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Snapshots: Samberg, Moutrey, Mikheyev

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The Winnipeg Jets won’t be signing one of their top defensive prospects this summer, as Dylan Samberg is heading back to the University of Minnesota-Duluth for next season according to Matt Wellens of the Duluth News Tribune. Samberg recently completed his sophomore year and has won consecutive NCAA titles with the Bulldogs.

Originally selected 43rd overall in 2017, Samberg has developed into one of the most feared defensemen in the country and looked ready to make the jump to professional hockey this season. The 6’4″ 215-lbs defender has twice suited up for Team USA at the World Juniors, bringing home silver and bronze medals. That’s a lot of hardware for the young Samberg, who could become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2021 if Winnipeg fails to sign him.

  • The Rockford IceHogs will have Nick Moutrey around for another year, as the team announced today that they have signed the 23-year old center to a one-year AHL contract. Moutrey was a fourth-round pick of the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2013 but has failed to reach the NHL. The 6’3″ forward had just five points in 49 games this season, but will provide another big body willing to go into the corners for the IceHogs next year.
  • Reports out of Russia make it sounds like the Vegas Golden Knights and Toronto Maple Leafs are the final two contenders for Russian forward Ilya Mikheyev, but he won’t announce his decision quite yet. The 24-year old winger will see his KHL contract with Avangard Omsk expire at the end of the month, making him free to sign with whoever he wants. After scoring 45 points in 62 games this season there were several teams chasing his services.

Pacific Notes: Brodie, Haula, Nyquist

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With an early and somewhat shocking first-round exit in the playoffs, many feel that the Calgary Flames are likely to make some changes this season to continue building their team into a contender. With plenty of salary cap issues already upon the franchise, the Flames will likely have to move on or trade some of their players in order to free up some much-needed cap room.

In a roundtable discussion, Postmedia’s Danny Austin, Wes Gilbertson and Kristin Andersen suggested several of those players, with defenseman T.J. Brodie potentially being the top name on the list. The 28-year-old Brodie has been a solid defenseman in Calgary for years, but with the emergence of rookies Rasmus Anderson, Juuso Valimaki and Oliver Kylington, the team might be better served by trading Brodie for another top-six forward after the disastrous signing of James Neal.  Brodie, who will still has one year remaining on the five-year, $23.2MM contract he signed in 2014 at an AAV of $4.65MM, might garner quite a bit of interest from teams that need to upgrade their defense.

Other suggestions of players who likely won’t be back included 37-year-old UFA goaltender Mike Smith, who might be let go to give David Rittich a chance to become the starting goaltender next season, and forward Michael Frolik, who has had issues with the team due to his lack of playing time this season.

  • The Athletic’s Jesse Granger (subscription required) profiles the injury of Vegas Golden Knights forward Erik Haula, who suffered a gruesome knee injury on Nov. 6 that saw his season come to an end after appearing in just 15 games. Interesting enough, he was close to returning to Vegas’ lineup during the playoffs had the team not been eliminated by San Jose in the first round. “He was probably a week to 10 days away from being able to practice with the team, and maybe three weeks away from playing,” Vegas general manager George McPhee said. However, Haula will scale back his aggressive rehab after the Golden Knights’ exit and now has four months to get close to 100% to begin next season. He is already penciled in to center the team’s third line next to wingers Alex Tuch and KHL star Nikita Gusev next season, which should be one of the strongest third lines in the league.
  • The San Jose Sharks were forced to play without one of their top players in Game 1 in Joe Pavelski. The veteran forward suffered an upper-body injury in Game 7 of their first-round series after he hit his head following being cross-checked by Vegas’ Cody Eakin. However, despite being without Pavelski against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 1, head coach Peter DeBoer praised his replacement, Gustav Nyquist, who moved up to the team’s second line and scored a goal in the team’s 5-2 win over Colorado, according to Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News. “I thought he was really good,” said DeBoer. “We’ve been waiting for that kind of impact. The effort has been there, but we haven’t had the impact on the game like we got last night, which is something he needs to build on and bring some more of.” Nyquist will continue to play on the second line until Pavelski is ready to return. Pavelski is currently listed as day-to-day.

Mark Stone To Play At The World Championships

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  • Canada has added several players to their team for the upcoming World Championships. TSN’s Darren Dreger reports (Twitter links) that Maple Leafs center John Tavares, Golden Knights winger, and Penguins goalie Matt Murray have all agreed to participate.  Meanwhile, Sportsnet 650’s Rick Dhaliwal adds (Twitter link) that Canucks defenseman Troy Stecher will also be taking part in the tournament which gets underway on May 10th.

Golden Knights Owner Pushing For Major Penalty Review

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A series-defining call, or mistake in the minds of many, has lit a fire underneath the owner of the NHL’s newest team. Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley has already begun lobbying the league to make all major penalty calls reviewable after a controversial major ended up costing his team in the first round.

With a 3-0 lead over the San Jose Sharks in the third period of Game Seven, Vegas center Cody Eakin was issued a five-minute major and game misconduct for cross-checking Sharks counterpart Joe Pavelski, who fell awkwardly to the ice, had to leave the game, and remains sidelined for San Jose. Over the course of that five-minute penalty, the Sharks scored four times and ultimately won in overtime to eliminate the Golden Knights. The penalty was a blatant cross-check and worthy of a two-minute minor, but it’s hard to argue that a major was the right call. In fact, the NHL has reportedly apologized to the club for the call.

While Knights GM George McPhee said that he and the team would not dwell on the call, he apparently wasn’t speaking for his owner. In a press conference on Thursday, Foley informed the media that he believed a major penalty should be reviewable via coach’s challenge. It is unlikely that this was a passion project of the owner prior to his team’s controversial elimination, but it certainly is now. Foley stated that he has already spoken with league officials and fellow owners about the issue and expects it to be a topic of conversation at the summer Board of Governors meeting.

Foley insisted that if a major penalty review process had been in place, the call on Eakin would have been overturned and the Golden Knights would have won the game and advanced to the next round. However, the owner is only focusing on one part of the problem. Bad calls happen, but if your team cannot allow less than four goals over one five-minute penalty, it would seem that the penalty kill is a bigger issue than the league’s policies and procedures.

William Karlsson Looking For Long-Term Contract

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The Vegas Golden Knights came into existence last season with almost no long-term commitments. It was obvious from their expansion draft strategy that they were after as much flexibility as possible, and selected several players with expiring deals. Now just two seasons into their history that has completely changed, with long-term extensions handed out like candy for their core pieces. Mark Stone, Reilly Smith, Jon Marchessault, Max Pacioretty, Alex Tuch, Shea Theodore, Colin Miller, Brayden McNabb, Nate Schmidt and Marc-Andre Fleury are all signed through at least 2021-22, and there soon could be another name to add to that group.

William Karlsson, the breakout star of the Golden Knights’ inaugural season, is scheduled to be a restricted free agent for the final time this summer and is arbitration eligible once again. Karlsson told David Schoen of the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he had some preliminary talks with the team before the playoffs and that he hopes to sign a long-term deal with Vegas. If Karlsson went to arbitration the process would only be able to award him a one-year contract, taking him to unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2020.

There were some who expected the Golden Knights to lock up Karlsson last summer, but their decision to wait seems to have paid off. The 26-year old forward could not replicate the 43-goal campaign he had in 2017-18, and finished with just 24 goals and 56 points this season. While that was still good enough for second on the team in scoring, Karlsson is in a much different place when heading into negotiations.

It was always expected that Karlsson would experience some regression, given the mind-boggling 23.4% shooting percentage he enjoyed in 2017-18. His previous high for goals had been just nine in a full season, but a move to Vegas has turned him into a much more effective offensive player. He also won the Lady Byng award last year, and received votes for both the Selke and Hart trophies.

That outstanding season turned into a one-year $5.25MM contract for Karlsson, a contract that will have an interesting effect on his next deal. UFA seasons usually cost more to buy out in long-term deals, meaning any multi-year contract will be an expensive addition to the Vegas salary structure. How that can fit in isn’t totally clear, given the some $82MM that the team has already committed to next year. That total doesn’t include new deals for Nikita Gusev or Jimmy Schuldt either, though it’s not clear how expensive they will be after burning through their entry-level deals without really playing.

The Golden Knights have quickly put themselves in a tricky financial situation, and one that may result in the team moving out a player or two as a cap casualty. It would have been difficult to see that coming a few days after the draft, but GM George McPhee has been aggressive in acquiring the talent to make his team a Stanley Cup contender right away.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Requests Coming Quickly For Vegas AGM

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The Vegas Golden Knights organization is probably still reeling from an incredible loss in game seven to the San Jose Sharks, but before long they’ll have to start thinking about their future. One person who will quickly have interested parties calling on him is assistant general manager Kelly McCrimmon, who has been linked to the GM searches of both the Edmonton Oilers and expansion Seattle team in the past. Today, Darren Dreger of TSN tweets that the Oilers will send a request for permission to speak with McCrimmon in the coming days.

It’s good fortune for the Oilers that the Golden Knights were eliminated by the Sharks last night, given that the team has been open with the fact that they want their front office search done in the next few weeks. The Golden Knights looked like they were sailing straight through to the second round before a five-minute major penalty was assessed to Cody Eakin in the third period. That penalty changed the course of the game and very well could change the course of the Oilers search, given how highly regarded McCrimmon is around the league.

After running the Brandon Wheat Kings organization for decades, McCrimmon came to the Golden Knights as they were preparing for their own expansion draft and has been credited with many of the strategies the team took to build a winner right away. Not only did Vegas put together an excellent NHL team, but their excellent draft class in 2017 allowed them to pull off some of the biggest trades of the last year. Names like Erik Brannstrom and Nick Suzuki were used as bait to land Mark Stone and Max Pacioretty, two players who will lead the Golden Knights for some time.

Those kinds of trades may be exactly what the Oilers are looking for. The team can’t wait around to draft and rebuild their team while Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are in prime years of production. There needs to be an improvement around them, and whoever is hired as GM will be tasked to start that immediately.

Ilya Mikheyev Expected To Make Decision Soon

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We heard a few days ago that KHL forward Ilya Mikheyev was being pursued by the Vegas Golden Knights, but they’re not the only team trying to get him under contract. Today, Igor Eronko of Sport-Express has heard that the Toronto Maple Leafs are among the final few teams, while Darren Dreger of TSN includes Vegas and the Chicago Blackhawks as well. Dreger notes that a majority of the league has shown interest, and that a decision is expected this weekend.

Mikheyev, 24, is a versatile forward that has played several seasons in the KHL with Avangard Omsk. This year he finished with 23 goals and 45 points, before putting up another 11 in his 13 playoff appearances. The 6’2″ winger is a great skater and plays his off-wing, allowing him to use his speed to drive the net and get shots away in tight. Whether that offense would translate to the NHL is still unclear, but teams are more than willing to take a chance.

He will be limited to a one-year entry-level contract whenever he does sign, likely with some sort of agreement to get a chance at the NHL in 2019-20. Teams courting him may well include a European Assignment Clause, allowing him to return to the KHL if they try to send him to the minor leagues. That is of course unless Mikheyev is committed to the long haul in North America and is willing to work with a development team to maximize his NHL potential.

Golden Knights Interested In Ilya Mikheyev

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The Golden Knights made a splash in Russia earlier this month with the signing of winger Nikita Gusev.  Now, it appears they have their sights set on winger Ilya Mikheyev.  A report from Sport-Express in Russia suggested that he has agreed to terms with Vegas but Sport-Express writer Igor Eronko clarified (Twitter link) that they are interested in signing him but Mikheyev has other NHL offers on the table and has yet to make a decision.

The 24-year-old recently wrapped up his best season in the KHL, picking up 23 goals and 22 assists in 62 games with Avangard Omsk.  He was even more productive in the postseason, collecting 11 points (4-7-11) in just 13 contests, good for fourth on the team in scoring.  Eronko notes that he is also an effective penalty killer which would bode well for his chances for making it as a bottom six player in the NHL.

Mikheyev is still subject to the entry-level system but his initial contract can only be for one year with a maximum base salary of $925K, including a 10% signing bonus.  As he isn’t eligible to play in the NHL this season since he wasn’t on a Reserve List before the trade deadline, he can’t sign a 2018-19 contract and burn it immediately since the regular season has already passed.  (Gusev was able to do so since he was on Vegas’ Reserve List, making him postseason-eligible.)  Mikheyev’s KHL contract doesn’t expire until the end of April so an official announcement on where he winds up isn’t likely to come for a couple more weeks.

AHL Notes: Studnicka, Conway, Bouchard, Jones, Howdeshell

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The Providence Bruins face the tall task of defeating the Charlotte Checkers in their first-round match-up of the Calder Cup Playoffs, after Charlotte’s historic season earned them the top seed in the Eastern Conference. If Providence is able to do so, it will likely be in no small part due to the efforts of their newest addition. Forward Jack Studnicka, the Boston Bruins’ 2017 second-round pick and the player considered by many to be their top prospect, has joined Providence following the end of his junior season. In a strange turnaround, Studnicka and the stacked Niagara Ice Dogs simply could not figure out fellow Bruins prospect Kyle Keyser in net and were surprisingly knocked off by his Oshawa Generals in the second round of the OHL Playoffs. Oshawa had traded Studnicka to Niagara earlier in the season, yet somehow emerged from the match-up with their former captain. Now, Stunicka has to move on from his junior season and try to help Providence immediately in their own playoff run. He was able to make an instant impact last year, recording five points in five games with the P-Bruins. This time around, he could be an even bigger threat. Studnicka scored at better than a point-per-game pace with both Oshawa and Niagara this season, totaling 83 points in 60 games. He’s also trying to impress the Boston brass, as Studnicka’s OHL career is over and this is his first step toward cracking the Bruins’ roster next season. Adding a motivated and talented top prospect to the mix should be a major boost for Providence.

The P-Bruins have also added a local product to the roster, reports Mark Divver of The Providence Journal. Divver writes that Providence College senior Scott Conway has joined the team and has signed a one-year AHL contract as well. Conway, 24, is coming off an interesting collegiate career, in which he showed consistent success but also flashed next-level ability that never fully manifested. After his freshman year at Penn State University, in which he recorded a respectable 26 points in 34 games, Conway opted to leave the program and played the 2015-16 season outside of the NCAA with the BCHL’s Penticton Vees. Conway was a star in the BCHL, amassing a league-leading 116 points while skating alongside Colorado Avalanche center Tyson Jost and quickly committed to a new college team in Providence. Yet, in three seasons with the Friars, Conway’s numbers were no better than they were with the Nittany Lions. It’s thus unclear what the ceiling may be for the experienced English forward, who dominated the junior-A level, but failed to reach stardom at the college level. The Bruins likely got a good look at the local product and willing to see what he can bring to the table next season.

  • Like Studnicka, two other highly-touted junior prospects have also joined their respective AHL teams for the playoff run. Defenseman Evan Bouchard, who played in seven games with the Edmonton Oilers to begin the season, has been assigned to the Bakersfield Condors, the team announced. Last year’s tenth overall pick notched 53 points in 45 games with the OHL’s London Knights this year and added another three points at the World Juniors with Team Canada. Bouchard is a near-lock to make the Oilers out of camp next season and can further improve those odds with a strong stretch of play for the Condors. Ben Jones, a seventh-round pick of the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017, has already proven to be a steal and will look to advance that title with his first pro experience. A teammate of Studnicka’s in Niagara, Jones led the team with 102 points on the year, but was held in check in the postseason compared to his fellow Ice Dogs standouts. Nevertheless, Jones will still be an exciting addition for the Chicago Wolves after a top-ten scoring season in the OHL. Having graduated from the junior level, this is also a peak into what’s in store for Jones next season in the pros.
  • Like Conway, another promising undrafted prospect has been brought in by an AHL team just prior to the postseason, only that team didn’t qualify for the postseason. Forward Keeghan Howdeshell of the OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds has signed a one-year deal with the Tuscon Roadrunners, his former club revealed. The Roadrunners are already looking ahead to next season after failing to grab one of the final spots in the Western Conference playoff picture, much like their parent club. Howdeshell, 21, finished tied for second in scoring for the Greyhounds this year with 77 points in 66 games. The U.S. National Team Development Program product seemed likely to be drafted but was instead passed over several times. He has since re-established his value and will look to translate his game to the pro level with Tuscon next season. A strong campaign could lead to Howdeshell earning an entry-level deal with the Arizona Coyotes.

NHL Announces 2019 Selke Trophy Finalists

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The NHL has announced the finalists for the 2019 Frank J. Selke Trophy, given to the best defensive forward in the league. Boston Bruins center Patrice Bergeron, who has won the award four times, received his eighth consecutive nomination. With him are St. Louis Blues center Ryan O’Reilly and Vegas Golden Knights winger Mark Stone.

Bergeron’s presence on the list should come as no surprise. The 33-year old center has long been considered one of the best defensive forwards to ever suit up in the NHL, finishing just outside the finalist group twice even before this nearly unprecedented eight-year run. Still, given the fact that he played just 65 games and logged an average of just 13:30 at even strength some may point to other deserving candidates like Aleksander Barkov who seem to have been overlooked. There’s no doubt that Bergeron still has the chops for this prize, but as he ages and more responsibility is put on other Bruins it will be harder and harder for him to take home the trophy.

In his place as a potential yearly candidate is O’Reilly, who turned in the best season of his career after a move to St. Louis. Though his 77 points don’t directly tie into the Selke voting (or at least, they shouldn’t), they were all the more impressive given his outstanding efforts in the defensive end. O’Reilly was once again one of the best faceoff men in the league, winning more draws than any other player and converting at a 56.9% rate. He has never been named a finalist for the award previously, but has received at least some votes in each of the last eight years.

Stone’s appearance here is perhaps most impressive, given that he does not play the position most often linked to the Selke trophy. The Golden Knights forward lines up on the wing but is arguably the best player in the league at creating neutral zone turnovers and hardly ever gives the puck up without a fight. That two-way ability is exactly why the Golden Knights decided to go out and acquire him at the deadline, and that decision is paying off handsomely as he leads all players with six goals and ten points in the playoffs.

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