Sam Gagner Confirms Retirement, Joins Senators’ Front Office
Longtime NHL forward Sam Gagner has confirmed his retirement and will join the Senators as their director of player development, the team announced.
“Sam had an incredible career as a player and we look forward to launching his next chapter,” Ottawa general manager Steve Staios said. “A true character individual, Sam has contributed to the success of his organizations, both on and off the ice.”
Gagner, 35, last played in the league during the 2023-24 season when he appeared in 28 games for the Oilers, his third go-around with the team that drafted him sixth overall in 2007. He cracked the 1,000 game plateau a few years ago. He finished his career with 1,034 regular-season appearances but played just 11 postseason contests over 17 years in the NHL, only reaching the Stanley Cup Playoffs with the Flyers in 2016 and the Blue Jackets in 2017.
After tantalizing with 118 points in just 53 junior games with the OHL’s London Knights in his draft year, the 5’11” center never arrived as an elite scoring presence in the pros. He was still a consistent yet sometimes injury-prone 40-point scorer, especially early in his career with Edmonton. He averaged 17 goals and 50 points per 82 games over the first seven years of his career with the Oilers and averaged north of 17 minutes per game.
One season into a three-year, $14.4MM contract he signed with the Oilers as an RFA, Gagner was flipped to the Coyotes via the Lightning in the summer of 2014 after underwhelming with 37 points and a -29 rating in 67 games the year prior. So began the journeyman stage of Gagner’s career as his offensive production fluctuated wildly from year to year, even resulting in some time in the minors. Between 2014 and 2020, Gagner would suit up for the Flyers, Blue Jackets, Canucks, the Oilers for a second time, and the Red Wings in addition to his year in Arizona. During that run, he scored a career-high 50 points in 81 games with Columbus in the 2016-17 campaign.
Gagner got a modicum of stability to end his career, spending two full seasons with Detroit after they acquired him from Edmonton at the 2020 trade deadline. He spent the 2022-23 season with the Jets before signing his final NHL deal with the Oilers nearly two years ago. The versatile right-shot pivot finishes his career with 197 goals, 332 assists, 529 points, and a -139 rating, averaging 15:37 per game and a 45.6 FO%. He earned approximately $38.1MM in salary throughout his career, per PuckPedia.
While Gagner didn’t play in the NHL last season, he was still active on an AHL deal with the Senators’ affiliate in Belleville, giving some context for his joining the front office of a team he never suited up for in the majors. He recorded 10 assists in 19 games for the B-Sens, appearing in his last game on March 5.
Ottawa also announced they’ve hired Matt Turek to serve as Belleville’s GM while taking a player personnel role with the parent club. He arrives in Ottawa after spending the last decade with the Hamilton/Brantford Bulldogs of the OHL as a scout and, later, their GM. Senators majority owner Michael Andlauer also owns that club, and Turek also worked under Staios as a scout when the latter was Hamilton’s GM before succeeding him upon his departure.
Turek will take on most of the responsibilities vacated by former assistant GM Ryan Bowness, who the Senators told clubs earlier this month won’t be back with the team next season.
Image courtesy of Ed Mulholland-Imagn Images.
Logan Stanley Set To Be Healthy Scratch For Jets
Despite a clean bill of health, Winnipeg Jets defenseman Logan Stanley is expected to be a healthy scratch for Game 4 against the Dallas Stars, per Mike McIntyre of Winnipeg News.
Known for his physical presence, Stanley was injured in Game 6 of the team’s first-round matchup against the St. Louis Blues. Before his injury, he posted 42 penalty minutes in five games and had no points and a negative plus-minus to show for it. The massive 6’7” presence could give the team a physically imposing force on the back end, but his style of play may not be the best matchup against Mikko Rantanen and the Stars’ skill-heavy attack. The 26-year-old recorded one goal, 14 points, 88 hits, 76 blocked shots, and 78 penalty minutes in 63 regular-season contests this season.
As the Jets look to even the series, Haydn Fleury will remain slotted into the lineup on the team’s third defensive pairing alongside veteran Colin Miller. Fleury recorded seven assists and a minus-12 in 39 regular-season games. However, his playoff metrics have looked much better, as he’s produced a plus-two rating and chipped in two assists in five games thus far. Additionally, he has averaged 17:24 of ice time per game in the playoffs — a solid increase from his regular season average of 15:56 — showcasing a growing level of trust in the 28-year-old’s play. That figure was certainly inflated by their double-overtime victory in Game 7 of the first round. However, that opportunity provided Fleury with the platform to highlight the impact Fleury can have on the blue line, as he logged a career-high 33:02 after Josh Morrissey left in the first period with an injury.
Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel recently told media, including NHL.com staff writer Tracey Myers, that Fleury provides the team with a mobile option on the back end. “Again, another skillset. He’s real mobile, he can skate out of trouble. Another guy that can be a part of that rush, a part of what we’re talking about getting after Dallas here and getting on our toes. And that’s what he brings to our game,” Arniel said.
Winnipeg Jets Recall Parker Ford
Needing additional depth due to the unknown status of a few key players, the Winnipeg Jets have made a small recall from their AHL affiliate. The Jets announced they’ve recalled forward Parker Ford from the Manitoba Moose for tonight’s contest against the Dallas Stars.
Earlier today, head coach Scott Arniel told reporters that forward Mark Scheifele, defensemen Josh Morrissey and Logan Stanley are game-time decisions for tonight’s contest. Scheifele has arguably been the most notable loss, missing Game 5 and Game 6 in the Jets’ opening-round matchup against the St. Louis Blues. He scored two goals and six points in the five games he played.
Ford won’t be tasked with replicating Scheifele’s offensive capabilities, but he’s an interesting plug-and-play option for Winnipeg. The Wakefield, RI native debuted in the NHL this past season in late January, scoring his first goal in his first NHL game.
Appearing in a postseason contest, on the fourth line or not, would be a big step for the former collegiate free agent out of Providence College. He’s only in his second full professional season and is on the heels of an 18-goal, 41-point campaign in 2023-24. Ford’s offensive output understandably decreased with fewer games played, as he scored 14 goals and 21 points in 41 contests for the Moose during the 2024-25 season.
Jets’ Mark Scheifele To Miss Game 7, Logan Stanley Questionable
The Winnipeg Jets received grim news to start their Sunday, as it’s been revealed that star center Mark Scheifele won’t be health enough to dress for Game 7, per Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Free Press. Both players were absent from Winnipeg’s morning skate. The details of Scheifele’s injury haven’t been disclosed. He exited Game 5 in the first period a few shifts after receiving a big hit from St. Louis Blues captain Brayden Schenn. Scheifele sat out of Game 6 but took the ice at Saturday morning’s practice, donning a track suit. Wiebe also shares that defenseman Logan Stanley will be a game-time decision.
Scheifele will stick in the track suit as Winnipeg faces a must-win game on Sunday. He’s been a true star for the Jets all season long, having appeared in all 82 games of the regular season and scoring 39 goals and 87 points – both second on the team behind Kyle Connor‘s 41 goals and 97 points. Scheifele’s strong scoring carried nicely into the postseason, where he managed two goals and six points in five games, or 13 periods, of action.
The Jets offense simply doesn’t function the same without their high-motor, high-speed center leading the charge. Winnipeg turned to Vladislav Namestnikov and Adam Lowry to fill the roles of top-six center in Game 6, which added plenty of pressure to the shoulders of top wingers Connor, Gabriel Vilardi, and Nikolaj Ehlers. The Jets only managed two goals with that makeup – both coming on the power-play, where they had the clearest advantage over the Blues. That could be Winnipeg’s silver lining, as St. Louis has recorded the second-most penalty minutes in the postseason so far, with 148 through six games. Unfortunately, the only team above them is indeed the Jets, who have recorded seven more penalties than St. Louis.
Efforts to balance out penalties could be made a bit easier if hard-hitting defender Logan Stanley is forced to sit. He leads the entire postseason with 42 penalty minutes in five games played, and has no scoring and a negative plus-minus to show for it. Stanley is an imposing six-foot-seven and capable of squaring up opponents seemingly every time they try to break into Winnipeg’s zone. That will be a tough role to fill should Stanley indeed be forced out of the lineup. Winnipeg’s next man up would likely be Haydn Fleury, who recorded seven assists and a minus-12 in 39 regular season games.
Jets’ Mark Scheifele Questionable For Game 7
May 3: With the series heading back to Winnipeg after a dominant Blues win in Game 6, Scheifele has been upgraded to a game-time decision for Sunday’s Game 7 (via TSN’s John Lu). He skated on his own today, with Arniel saying Scheifele’s feeling much better today after his presumed upper-body injury.
May 1: Jets star center Mark Scheifele has already been ruled out for Winnipeg’s potential series-clinching Game 6 contest against the Blues on Friday, head coach Scott Arniel announced (via Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Free Press).
The 32-year-old pivot is dealing with an undisclosed injury he sustained in the first period of last night’s Game 5 win. There’s been some contention about which hit caused him to eventually leave the game. Blues head coach Jim Montgomery said postgame that Scheifele obviously sustained the injury on a clean but hard hit from St. Louis center Radek Faksa late in the first (video via Sportsnet), but Scheifele also took a high hit from Blues captain Brayden Schenn earlier in the game that resulted in an interference penalty. Scheifele didn’t miss a shift in the first period but didn’t come out for the second and was unavailable for the rest of the night. Schenn isn’t facing a suspension for the hit, per Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.
Scheifele managed an assist before exiting the contest, bringing up to a 2-4–6 scoring line on the series to rank second on the team in points. He’s struggled to get the puck on net with just six shots on goal, though, a full shot per game less than his regular-season average.
The two-time All-Star Game participant scored a career-high 87 points in 2024-25 and tied for the league lead with 11 game-winning goals, a strong bounceback campaign after a disappointing 2023-24 campaign for him in the goal-scoring department. The first draft pick the Jets made after relocating to Winnipeg from Atlanta also averaged over 20 minutes per game for the ninth year in a row and is in the first season of a seven-year, $59.5MM extension.
Winnipeg has yet to ice a healthy top six in the postseason. Winger Nikolaj Ehlers hasn’t played in over two weeks with a foot injury and has only recently started skating in a non-contact jersey. It’s unclear if he’ll travel to St. Louis for Game 6, but even if he does, he’s highly unlikely to play. Scheifele isn’t traveling, Arniel said. The Jets are up 3-2, so they’ll either return home to their star center triumphant without him or hope he can return for a Game 7 on Sunday.
Scott Arniel, Spencer Carbery, Martin St. Louis Named Jack Adams Finalists
The Jets’ Scott Arniel, the Capitals’ Spencer Carbery, and the Canadiens’ Martin St. Louis are this year’s Jack Adams Award finalists as the NHL’s top head coach, the league announced.
All are first-time finalists. Unlike most other awards (like the Selke, whose finalists were announced today), the Adams is voted on by broadcast media members, not print/digital.
In his first season behind the Winnipeg bench after taking over for the retiring Rick Bowness, Arniel guided the Jets to their first Presidents’ Trophy and best regular season in franchise history. Promoted after serving as an assistant under Bowness since 2022-23, the former Jets 1.0 forward logged a 56-22-4 record.
This is Arniel’s second stop as an NHL head coach. He was previously at the helm of the Blue Jackets for a year and a half, posting a 45-60-18 (.439) record in 123 games before being fired at the halfway point of the 2011-12 season. He would be the first bench boss in Jets 2.0 franchise history to win Coach of the Year honors.
Over in Washington, Carbery oversaw one of the league’s biggest point increases from 2023-24 to 2024-25 in his second year behind the Capitals’ bench. He’s now posted a 91-53-20 (.616) record across his two seasons in the role, including an Eastern Conference-leading 51-22-9 record this year for Washington’s first division title in five years. While it’s not considered for this award’s purposes, he also just guided the Caps to their first playoff series win since 2018 with a five-game dispatching of the Canadiens in the first round.
Carbery helped improve Washington’s offense from a 28th-ranked 2.63 goals per game last year to 3.49 in 2024-25, second-best in the NHL. If he wins, the 43-year-old would be the first to take home Coach of the Year honors at every stop of the NHL’s professional development pyramid. While in lower levels of the Caps organization, he won COTY honors with ECHL South Carolina in 2013-14 and with AHL Hershey in 2020-21.
As for St. Louis, the Hall-of-Fame winger could add coaching-related honors to a trophy case that includes a Stanley Cup, two Art Ross Trophies, MVP honors, and three Lady Byng Trophies. Coming off his third full season behind the Montreal bench, the 49-year-old helped guide a young Habs squad out of the dark stages of their rebuild. The team recorded their first 40-win season in six years and ended a three-year postseason drought that was tied for the longest (1999-2001, 1920-1922) in franchise history. A Habs bench boss hasn’t been named COTY since Pat Burns in 1989.
Jets’ Nikolaj Ehlers Set To Return For Game 6
Star Jets winger Nikolaj Ehlers is set to return for Winnipeg’s potential series-clinching Game 6 in their series against the Blues tonight, the team announced.
Ehlers has been dealing with a foot injury that’s kept him out of the Jets’ first five playoff games and all but two contests since April 3. He’s been skating in a non-contact jersey in practice since Wednesday and shed the designation for the first time this morning, the team’s Mitchell Clinton relayed. Winnipeg has managed a 3-2 series lead without him, but as they travel to St. Louis for Game 6, the home team has won every game in the series thus far.
His return comes as first-line center Mark Scheifele exits the lineup due to an undisclosed injury he sustained in the first period of Game 5. The Jets were quick to rule out their top pivot yesterday, and he didn’t accompany the team on the trip to Missouri.
Ehlers’ return will be imperative as he looks to help Winnipeg’s offense sustain Scheifele’s loss. During the regular season, the pending unrestricted free agent fell just short of setting a career-high in points with 63 (24 goals, 39 assists) in 69 games.
Ehlers will skate in his usual second-line role with captain Adam Lowry elevated from third-line duties to center him and Cole Perfetti. Normal No. 2 center Vladislav Namestnikov moves up to replace Scheifele between Kyle Connor and Gabriel Vilardi.
Lower in the lineup, this morning’s line rushes indicate depth center Dominic Toninato is set to make his first playoff appearance since 2021 between Alex Iafallo and Brandon Tanev. He’s coming in for Jaret Anderson-Dolan, who played the first five games of the series but will now serve as a healthy scratch despite contributing a goal, assist, and 19 hits in his limited minutes.
Jets Recall Brayden Yager From WHL
The Winnipeg Jets have assigned top prospect Brayden Yager to the NHL roster after the end of his season with the WHL’s Lethbridge Hurricanes. Yager will join the club ahead of a potential series-clinching Game 6. He finished the WHL playoffs with eight goals and 14 points in 16 games.
Winnipeg acquired Yager in a one-for-one swap that sent Rutger McGroarty back to the Pittsburgh Penguins. The move helped keep the Saskatoon native in western Canada, after growing up in Martensville and spending the last five seasons in the WHL. Yager was drafted 14th-overall in the 2023 NHL Draft by Pittsburgh, following a dazzling age-18 season with the Moose Jaw Warriors. He scored 28 goals and 78 points in 67 games of his draft-eligible campaign, and earned a confident hold over Moose Jaw’s top center role. Yager has continued to match that mark in the years since, with 95 points in 57 games last year and a combined 82 points in 54 games this season – split between Moose Jaw and Lethbridge. He has also been a dominant force for Canada internationally, scoring five points in five games at the 2024 World Juniors and returning to captain the lineup and net three assists in five games this year.
Yager is a playmaker through-and-through, with strong control over the middle lane and an impressive ability to keep his poise at top speeds. He has a slight frame – six-foot tall and 170-pounds – that’s worried some scouts in the past. But the right-shot centerman has shown a consistent ability to play above his size and bully his way into the dirty areas of the ice. It’s unlikely that he sees any NHL action in the coming days, though a first-round could have Winnipeg excited to test their top man in round two.
Leon Draisaitl, Connor Hellebuyck, Nikita Kucherov Named Hart Trophy Finalists
Oilers center Leon Draisaitl, Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, and Lightning right-winger Nikita Kucherov have been named the Hart Trophy finalists as the NHL’s most valuable player for the 2024-25 season, the league announced today (via X).
Like most other major awards, the Hart is voted on by members of the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association. It’s one of the longest-running annual honors in the league, first presented in 1924. Each voter submits a five-player ballot with a 10-7-5-3-1 points system. Compared with the Ted Lindsay Award, voted on by the players for best player, Kucherov is the only carryover member in this year’s nominations.
Draisaitl and Kucherov are in the running to win the Hart for the second time in their careers, while Hellebuyck is a first-time finalist after finishing top 10 in voting in 2019-20 and 2023-24. He’s the first goalie to finish as a finalist for the award since the Rangers’ Igor Shesterkin in 2021-22, and he’s aiming to be the first to win it since the Canadiens’ Carey Price in 2014-15.
Draisaitl, 29, has never been nominated for the Hart without winning it. He didn’t receive any votes last year after four straight years in the top 10, but rebounded with a vengeance in 2024-25 with a league-leading 52 goals despite missing 11 games due to injuries. It was the German superstar’s first time leading the league in goals, and his 11 game-winners led the league for the third time.
Hellebuyck wins a nomination in what will likely be an extremely tight vote when results are released following the announcement of the winner. The 31-year-old has continued his dominant run as the league’s best regular-season netminder over the past half-decade, posting a .925 SV% along with a league-leading 2.00 GAA, eight shutouts, 47 wins, and 41.6 goals saved above average – all career-highs, too – in 63 appearances.
As for Kucherov, he secures his second straight Hart nomination, along with the Art Ross Trophy as the league’s leading point-getter, for the second straight season. While his campaign ended in defeat at the hands of the Panthers in last night’s Game 5, he posted 84 assists and 121 points in 78 games in the regular season en route to the 31-year-old’s third career Hart nomination. With a win, the future Hall-of-Famer would join Alex Ovechkin as the only Russian in league history with multiple MVP awards.
Jets’ Gabriel Vilardi Likely To Play Game 5
Jets top-line forward Gabriel Vilardi is expected to make his 2025 playoffs debut in Game 5 of their first-round series against the Blues, head coach Scott Arniel said today (via John Lu of TSN).
Vilardi won’t have his minutes limited in his return to the lineup, Arniel said. The 25-year-old hasn’t played since sustaining an upper-body injury against the Sabres on March 23, missing over a month.
Riding shotgun with Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele to form the most-deployed line at 5-on-5 in the league this season, Vilardi enjoyed a career-high 27 goals, 34 assists, and 61 points in 71 games before injury ended his season. The 6’3″, 216-lb forward averaged 18:08 per game, third-most among Winnipeg forwards behind his linemates, and led the team with 12 power-play goals. That’ll make him a huge boost to a Jets power play that’s clicking at just 16.7% against St. Louis thus far, 13th among 16 playoff teams and 12.2 percentage points worse than their league-leading 28.9% conversion rate in the regular season.
Vilardi’s return comes at a crucial point in the series. After scoring seven goals at home to take a 2-0 series lead, Winnipeg managed to put the puck past Jordan Binnington just three times in Games 3 and 4 as St. Louis stormed back to tie the series. It’s now a best-of-three between the Presidents’ Trophy winners and the second wild-card team in the West.
Alex Iafallo, fresh off an extension, has taken Vilardi’s place on the top line to begin the series. He scored in Game 1 but hasn’t registered a point since and was a minus-five across Games 3 and 4. Inexplicably, his line with Connor and Scheifele has been the Jets’ worst at driving play in the postseason. The trio’s 36.7% expected goals share is the only Jets line with at least 10 minutes of ice time to register an xG share under 50, per MoneyPuck. In the regular season, Connor and Scheifele controlled 52.6% of expected goals when paired with Vilardi.
Photo courtesy of Terrence Lee-Imagn Images.