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Mike Condon, Ben Street Placed On Waivers

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Thursday: Both Condon and Street have cleared waivers, and can now be assigned to the minor leagues.

Wednesday: After a tough night in Arizona, Mike Condon has been placed on waivers by the Ottawa Senators according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Joining Condon today is Ben Street of the Anaheim Ducks, while Jakub Jerabek has cleared and has been assigned to the minor leagues by the St. Louis Blues.

Condon has gone through quite a disastrous spell since signing a three-year, $7.2MM contract with the Senators in June of 2017. That summer he was coming off a very successful campaign in which he recorded a .914 save percentage and helped Ottawa get all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals. Since, he’s recorded just a .898 save percentage and won just five of his 28 starts. His and fellow netminder Craig Anderson’s disappointing 2017-18 season were a huge part of why the Senators fell to the bottom of the standings, and now there’s some question about whether or not he’ll be able to find his game again.

It’s not like Condon is at the beginning of his career, just dealing with a bump in the road. He’ll turn 29 this season, and could very well be on his way out of the league if he can’t turn things around. For now, he’ll likely clear waivers due to his hefty contract and try to work his way back to relevancy in the minor leagues. John Shannon of Sportsnet reports that it will be either veteran goaltender Mike McKenna or prospect Filip Gustavsson that will be called up to replace Condon in Ottawa and back up Anderson.

For Street, it’s a numbers game as the Ducks try to find a way to right the ship in the early part of the season. Patrick Eaves is close to a return, and with Kalle Kossila and Kiefer Sherwood making there return Anaheim needed to send someone back down. Street will likely join Sam Steel in the minor leagues, though was still skating with the team today.

Minor Transactions: 10/31/18

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It’s Halloween and the NHL has just a single game on tap, as the Chicago Blackhawks will take on the Vancouver Canucks this evening. As teams hand out tricks or treats to their fringe roster players, we’ll be right here to keep track of all the movement.

  • Ville Husso has been returned to the minor leagues by the St. Louis Blues, after Jake Allen rejoined the team at practice. Allen’s injury is apparently not as serious as originally feared, meaning Husso can go back to starting for the San Antonio Rampage for now. The 23-year old goaltender is still waiting for his first shot at the NHL, but has to clean up his game at the AHL level first.
  • Colby Cave, who was up on emergency conditions for the Boston Bruins, has been returned to the AHL. Cave, who played three games for the Bruins last season, is a hugely important forward for the AHL’s Providence Bruins, but was only brought up as insurance for some of the banged up NHL players. He’ll likely see some game action with Boston later on this season, but for now will return and try to extend his excellent start to the year.
  • The Minnesota Wild have reassigned Matt Read to the AHL, after seeing him play just five games in the NHL. The veteran forward will be used as an extra man this season and bounce up and down, clearing waivers when required.
  • Wade Megan has been recalled by the Detroit Red Wings, while Joe Hicketts is on his way back to the Grand Rapids Griffins. This is Megan’s first recall of the season after clearing waivers just before the end of training camp. The 28-year old forward has four points in eight games with the Griffins, and will be looking to play just his fifth career NHL game if he can get into the Detroit lineup.
  • The Los Angeles Kings have sent Austin Wagner and Sean Walker back to the Ontario Reign, partly as a cap-saving move. The Kings find themselves pressed right up against the cap ceiling given their current roster, and are trying to save space by sending players down on short term assignments. The team will likely recall a forward before tomorrow’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers, though since they’re in a long homestand could use the proximity of Ontario to their advantage and remain at a roster of 21 for as long as possible.
  • The New York Islanders have recalled Christopher Gibson under emergency conditions as Robin Lehner is dealing with a minor injury. Sending Tom Kuhnhackl down to the minor leagues in his place could mean that Cal Clutterbuck is ready to return, but for now the focus is on the goaltending position and how long Lehner will be out. Coach Barry Trotz didn’t believe it was a serious injury, but with Lehner playing so well to start the season it’s tough to see him taken off the ice at all.
  • Aaron Ness has been recalled by the Washington Capitals, while Travis Boyd has been sent down on a long-term injury conditioning loan. With Brooks Orpik dealing with a minor injury, Ness will serve as insurance for any pregame injuries.
  • The Carolina Hurricanes announced that they’ve recalled defenseman Haydn Fleury from Charlotte of the AHL.  The 22-year-old played in four games with the Checkers while on loan from Carolina and while he may once again be the odd man out on their back end to start, he’ll at least be in better game shape when called upon.

St. Louis Blues Place Jakub Jerabek On Waivers

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The St. Louis Blues have placed Jakub Jerabek on waivers, according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Jerabek has played just a single game for the Blues, after coming over from the Edmonton Oilers just before the season started.

If claimed, Jerabek could be joining his fourth NHL team since coming over from the KHL, despite only playing 39 games between the regular season and playoffs. The 27-year old defenseman signed with the Montreal Canadiens in the summer of 2017 only to be traded at the deadline to the eventual Stanley Cup winning Washington Capitals. A new contract with the Oilers didn’t even last all of training camp before he was cut from the squad and sent south to the Blues, where he still hasn’t been able to make much of an impression.

With the recent return of Carl Gunnarsson and several forwards from their conditioning stints, the Blues need room on the roster and Jerabek is the easiest choice to lose. His $1MM salary may actually protect him from claim, but one has to wonder if he’ll accept another demotion to the minor leagues. The Czech-born defenseman was an excellent professional player for years in his home country, and if he’s not going to get another opportunity at the NHL level this season there seems little chance of him earning a one-way contract next summer.

Jordan Kyrou Assigned To AHL

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The experiment is over for now, as the St. Louis Blues have assigned Jordan Kyrou to the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL. Kyrou registered one point in his nine-game stint, but will now head to the minor leagues to open up some room on the roster for Robby Fabbri, Nikita Soshnikov and Carl Gunnarsson, who all returned from their conditioning stints today.

Kyrou, 20, was an easy choice for the Blues given his waiver-exempt status and rapidly diminishing role on the NHL team. Though he started out the season given a chance with some of the more established offensive players on the roster, Kyrou has seen an average of just seven and a half minutes over his last three games, which included an overtime-extended loss against the Winnipeg Jets. It’s hard to see how playing such a small role with the Blues would be more beneficial for the development of the young forward, given he’s only in his first professional season and still has lots he can learn at the minor league level.

A brilliant skater, Kyrou needs to find the decisiveness that led him to 94 and 109 point seasons in his final two years of junior hockey and get back to being a dominant offensive force. This will hardly be the last chance he receives with the Blues, and he could be back up as soon as a single injury hits. For now though, the team will test out Fabbri to see if they can still rely on him as a top-9 option, while allowing Kyrou to get prime playing time with the Rampage.

Robert Bortuzzo (Lower-Body Injury) To Be Re-Evaluated In Two Weeks

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  • While there is no firm timetable for his return, Blues defenseman Robert Bortuzzo is not expected to need surgery on his lower-body injury, notes Tom Timmermann of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The team will give him a couple of weeks to rest and then re-evaluate his situation at that time.  While St. Louis is down another blueliner for now, they should get Carl Gunnarsson back in the lineup at some point next week once he finishes up his rehab assignment with AHL San Antonio.

Agent Mike Liut Set To Bury The “Bridge Deal” This Off-Season

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For some time now, the landscape of NHL contracts has been changing, trending away from short and relatively inexpensive contracts for young restricted free agents. These “bridge deals” had long been used by teams to keep promising young talent on a reasonable price tag after their entry-level contract expired. While teams have been complicit in the movement away from bridge deals, players have simply begun to produce at a much higher level far sooner than in the past and, in turn, agents have demanded more term and salary than they ever had the leverage to command previously. The bridge deal is not yet extinct, but players and their representatives are having a much easier time landing expensive, long-term deals as early as possible in recent years.

While the beginning of the end for affordable youth can be traced back to superstars like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin – whose cap hits now look like bargains some years later – it is within the last few years that young players of a lesser caliber than the all-world exception have been able to land similar pacts. The architect of multiple recent deals of great length and value has been Mike Liut of Octagon Sports. A former NHLer himself, Liut is the director of Octagon’s hockey division. Forbes reports that Liut manages 22 clients and over $325MM in player salary. His efforts to eliminate the bridge deal have played no small part in that impressive total. Liut negotiated the eight-year, $60MM contract signed by the St. Louis Blues’ Vladimir Tarasenko back in 2015, when Tarasenko had less than 200 NHL games to his credit. He then put together the eight-year, $49MM contract of the Winnipeg Jets’ Mark Scheifele in 2016, before he became the point-per-game player he is today. However, the crown jewel of Liut’s collection has to be the massive eight-year, $68MM contract belonging to the Edmonton Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl. Signed last year, Draisaitl’s deal carries an $8.5MM cap hit that is among the top fifteen players in the league. Yet, Liut somehow landed Draisaitl that deal after just two and half seasons, only one of which was truly impressive.

Now, Liut has a chance at a repeat performance of the Draisaitl deal not once, not twice, not even thrice, but with four different prominent players this off-season. Liut counts Patrik Laine, Mikko Rantanen, Brock Boeser, and Jake Guentzel among his clients and each of those four is set to have their entry-level contract expire this off-season. Winnipeg’s Laine has finished in the top ten in goal scoring in each of his first two seasons and was second only to Ovechkin for the league lead last year. Colorado’s Rantanen recorded 84 points in 81 games last year and currently shares the NHL lead in points and assists. Vancouver’s Boeser finished second in Calder Trophy voting last year and led the Canucks in scoring. Pittsburgh’s Guentzel is a Stanley Cup champion and a proven clutch scorer. Liut has shown an ability to bypass the bridge deal before and has an excellent chance at landing each of these players an expensive long-term deal. Other restricted free agents like Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and Sebastian Aho are also certain to land similar deals. As such, in an off-season with an abnormal amount of high-profile RFA’s, each one could end up with an expensive, long-term extension. The effect, as Liut hopes, that the bridge deal dies as a result.

Fabbri, Neuvirth Sent To AHL For Conditioning Stints

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The St. Louis Blues and Philadelphia Flyers will be getting a pair of players back soon, as the teams announced conditioning stints for Robby Fabbri and Michal Neuvirth respectively. Fabbri will go to the San Antonio Rampage to try and finally make it back into game action, his first since the second half of 2016-17, while Neuvirth is headed for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms before retaking his place beside Brian Elliott in the NHL net.

There’s low expectations at this point for Fabbri, but that wasn’t so just a few seasons ago. The 22-year old forward was a blossoming star in St. Louis after being selected 21st overall in 2014 and scoring 18 goals and 37 points in his rookie season. The versatile forward was dangerous on offense and could play both center and the wing, proving his talents in the postseason with 15 points in 20 games to lead the team in 2016. That excellent play continued early into the next season before Fabbri would suffer a knee injury that sent him to the shelf. As he tried to come back, he re-injured the knee and would miss the entire 2017-18 season.

Now, with just a $925K salary and an uncertain place in the lineup, Fabbri is a wild card for the Blues. The team has built a solid group of forwards that includes several even younger options, and could be dangerous even if Fabbri can’t get back to the level he once showed. There’s a long time for him to still be an impact forward at the NHL level, but he’ll have to prove he can stay healthy and put the knee injury behind him before anyone puts any responsibility on his shoulders.

Neuvirth though is in a very different situation, as he tries to hold on to his role with the Flyers. Philadelphia has several young goaltenders pushing for NHL playing time, and even picked up Calvin Pickard while Neuvirth dealt with his injury. The 30-year old goaltender did record a .915 save percentage last season, but it was only in 22 games and it still only resulted in a 9-7-3 record. In the final season of his current contract, he’ll have to show more than he did last year to stick around and keep the seat warm for top prospect Carter Hart. He’ll need to stay healthy to even do that.

Snapshots: Three Stars, Bortuzzo, Backes

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The NHL has released the Three Stars for the third week of the season, and Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog has found himself in the top spot. Landeskog makes up part of one of the most dangerous trios in the league alongside Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen, and finished last week with six goals and seven points in just three games. Landeskog is still just 25 years old despite this being his eighth season in the league and still has the potential to breakout and become a point-per-game player. That’s what he is so far with ten through his first eight games, and is an early bet to break his career high of 65 points this season.

Connor McDavid and Marc-Andre Fleury round out the stars of the week, taking home second and third respectively. Fleury especially bounced back from some early season struggles and is once again playing at a high level for the Vegas Golden Knights. The 33-year old goaltender is now tenth all-time in wins, and should pass Tony Esposito by season’s end to climb another spot.

  • Robert Bortuzzo won’t be suiting up for the St. Louis Blues in Winnipeg tonight, as he’s flown back to St. Louis to be evaluated for a lower-body injury. The defenseman played on Saturday night, but is now apparently dealing with something serious enough to leave the team. The 29-year old has one goal through five games for the Blues, and is coming off the best season of his career in 2017-18 when he suited up for 72 contests. The team will have to go without his physicality and penalty killing for the time being, and will re-insert Jay Bouwmeester into the lineup for tonight’s game.
  • It’s similar news for David Backes, who has left the Boston Bruins to return home and “have some tests done.” Backes didn’t play in Vancouver on Saturday night, and was limited to just over six minutes of ice time against the Edmonton Oilers after taking an early hit and being checked for a concussion. The 34-year old forward hasn’t scored yet this season, and could be on his way out of the Boston lineup on a long-term basis if he both can’t stay healthy and can’t produce. Unfortunately for the Bruins, he’s still has two more years after this season at a $6MM cap hit, and currently has a no-movement clause.

Snapshots: Bobrovsky, Flyers Defense, O’Reilly, Holden, Gurianov

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This offseason could be a very interesting one assuming that teams don’t lock all the potential unrestricted free agents to contract extensions in the coming months. The Athletic’s Craig Custance (subscription required) breaks down the top 25 UFA’s this coming offseason with an update on how contract negotiations are going.

One interesting note is for the No. 3 UFA in Columbus Blue Jackets’ Sergei Bobrovsky, who is rumored to be asking for Carey Price money (around $10.5MM). That might be too much money for Columbus to offer, especially for a 30-year-old goaltender. Custance adds that the team could easily get outbid for the netminder’s services by the New York Islanders who might be extremely aggressive in adding a franchise-changing goaltender. Islanders’ general manager Lou Lamoriello is known to be a big fan of impact goaltenders, which goes all the way back to Martin Brodeur when he was in New Jersey.

After all, in 315 games between Philadelphia and Columbus, Bobrovsky has a .922 save percentage, two Vezina Trophies and has finished in the top 10 in Vezina voting four times.

  • The Philadelphia Flyers had lost four of six games before Saturday’s game and Sam Carchidi of Philly.com writes that head coach Dave Hakstol decided to make a change as he separated his top pair defensemen in Shayne Gostisbehere and Ivan Provorov which turned out to be key in their 5-2 win over New Jersey. Gostisbehere was matched with Christian Folin, while Provorov was paired with Robert Hagg. The top four held to the Devils to just 21 shots on goal in the victory. Provorov was also much more noticeable on the offensive end of the ice. Previously held to just one point in the first seven games of the season, the 21-year-old posted two assists on Saturday. “(Hagg) is a little heavier body to play with Provy in some of those situations,” said Hakstol. “He obviously has a different look than Ghost. He doesn’t do as much with the puck, but he provides a heavier presence, so that changes the look of that pair.”
  • Speaking of lines, the St. Louis Blues shook up their lines Saturday as well as center Ryan O’Reilly found himself with two new wingers Zachary Sanford and David Perron on the second line, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Jim Thomas. After his line put up two goals and three assists Saturday (including O’Reilly’s first goal as a member of the Blues), that line may not break up any time soon. “I thought ’O’Ry’ was outstanding obviously in all areas of the game,” Yeo said. “So that line gave us some really good minutes.”
  • NHL.com’s Gary Lawless writes that some of the Vegas Golden Knights’ success in their last three games comes from moving defenseman Nick Holden into the top-four. The veteran defenseman was originally signed to serve as a third pairing defenseman this offseason, but with Nate Schmidt (suspension) and Deryk Engelland (injury) both out, Holden has filled in admirably, averaging 18:54 ATOI. Holden did have a similar role back in 2016-17 when he was with the New York Rangers, so the 31-year-old already has quite a bit of experience playing in that role.
  • After a postseason run last year where Dallas Stars prospect Denis Gurianov was often a healthy scratch and was beginning to look like a bust, the 21-year-old seems to have turned the corner early this season as he has been dominant as he enters his third year with the AHL, writes SportsDay’s Matthew DeFranks. The 12th-overall pick in the 2015 draft is starting to show off his potential as he is riding a five-game scoring streak and has five goals and seven points in seven games.

Central Notes: Dano, Kamenev, Blackhawks, Bouwmeester

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It’s been six days since winger Marko Dano was claimed by the Colorado Avalanche and the 23-year-old forward finally got an opportunity to practice with the team Sunday, but no one is quite sure when he may make his Avalanche debut, but it could come as early as Monday, according to NHL.com’s Callie Parmele.

Dano already has some familiarity with the team, especially with head coach Jared Bednar and assistant coach Nolan Pratt, who both were on the Springfield Falcons coaching staff during the 2013-14 season when Dano made his North American debut in the AHL for the team’s final 10 games. Bednar was promoted to head coach the following year where he had even more time with Dano.

“We had a good run in Springfield, and it’s always good when you know the coach,” Dano said of his relationship with Bednar. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, and I am excited to work with him and I appreciate the chance they have given to me.”

  • Still with the Avalanche, the team likes what it sees in Vladislav Kamenev, who received the most ice time of his career on Thursday when he skated 12:36 against the New Jersey Devils. Although he hasn’t turned that extra time into offense (he has no points in five games this season), he is building trust in his head coach. “We feel like from watching him work in practice in that area, we can give him those minutes,” Bednar said Friday. “We trust him with those minutes. He’s done a nice job in the games so far. I think he’s getting better and better as he feels more comfortable and feels like he belongs, which is normal. I just want him to keep pushing himself and try and be a difference maker every night.”
  • While Chicago Blackhawks Stan Bowman hardly can admit victory in his offseason trade a year ago when he traded Artemi Panarin to Columbus for Brandon Saad and Anton Forsberg, he knew that the Panarin’s contract situation would be a problem for the Blackhawks too had they chosen to hold onto him, according to Mark Lazerus of The Athletic (subscription required), who analyzes who won last year’s trade. Saad has struggled in his return to Chicago and is struggling on the bottom-six, while Forsberg hasn’t fared any better in net for the team, but Bowman knew there were going to be problems with Panarin, who has shown little to no interest in signing an extension in Columbus and has put the team in a tough position as he plays out the final year of his contract while they are trying to compete for a playoff spot. “They’re in a tough spot now,” Bowman told The Athletic on Saturday night. “What do you do with him? I saw that coming as a challenge.”
  • Tom Timmermann of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes that considering how well the St. Louis Blues defense played on Saturday, he doubts whether the team will put defenseman Jay Bouwmeester back on the ice for Monday’s game against Winnipeg. The veteran was scratched for the first time in his career Saturday as his play hasn’t been up to his usual standards. The Blues put forth one of the best games of the season, defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-1.

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