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Training Camp Cuts: 9/23/24

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Training camp cuts continue Monday across the league, mostly involving fringe prospects being returned to their junior teams. As always, we’re keeping track of today’s moves with this article, which will be updated throughout the day.

Colorado Avalanche (per team announcement)

F Chad Hillebrand (released from PTO to AHL Colorado)
D Devante Stephens (released from PTO to AHL Colorado)
D Saige Weinstein (to WHL Spokane)

Los Angeles Kings (per team announcement)

F Cole Davis (released from ATO to OHL Windsor)
F Ethan Neutens (released from ATO to WHL Kelowna)
F Oliver Tulk (released from ATO to WHL Calgary)
D Corbin Vaughan (released from ATO to WHL Regina)
F Luke Woodworth (released from ATO to QMJHL Drummondville)

Nashville Predators (per team announcement)

F Kalan Lind (to WHL Red Deer)
D Dylan MacKinnon (to QMJHL Moncton)
F Miguel Marques (to WHL Lethbridge)
G Jakub Milota (to QMJHL Cape Breton)
F Joey Willis (to OHL Saginaw)

New York Rangers (per team announcement)

G Hugo Ollas (to AHL Hartford)

Ottawa Senators (per team announcement)

D Matthew Andonovski (to OHL Kitchener)
F Lucas Ellinas (to OHL Kitchener)
D Gabriel Eliasson (to SHL HV71)
D Filip Nordberg (to USHL Sioux Falls)

San Jose Sharks (per Max Miller of The Hockey News/NHL.com)

D Jérémie Bucheler (released from PTO to AHL San Jose)
F Nolan Burke (to AHL San Jose)
F Joe Carroll (released from PTO to AHL San Jose)
G Dawson Cowan (released from ATO to WHL Spokane)
G Aaron Dell (released from PTO to AHL San Jose) – per Curtis Pashelka of the Bay Area News Group
F Luke Grainger (released from PTO to AHL San Jose)
D Gannon Laroque (to AHL San Jose)
F Ivan Lodnia (released from PTO)
D Nate Misskey (to WHL Victoria)
F Nathan Pilling (released from ATO to WHL Victoria)
D Colton Roberts (to WHL Vancouver)
F Donavan Villeneuve-Houle (released from PTO to AHL San Jose)
F Carson Wetsch (to WHL Calgary)

Seattle Kraken (per team announcement)

D Alexis Bernier (to QMJHL Baie-Comeau)
F Clarke Caswell (to WHL Swift Current)
D Lukas Dragicevic (to WHL Prince Albert)
D Jakub Fibigr (to OHL Brampton)
D Kaden Hammell (to WHL Everett)
F Ollie Josephson (to WHL Red Deer)
D Tyson Jugnauth (to WHL Portland)
F Andrei Loshko (to OHL Niagara)
F Julius Miettinen (to WHL Everett)
D Caden Price (to WHL Kelowna)

Vegas Golden Knights (per team announcement)

F Mikael Huchette (to USports Concordia)
D Viliam Kmec (to WHL Prince George)
D Mazden Leslie (to WHL Vancouver)
F Jacob Mathieu (to QMJHL Rimouski)
F Shane Smith (to WHL Medicine Hat)
F Tuomas Uronen (to OHL Kingston)

Golden Knights Sign Viliam Kmec To Entry-Level Contract

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The Golden Knights have signed defenseman Viliam Kmec to a three-year, entry-level contract, general manager Kelly McCrimmon announced Monday.

Kmec, 20, lands his first professional contract after being passed over for the third straight draft in June. He’s been in the Vegas organization unofficially for the past few months, receiving invites to their July development camp and this month’s rookie camp before being extended an amateur tryout for training camp.

The right-shot defender checks in at 6’3″ and 209 lbs, already boasting pro-ready size. That’s an appealing package when combined with his strong all-around performance for the WHL’s Prince George Cougars. Over the past two seasons, Kmec – a stay-at-home defender by trade – still managed 66 points in 118 games with a combined +63 rating.

Prince George’s three 20-year-old slots are full, so Kmec won’t be heading back to juniors for a fourth season. Instead, all signs point to the Golden Knights assigning him to their AHL affiliate, the Henderson Silver Knights, when they decide to cut him from their training camp roster.

The Slovakia native is a nice under-the-radar add to a Golden Knights prospect pool that ranked 27th in the league in Elite Prospects’ 2024 rankings. He’s suited up for Slovakia at the past three World Junior Championships, totaling six points and a -1 rating in 14 games.

Pacific Notes: Lehner, Poolman, Kassian

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The Vegas Golden Knights are exploring all options, including contract termination, after goaltender Robin Lehner failed to attend the contractually mandatory pre-season medical exam ahead of training camp, shares Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli. The exam was necessary to confirm Lehner’s medical ineligibility for next season. Seravalli adds that Vegas has been in contact with the NHL and NHL Players’ Association on how to reasonably handle the manner, considering Lehner hasn’t played in over two years. His last game came on April 20, 2022, with his career ended by a hip injury, though Lehner also faced multiple concussions.

Lehner was three years into a five-year, $25MM contract when he stepped away from the game, with the last season slated for the upcoming 2024-25. He only played in 99 games on the contract – spending a third with the Chicago Blackhawks – but he was accomplished when he played, recording 55 wins and a .913 save percentage. Lehner took home the William M Jennings Trophy twice in his career, the Bill Masterton Trophy in 2019, and ranked in the top six of Vezina Trophy voting every year between 2018 and 2020. The achievements spanned a 12-year, 364-game tenure in the NHL.

Other notes from out West:

  • Vancouver Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin announced that defender Tucker Poolman won’t play this season, per Brendan Batchelor of Sportsnet 650. Poolman hasn’t played since the 2022-23 season, when his career was ended by chronic migraines. He played in three games and scored one assist that year, marking the fifth NHL season Poolman took part in, though he only managed to play in a majority of his team’s games once. That came in the 2019-20 season, when Poolman played in 57 games and scored 16 points with the Winnipeg Jets. He worked his way up to second-pair ice time for parts of that season, but ultimately couldn’t stick in the lineup through repeat injuries. His career ended at 163 games and 17 points – still impressive numbers for a fifth-round pick out of the 2013 NHL Draft.
  • The Edmonton Oilers have hired the recently-retired Zack Kassian as a pro scout, per NHL.com’s Jim Matheson. Kassian spent 12 years in the NHL, seven being served in Edmonton. He was never much of a scorer, but fought his way into a middle-six role as the hardnosed and gritty presence to back Edmonton’s finesse players. He even worked into occasional power-play usage – despite a career-high of just 34 points – thanks to his ability to body opponents out of shooting lanes. Kassian’s career ended with 661 games and 203 points. He’ll now look to translate that experience to the hockey ops side of house, supporting a Oilers scouting room that recently departed with longtime pro scout and assistant general manager Brad Holland.

Golden Knights Notes: Marchessault, Theodore, Hagg

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The departure of Jonathan Marchessault to Nashville in free agency was one of the bigger surprises with many expecting that he’d have re-signed with the Golden Knights.  Team reporter Gary Lawless transcribed a part of a Sirius XM interview with Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon where he indicated that while they eventually went to four years on their offer for the 33-year-old, they weren’t comfortable going to five which is how many he received from the Predators.  Marchessault spent seven seasons with Vegas, recording 192 goals and 225 assists in 514 games, making him the franchise leader in every category.

More from Vegas:

  • One player who will beat at least one of those club records this season is defenseman Shea Theodore who sits just two assists behind Marchessault (while also being 70 games behind that mark). The 29-year-old is entering the final year of his contract and Vegas’ Jason Pothier highlights how it won’t be easy to retain him.  Theodore held out for a pricey post-entry-level contract after being acquired (one that sees him making $5.2MM) and has been one of the more productive blueliners since then, ranking 13th in points by a defender since 2018.  He’ll begin his next deal at 30 and could add $3MM or more to his current price tag.  With Alex Pietrangelo and Noah Hanifin already on the books at more than $16MM combined, it might be tough for the Golden Knights to afford a third big-ticket rearguard on their books.
  • Veteran free agent blueliner Robert Hagg inked a one-year, one-way deal worth $775K with Vegas this summer. The 29-year-old told Expressen’s Gunnar Nordstrom that he had an offer from Modo in Sweden this summer which would have been a return to the program he played in before making the move to North America.  However, after a rough 2023-24 season that saw him play in just five NHL games with Anaheim, Hagg wanted an opportunity to show that he can be more of a contributor at the top level and isn’t ready to return to play at home just yet.

Mark Stone Hoping To Play All 82 Games This Season

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Edmonton Oilers general manager Stan Bowman didn’t close the door on adding to his roster between now and the start of the regular season. The Oilers have been busy this week making multiple trades and dealing with the fallout of the offer sheet saga with the St. Louis Blues. Bowman didn’t get into any specifics as far as adding to the Oilers lineup but did comment that they have the capability to do so if there is a player out there that makes sense.

Edmonton is pretty set at forward, but their defense leaves a lot to be desired outside of their top pairing. There are a lot of question marks on the bottom two pairings and one could argue they don’t have another top-four defenseman beyond Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm. The Oilers won’t find a second-pairing defenseman in free agency but could look at Kevin Shattenkirk as an option to fill the void. Shattenkirk was just fine last season for the Bruins in a depth role and averaged nearly 20 minutes a game just two seasons ago. He isn’t an ideal second-pairing defenseman, but he is probably a better option than what the Oilers are currently looking to deploy on the right side of their second unit.

In other evening notes:

  • St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong spoke today about offer sheets and said he isn’t aware of any GM code regarding the little-used tactic. Armstrong used two offer sheets last week to pry Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg away from the Edmonton Oilers and poured water on the notion that he wouldn’t have done so if former Oilers general manager Ken Holland was still on the job. Armstrong added that he would have tendered the offer sheets to Edmonton even if his own mother was in charge of the team. Offer sheets remain rare in the NHL, and a team using two of them in the same summer is unheard of.
  • Vegas Golden Knights writer Gary Lawless spoke with captain Mark Stone recently to discuss the upcoming season. Stone told Lawless that he expects to play 82 games next season after a spleen injury limited him to just 56 games last season. Those 56 games marked a high mark in games played for the 32-year-old since the 2019-20 season when he dressed in 65 games. Stone also added that he’s hoping to make Team Canada for the upcoming 4 Nations Face-off as well as the next Olympics which is certainly a possibility if the Winnipeg, Manitoba native can stay healthy. Stone was terrific in limited time last season, posting 16 goals and 37 assists in the aforementioned 56 games.

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.

Canucks Testing Goalie Market Amid Thatcher Demko’s Injury

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The Canucks are on the hunt for some short-term goalie help on the trade and UFA market, CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal said on Sportsnet 650 Tuesday. That’s because star starter Thatcher Demko is healing slower than expected from the knee injury he sustained early in their first-round series against the Predators and still isn’t 100%, per Dhaliwal.

Dhaliwal said it’s unclear if Demko has undergone surgery to address the knee injury, and Vancouver has been concerned about the pace of his rehab as far back as the draft in June.

This storyline comes after information about Demko’s return timeline varied wildly throughout the postseason. Multiple reports stated he’d only be out for one series, while others said he would be shut down for the season. The team never officially ruled him out, instead continuously listing him as week-to-week, but he never did return to the lineup after recording a win in Game 1 against the Predators.

The Canucks were also rumored to be sniffing around for a veteran name to supplement their crease and provide competition for emerging youngster Arturs Silovs around the draft and free agency, but that never came to fruition. Last year’s No. 2 option, Casey DeSmith, wasn’t brought back and signed a three-year deal with the Stars. Vancouver’s only notable offseason addition between the pipes was former Golden Knights prospect Jiri Patera, who’s meant as a No. 3/4 option behind Silovs.

Those rumblings will get louder now with Demko’s status uncertain. The most clear-cut addition for the Canucks would be Kevin Lankinen, the top goalie left on the UFA market. His time as a Predator ended at the hands of Vancouver last season, and he remains unsigned after Nashville opted to sign Scott Wedgewood to replace him as Juuse Saros’ backup. The 29-year-old Finn was an above-average backup during his two years in Tennessee but was sparsely used, posting a 20-14-1 record and .912 SV% in 35 starts and eight relief appearances. Still, he’d be a cheap pickup, certainly not more than the $2MM he made last year after waiting for this late into August to sign.

Some other notable veteran UFA options include Martin Jones and Antti Raanta, but both are significantly older than Lankinen and have a much higher potential for age-related regression. Jones is coming off a resurgent year as the third-stringer for the Maple Leafs, but Raanta’s typically strong but injury-plagued play collapsed last season with a .872 SV% in 24 games for the Hurricanes.

On the trade market, funnily enough, Nashville might be one of their first calls. Top goaltending prospect Yaroslav Askarov has reportedly submitted a trade request to the club, but it’s a situation that could potentially be resolved if they decided to flip Scott Wedgewood, who signed a two-year, $3MM contract with the club on July 1st. He’s spent the last three seasons in the Dallas Stars organization, though he sat out much of the 2021-22 campaign. Wedgewood has played in 53 games over the two seasons since, posting 15 wins and a collective .907 save percentage behind Jake Oettinger. He’s poised to fill the same role in Nashville – ceding a majority of starts to a proven starter and limiting Askarov’s chance at the NHL ice time he’s searching for. With Nashville facing a formal trade request from one of the league’s top goalie prospects, the Canucks could benefit from timing, and reel in another hardy backup to help fill time before Demko’s return – a situation akin to the Tampa Bay Lightning’s platooning while Andrei Vasilevskiy missed time last season.

The Canucks may be able to offer that upside in the short-term, but it’ll be hard to move too far from Demko, who’s risen to prominency as he’s taken over Vancouver’s top role. That growth peaked this season, with Demko ranking second in Vezina Trophy after posting a .918 through 51 appearances. He’s signed at a $5MM cap hit through the next two seasons and is likely to hang onto Vancouver’s starting crease through any new additions. That strings out a tight-rope the Canucks will need to walk, as they make the decision between a lofty goalie trade, a free agent signing, or leaning on unproven backups.

Pacific Notes: Chernyshov, Pettersson, Holtz, Barr

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Sharks 2024 second-round pick Igor Chernyshov has officially found a place to play this season. As he said was likely the case last week, he’s inked a scholarship and development agreement with the Saginaw Spirit of the Ontario Hockey League, per the club.

The 33rd overall pick in June was originally supposed to remain in his native Russia next season. He had one year left on his contract with Dynamo Moscow of the Kontinental Hockey League, but he bought himself out of the deal last week and subsequently signed his entry-level contract with the Sharks.

Chernyshov, 18, will attend training camp for a brief period in San Jose before being returned to Saginaw, likely for the entire 2024-25 campaign. Doing so will slide the beginning of his entry-level contract to 2025-26.

The 6’3″, 203-lb winger had three goals and one assist for four points in 34 KHL games last season. He was much more productive in the junior ranks, posting 28 points (13 G, 15 A) in 22 games with MHK Dynamo Moscow.

More out of the Pacific Division:

  • When Chernyshov’s move to Saginaw was announced this morning, there was a brief thought that Ducks 2024 second-rounder Lucas Pettersson might join him in Michigan. That won’t be the case, however. Sources told Max Miller of The Hockey News and Scott Wheeler of The Athletic that he’ll remain in his native Sweden after being selected by the Spirit in the CHL Import Draft. Pettersson, 18, was selected two picks after Chernyshov in June. He’ll likely get some action in the pros with MoDo Hockey of the Swedish Hockey League, but could still spend a solid chunk of 2024-25 with their junior team. The 5’11” center was one of the Swedish junior circuit’s leading scorers last season, posting 57 points (27 goals, 30 assists) in 44 games for MoDo’s U-20 club.
  • The Golden Knights bought low on 2020 seventh-overall pick Alexander Holtz this summer, only parting ways with depth forward Paul Cotter and a 2025 third-rounder to acquire him and Akira Schmid from the Devils. Speaking to reporters, Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon said Holtz was “a player we had tremendous regard for as an amateur. We’re taking a swing at his upside and what a change can do sometimes for young players” (via James Nichols of New Jersey Hockey Now). McCrimmon thinks Holtz has “untapped potential that we feel we can unlock here to some degree with the opportunity,” he added. With Jonathan Marchessault and Chandler Stephenson among the key departures from Vegas’ forward group this summer, Holtz will be relied upon as a top-nine scoring option for the Knights in 2024-25 with the potential to challenge for top-six minutes. The 22-year-old had 28 points in 82 games in New Jersey last year.
  • The Ducks have added to their minor-league coaching staff, hiring Dave Barr as an assistant for the AHL’s San Diego Gulls, per a team release. Barr, 63, spent last season as an assistant with the Chicago Wolves during their one year of operating independently of an NHL affiliation. He has 12 years of experience as an assistant at the game’s highest level, spending time on benches for the Avalanche, Wild, Devils, Sabres, Panthers and Sharks from 2008 to 2020. Before joining the Wolves last season, he spent two years as the head coach of the Vienna Capitals in Austria’s ICEHL.

Jakub Demek Hoping To Become A Leader For Vegas

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In what will be his final development camp with the Vegas Golden Knights, prospect Jakub Demek hopes to refine his game enough to make his NHL debut next year. In a write-up from Paul Delos Santos of the NHL, it was made clear that Demek is ready to be a leader both on and off the ice with the Golden Knights organization.

He was originally drafted 128th overall by Vegas in the 2021 NHL Draft and participated in his first professional season last year. The Golden Knights have a requirement that its prospects participate in development camp after their first full professional season and Demek quickly became one of the group’s leaders. This is one of the main pillars of Vegas’ development path as director of player development, Will Nichol, remarked, “[When you’re at your last developmental camp], there’s that last piece of development — leadership. That’s a huge part of the development as you keep passing the baton on with culture“.

Demek suited up in 55 games for the organization’s AHL affiliate in Henderson last year where he scored seven goals and 16 points. The Golden Knights recalled Demek from the AHL last year in late February but he did not make his NHL debut. The young Slovakian still has a few key developmental items to take care of before he becomes a full-time member of Vegas’ roster but that is where he is aiming for the 2024-25 NHL season.

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