorer has notched nine goals and 19 points in 53 games for Vegas this season averaging 12:01 of ice time per night.

Other Pacific notes:

  •  Vancouver could be headed for treacherous waters with their pending unrestricted free agent forward Brock Boeser. The team has been playing too well to warrant moving Boeser at the deadline but not much traction has been made for a potential extension. In an article from Thomas Drance in The Athletic, he argues the Canucks will treat Boeser as their own rental for the deadline. Still, Drance argues that if Vancouver significantly falters leading up to March 7th, that could make a Boeser trade more palatable from their perspective.
  • According to San Jose beat writer Curtis Pashelka, forward Nikolai Kovalenko nor defenseman Jan Rutta are expected to join the San Jose Sharks on their upcoming road trip. Pashelka adds that Rutta is still relatively far from a return, which could affect his trade value at the upcoming deadline. Rutta is a pending unrestricted free agent right-handed shot defenseman who would likely have some value as a potential depth option for a contending team.

Golden Knights Place Tanner Pearson On Injured Reserve

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The Golden Knights have placed left-winger Tanner Pearson on injured reserve, per Sin Ben Vegas. Pearson, who missed Tuesday’s loss to the Islanders with an undisclosed injury, has been ruled out for the team’s final two games before the 4 Nations Face-Off.

The Knights now have an open roster spot – they previously had one before the transaction, but recalled Jonas Røndbjerg from AHL Henderson today to replace Pearson on the active roster, per the NHL’s media site. He’ll join the team for tonight’s game in New Jersey and have to suit up unless they plan on dressing 11 forwards and seven defensemen.

Pearson, 32, landed a PTO with Vegas and eventually signed a one-year, league-minimum deal a few days before the start of the regular season. The 12-year veteran started the season on a high note with seven points in 11 games, but he’s been colder since then, with 12 points in 42 appearances since the beginning of November. He’s been especially cold lately, posting an assist and a minus-eight rating in his last 14 showings. He’s lost ice time and been pushed down the depth chart after the team inked Brandon Saad following his mutual termination with the Blues last week.

The 2014 Stanley Cup champion has a 9-10–19 scoring line in 53 games for Vegas on the whole, his best offensive showing since he scored 14-20–34 in 68 GP with the Canucks in 2021-22. Pearson lost most of the 2022-23 season with Vancouver due to a lingering hand injury and struggled to the tune of 5-8–13 in 54 games with the Canadiens last year.

His injury did force Vegas to roll 11-7 against the Isles, and it’s still unclear when he sustained it. Pending RFA Alexander Holtz should get a look in the top nine with Pearson out, as he’s projected to skate alongside Pavel Dorofeyev and Tomáš Hertl tonight against his former club. He’s back with the club after the team quietly assigned him to Henderson over the course of the past couple of weeks, although he never suited up for the minor-league club.

Røndjberg has played fourth-line spot duty again for Vegas this year, entering the lineup nine times. He’s still looking for his first point of the year but has secured his fourth straight season of NHL playing time with the Knights, who drafted him 65th overall back in 2017. The Danish winger has 7-8–15 in 32 games with Henderson.

Vegas Golden Knights Sign Tanner Pearson

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Another professional tryout agreement has ended in a guaranteed contract. The Vegas Golden Knights organization has announced they have signed veteran forward Tanner Pearson to a one-year, $775K contract for the 2024-25 NHL season.

It’s a feel-good story for Pearson who has been limited by injuries the last few years. His last year with the Vancouver Canucks in 2022-23 saw Pearson skate in only 14 contests during the season as a hand injury requiring three surgeries lost him much of the year. He managed to skate in more than half of the games last year with the Montreal Canadiens but another hand injury lost him 38 games on the season.

The injuries to his hand have certainly limited his offensive production over the last two years but Pearson has been known as a reliable depth scorer in the past. He’s no longer a player who can carry responsibility in the top six for a playoff contender like his days with the Los Angeles Kings in the mid-to-late 2010s.

He has shown glimpses of his goal-scoring capabilities recently with 21 goals in 69 games for the Canucks in 2019-20 with another 24 in 119 games from 2020-22. The Golden Knights will likely use Pearson in a bottom-six role on the wing for some offensive punch toward the bottom of the lineup.

The signing is not all that surprising despite Pearson’s waning abilities over the last couple of years. Vegas has experienced a dramatic decrease in depth thanks to spending toward the upper limit of the salary cap and will have to supplement their roster with league minimum contracts.

TSN’s Chris Johnston was the first to report the signing.

Golden Knights Sign Tanner Pearson To PTO

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The Vegas Golden Knights have signed forward Tanner Pearson to a professional tryout agreement. The deal gives Pearson a chance to fight for one of Vegas’ remaining bottom-six positions – a battle already being fought by Victor Olofsson, Keegan Kolesar, Brendan Brisson, and Jonas Rondbjerg.

Pearson, 32, recently completed a one-year stint with the Montreal Canadiens. He was the return for Casey DeSmith in a pre-season swap with the Vancouver Canucks, though upper-body injuries and healthy scratches limited him to just 54 appearances. He scored 13 points in those outings – a career-low in years he played in more than 20 games. The move to Montreal ended Pearson’s stretch of five years with the Canucks, where he managed 114 points across 221 games. The bulk of that scoring came in his first year in Vancouver, when Pearson managed a career-high 45 points in 69 games. It continued the streak of 40-point scoring that he carried through six years with the Los Angeles Kings. But he’d lose that streak quickly after, with 34 points in 2021-22 marking the only time that Pearson has exceeded 20 points in the last four seasons.

The battle for ice time among Vegas’ bottom-six now grows thicker, as the team looks to make up for off-season departures of lineup fixtures like William Carrier, Chandler Stephenson, Jonathan Marchessault, and Michael Amadio. Those absences open plenty of minutes on Vegas’ bottom lines, though new signee Olofsson, and young prospects like Brisson and Pavel Dorofeyev, are likely to earn precedent – unless Pearson impresses enough to earn a contract of his own in Vegas’ training camp.

Free Agent Profile: Tanner Pearson

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The third week of free agency saw the amount of forward options continue to thin out. Most of the best available names found new homes on the open market or headed overseas. That’s left teams with a remaining UFA class made up almost exclusively of reclamation projects, whether they be youngsters coming off being non-tendered or veterans in the twilight of their careers.

We’ve already examined one of the latter names, James van Riemsdyk, who’s still looking for a new home after a successful year in a depth role with the Bruins. Left-winger Tanner Pearson is another one who is still available.

Pearson began his career with the Kings back in 2013-14 in a depth role, gradually adjusting to NHL minutes after being selected in the first round in 2012. The then 21-year-old didn’t start the season on the NHL roster, instead working his way up to a late-season call-up and earning an everyday role in the lineup by the time the playoffs rolled around. Now in more of a middle-six role, Pearson would turn out to be one of the Kings’ most valuable players that spring, posting 12 points in 24 games despite only seeing around 12 minutes of ice time per night as L.A. won its second Stanley Cup in three years.

The Kitchener, Ontario native continued working his way up the Kings’ lineup, posting a career-high 24 goals in 2016-17 in the final year of a bridge deal. Los Angeles didn’t let the pending RFA go unsigned following his breakout campaign, locking him into a four-year, $15MM deal that was rather ill-fated in hindsight. After failing to take a step forward in 2017-18, Pearson began the 2018-19 season with just one assist in 17 games before being shipped out to the Penguins for Carl Hagelin. Pearson’s tenure in Pittsburgh was improved but still forgettable, posting 14 points in 44 games before being traded for the second time that season, this time to the Canucks for Erik Gudbranson.

In Vancouver, Pearson managed to rediscover his game. He ended the season on a tear, doubling his nine goals on the year in just 19 games in a Canucks jersey. Revitalized, Pearson assumed top-six duties in Vancouver in 2019-20, posting a career-high 45 points in 69 games, with his 0.65 points per game smashing his previous career high of 0.55.

Pearson’s performance nosedived in the final season of his contract, though. Despite averaging a career-high 17:04 per game in 2020-21, he was limited to just 10 goals and 18 points in 51 games with a -15 rating. Vancouver still believed Pearson was closer to the player who had broken out for a career-high the year prior, though, extending him for the next three seasons at a $3.25MM cap hit.

That deal saw Pearson return to decent middle-six production in 2021-22 (34 points in 68 games). But a hand injury that teammate Quinn Hughes alleged was improperly handled by the Canucks limited him to 14 games in 2022-23, posting a lone goal and four assists. There was a time when some believed Pearson’s career might be over due to the injury, but it became clear during the summer that he would be healthy enough to return to play. It wouldn’t be in Vancouver, though, as they traded him to the Canadiens during training camp in a deal for backup netminder Casey DeSmith.

Pearson remained hampered by unrelated injuries during his time in Montreal, missing nearly 30 games and slipping back down to a decidedly bottom-six role. The Canadiens tried to shop him at this year’s deadline, which would have been the fourth time being traded in his career, but there wasn’t interest. Unsurprisingly, reports as far back as May indicated Montreal wouldn’t bring him back.

Stats

2023-24: 54 GP, 5 G, 8 A, 13 P, -12, 21 PIMs, 12:56 ATOI, 43.5 CF%
Career: 644 GP, 138 G, 147 A, 285 P, -3, 230 PIMs, 15:04 ATOI, 51.4 CF%

Potential Suitors

There haven’t been any specific names linked to Pearson on the open market. With a Stanley Cup ring and over 50 games of playoff experience under his belt, though, there should be a fair amount of interest from postseason hopefuls in Pearson as a low-cost fourth-line option.

A return to the Kings could make sense. The team qualified RFA Arthur Kaliyev, but he’s not expected back in the fall and will likely find a new home via trade. That leaves a vacancy on their fourth line, exacerbated by the departures of Carl Grundström and Blake Lizotte. Even assuming 2019 top-five pick Alex Turcotte makes the jump to the NHL full-time next season, they don’t have enough internal options at forward for consistent NHL minutes.

Other teams in the West looking to make a push for the playoffs next year that could use veteran insurance for their bottom six include the Jets, Predators and Wild. Over in the East, the Bruins, Red Wings and Senators all make a fair bit of sense as well, with some question marks remaining among their depth wingers.

Projected Contract

This late in the month and coming off the worst season of his career by points per game (0.24), there won’t be much of an appetite for anything above a one-year, $1MM pact for Pearson. A league minimum deal ($775K) becomes more likely the longer he remains unsigned. He should still be able to land a one-way deal entering his age-32 campaign, but his cap hit will still be buriable in the minors, in all likelihood.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

Canadiens Won’t Re-Sign Tanner Pearson

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Add Tanner Pearson’s name to those all but confirmed to be heading to market in July. The Canadiens have opted not to re-sign the 2014 Stanley Cup champion, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reports.

The 31-year-old will reach unrestricted free agency for the first time in his career. While he’s switched teams three times in his 11-year career, all have been via trade.

Pearson’s had a rough go of the past two seasons, missing significant time due to injuries. With the Canucks in 2022-23, Pearson needed multiple hand surgeries and was limited to one goal in 14 games. His extended stay on long-term injured reserve spurred comments from then-teammate Quinn Hughes that his injury wasn’t being addressed properly by the team’s medical staff, prompting brief NHLPA scrutiny.

He was cleared to play entering training camp last September, but a cap crunch in Vancouver prompted the Canucks to trade him to the Canadiens along with a 2025 third-round pick for backup goaltender Casey DeSmith. Pearson, who cost $3.25MM against the cap this season, was limited to five goals, eight assists, 13 points and a -12 rating in 54 appearances with the Habs.

There was some interest in his services nearing the trade deadline, but reports at the time indicated none of the offers were strong enough to convince general manager Kent Hughes to execute a move. Now, Pearson walks for nothing after averaging 12:56 per game for Montreal, his lowest usage since his Cup-winning rookie season with the Kings.

A Los Angeles first-round pick in 2012, Pearson has 138 goals and 285 points in 644 career games for the Canadiens, Canucks, Kings and Penguins. Pagnotta dubbed him “a quality mid-six add for a contender” in his report, but he likely slots in as a fourth-line or extra forward to begin the season after struggling to produce on a rebuilding club. His 0.24 points per game this season ranked 316th among 368 forwards with more than 50 games played.

He won’t cost very much on his next deal after his rough recent showing, and he did have 14 goals and 34 points in 68 games for the Canucks two years ago before his hand injuries arose. Evolving Hockey projects him to land a one-year, $1MM deal.

Snapshots: Canadiens, Danforth, Kings

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The Canadiens were relatively quiet on trade deadline day with their only move coming late in the day when they moved Jake Allen to New Jersey.  However, ESPN’s Kristen Shilton notes that Montreal did have interest in wingers Tanner Pearson and Joel Armia but not to the point where GM Kent Hughes was compelled to make a move.  The Canadiens only had one available retention slot which was used on Allen which likely limited the market for Pearson, a pending unrestricted free agent.  Meanwhile, Armia has rebounded relatively well after clearing waivers at the beginning of the season and has 11 goals in 48 games so far.  However, he also has another season left at $3.4MM so teams likely would have been asking Montreal to retain salary or take back another contract to help facilitate a deal.

Elsewhere around the NHL:

  • Blue Jackets forward Justin Danforth is dealing with a concussion and will be out longer than day-to-day, team reporter Jeff Svoboda relays (Twitter link). The 30-year-old missed Saturday’s game against Nashville with what was called an illness at the time.  Danforth is in the middle of a career year, notching 10 goals and 11 assists through 63 games so far.  Danforth inked a one-year, $1.1MM contract extension back in October meaning he won’t be eligible for unrestricted free agency until the 2025 offseason.
  • Kings GM Rob Blake recently told reporters including Andrew Knoll of the Los Angeles Daily News that there haven’t been any discussions about a contract extension with pending unrestricted free agents Viktor Arvidsson and Matt Roy. Arvidsson has been limited to just four games this season due to injuries so the hesitance there certainly makes sense.  However, Roy has been a key cog on the back end for Los Angeles for several years now so it stands to reason that they’d like to keep him around even with him almost certainly eyeing a sizable raise from his current $3.15MM AAV.  However, it appears those talks may have to wait until after the season.

Canadiens Shopping Multiple Depth Wingers

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The Canadiens’ offense hasn’t done much this year outside of their top line of Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Nick Suzuki, ranking 27th in the league. As such, Montreal GM Kent Hughes is open to moving out multiple wingers – a group highlighted by two-time 20-goal scorer Josh Anderson – ahead of the March 8 trade deadline, reports David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period.

According to Pagnotta, Hughes is also shopping solid shutdown winger Joel Armia and pending UFA Tanner Pearson. It’s not like the Canadiens have a bunch of youngsters chomping at the bit to take their spots—prospects like Sean Farrell and Emil Heineman need some more minor-league development time—but it does behoove them to free up some roster space and gain some assets as they continue their rebuild.

The Canadiens still need de facto retired goaltender Carey Price’s $10.5MM LTIR relief to remain cap-compliant, although their cap hit has been exacerbated by some injuries this season. Still, contracts like Anderson’s (a $5.5MM cap hit through 2027) aren’t ideal for a rebuilding squad, especially for his level of dwindling production.

Once a highly sought-after developing power forward, the 6-foot-3 Anderson has tanked this season with eight goals and 17 points in 57 games despite still seeing some top-six minutes, averaging 16:05 per game. He is shooting far below his career average at 7.1%, but his possession metrics are also among the worst on the team – no Canadien has a worse expected rating than Anderson’s -9.7.

Given his low shooting percentage, though, there is hope for some positive goal-scoring regression, which was always one of the more attractive aspects of his game. Anderson may still have some trade value if the Habs are willing to slash his cap hit down to $2.75MM by retaining 50% of the remainder of his deal. That’s much closer to what he would earn on the free-agent market if he were a UFA this summer.

While Montreal would also likely need to retain some of Armia’s $3.4MM cap hit through 2025, he probably has the highest trade value out of their three forward assets. After being buried in the minors to start the year, injuries re-opened an NHL opportunity, and he’s responded well. His 11 goals on the campaign make him the only active non-first-line player with double-digits on the year, and he’s managed a 48.2 CF% at even strength (sixth among full-time Habs forwards) while logging first-unit minutes on their penalty kill. Add in his solid postseason performance with Montreal on their run to the 2021 Stanley Cup Final, and he appears a solid pickup for any contender looking to add some defensive acumen to their fourth line.

Theoretically, Pearson’s expiring deal makes him the easiest to move, but it’s hard to imagine much interest in the 31-year-old’s services. Now relegated to a fourth-line role with the Canadiens, he has five goals and 11 points in 42 games with a -11 rating. Hughes would again need to retain some of his $3.25MM cap hit to move him out.

Those retention caveats highlight a crucial problem with the Canadiens’ deadline plans. They’re still retaining salary on the contracts of Joel Edmundson and Jeff Petry, meaning they only have one slot left for an additional retained salary transaction. With none of these players likely to get moved at full price in-season, the Habs will likely only be able to move one or enlist a third party to retain 50% of a contract on another.

Tanner Pearson Returning To The Canadiens Lineup

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Montreal Canadiens forward Tanner Pearson is set to return to the lineup tonight when the Canadiens take on the Ottawa Senators. Pearson has been sidelined since December 9th with an upper-body injury but has been practicing with the team for a few days now.

The 31-year-old was acquired by the Canadiens last September along with a 2025 third-round pick in exchange for goaltender Casey DeSmith. He started the season slow with just four goals and four assists in his first 27 games before the injury sidelined him.

It’s been a tough few years for the 31-year-old as he was once a perennial 15-20 goal scorer but hasn’t topped 15 goals since the 2019-20 season when he had 21 goals with the Vancouver Canucks.

Pearson is in the final season of a three-year contract he signed with the Canucks back in April 2021 and could become a trade chip for the Canadiens if he can show that he is healthy and productive. He spent the first six years of his career with the Los Angeles Kings, winning a Stanley Cup in 2014. However, since 2018 he has been dealt on three separate occasions and could be looking at another move, or possibly two over the next six months.

Pearson is counting $3.25MM against the cap this year and could be one of the less expensive forwards on the market. His trade market could heat up if he can get any traction over the next four to six weeks.

Snapshots: Flyers, Grubauer, Pearson, Engvall, ECHL, Dionicio

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Flyers defensemen Sean Walker and Nick Seeler have been speculative trade candidates for most of the season as pending unrestricted free agents but with Philadelphia finding itself in a top-three spot in the Metropolitan Division, there’s a chance they may not move after all.  As Kevin Kurz of The Athletic notes (subscription link), that would be an outcome both blueliners would be quite pleased with as both have expressed an interest in remaining with the Flyers beyond this season.  Walker carries a $2.65MM cap hit and has 15 points in 44 games while logging over 20 minutes a night on the back end while Seeler makes the league minimum and is averaging more than 17 minutes a night.  Both players appear to be heading for raises on the open market next summer.

Elsewhere around the hockey world:

  • The Kraken moved goaltender Philipp Grubauer to LTIR before last night’s late recall of John Hayden, PuckPedia reports (Twitter link). Grubauer has been out for more than a month already so he’s eligible to be activated as soon as he’s cleared to return from his lower-body injury.  The 32-year-old has a 3.25 GAA and a .884 SV% in 17 starts so far this season.
  • Canadiens winger Tanner Pearson will accompany the team on its upcoming road trip as he works his way back from a hand injury, relays Sportsnet’s Eric Engels (Twitter link). The 31-year-old has missed more than a month with this latest hand issue after undergoing several surgeries last season.  Pearson has four goals and four assists in 27 games so far and is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
  • The Islanders announced (Twitter link) that winger Pierre Engvall is listed as day-to-day with an upper-body injury. His first full season in New York hasn’t quite gone to plan as the 27-year-old has just five goals and nine assists in 41 games so far, hardly the type of performance they were expecting after giving him a seven-year, $21MM contract last summer.
  • The ECHL announced that it has approved the expansion application from Bloomington, Illinois to begin play in the 2024-25 season. The yet-to-be-named team will be the 30th squad at that level.  The ECHL has affiliation agreements with 28 of 32 NHL teams this season, a number that could very well go up as a result of this news.
  • Ducks prospect Rodwin Dionicio is having a breakout year in the OHL and had a strong showing at the World Juniors but it appears an entry-level deal won’t be coming his way anytime soon. Instead, EHC Biel-Bienne in Switzerland announced that they’ve inked the blueliner to a three-year contract which will begin next season.  Anaheim has until June 1, 2025 to sign the 19-year-old who has 31 points in as many games at the junior level this season but will they want to commit two seasons of that contract to someone who will be playing overseas?  That’s a decision GM Pat Verbeek will have to ponder down the road.

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