The St. Louis Blues made a surprising move on Tuesday as veteran winger Brandon Saad was placed on waivers.
The 32-year-old has only seven goals and 16 points this season, well down from the 26 goals and 42 points he scored for the Blues in 2023-24.
Saad was selected in the second round of the 2011 NHL Draft by the Chicago Blackhawks and won two Stanley Cups with the team in 2013 and 2015. The Hawks traded Saad to the Columbus Blue Jackets following that second championship and reacquired him two years later when they moved Artemi Panarin to Columbus.
After playing with Columbus, Chicago, and the Colorado Avalanche, Saad inked a five-year contract with the Blues in July of 2021 worth $4.5 million annually. He has one more season left on that deal and is set to become an unrestricted free agent next July.
Through 906 games in the NHL over parts of 14 seasons, Saad has 260 goals and 515 points. He’s also added 55 points in 103 playoff games.

Jim Rutherford admits there’s ‘no good solution’ in keeping J.T. Miller, Elias Pettersson

If there was any doubt whether a rift truly exists between J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson, Vancouver Canucks president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford has confirmed any lingering suspicions.
“I felt like for a long time that there was a solution here because everybody has worked on it, including the parties involved,” Rutherford told Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail. “But it only gets resolved for a short period of time and then it festers again and so it certainly appears like there’s not a good solution that would keep this group together.
“We’ve had those conversations and I think the parties understand that and I think they’ve tried. As you know, sometimes emotions get deep and as much as people try sometimes you can’t get over it. It certainly appears that’s what’s going on here.”

Other news and notes from around the NHL…

  • The Minnesota Wild will be without two key players for the next few weeks. News broke on Tuesday that Kirill Kaprizov is headed for surgery to repair a lower-body injury. Kaprizov got off to one of the hottest starts in the league, scoring 23 goals and 50 points in his first 34 games before being taken out of the lineup in late December. He missed a month of play and returned to Minnesota’s lineup for three games before deciding to have the operation done. The Wild also announced on Tuesday that defender Jonas Brodin has been placed on the Long-Term Injured Reserve retroactive on January 7. Brodin blocked a shot earlier in January and has missed nine games. The Wild have gone 3-6-0 in his absence.
  • The Vegas Golden Knights called up Raphael Lavoie from their AHL affiliate on Tuesday ahead of their game with the Dallas Stars. The former second-round pick by the Edmonton Oilers logged 8:28 in his debut with the Golden Knights and didn’t record any points. Vegas grabbed Lavoie off waivers at the beginning of the season and he’s scored nine goals and 16 points over 29 games playing for the Henderson Silver Knights.