Weekly Rumours – Are Moves Coming?
3 years ago
THE NHL IS COMING BACK! While there hasn’t been an official announcement, the league and the NHLPA have put their differences aside and reportedly have an agreement in place for the 2020/21 season.
By now you’ve already heard the rumoured details about next season (January 13th start date, 56 game schedules, new divisions, and all that) so I’m not going to bother going through those again.
Instead, we’re going to get right into the rumours. The uncertainty around next season resulted in a weird transaction freeze around the league. For pretty much the entire month of November, we didn’t see any meaningful trades or any of the remaining big-name free agents signed. Now that we know next season is happening, and there’s a pretty solid start date, I expect that to change.
There will be no shortage of transactions between today and the start of training camp. There are teams that will need to shed salary before the season starts and there are teams still looking to make some upgrades to their rosters. That means there are plenty of rumours to get to!
VEGAS LOOKING TO MAKE A MOVE
Earlier this week, TSN’s Frank Seravalli reported the Vegas Golden Knights have looked into moving @Max Pacioretty in order to create some cap flexibility. The Golden Knights are currently close to $1 million over the cap according to Puck Pedia and only have 21 players on their roster. They’ll need to make a move eventually and it’s easy to see why they would be interested in moving Pacioretty, who has a $7 million cap hit.
Jesse Granger of The Athletic also reported that the Golden Knights have spoken to a few teams about Pacioretty and added that both @Jonathan Marchessault and Marc-Andre Fleury have had their names pop up in trade conversations. Marchessault has a cap hit of $5 million and is under contract for four more seasons while Fleury will make $7 million for two more seasons.
It will be tough for Vegas to move one of these big contracts. If there was a move to be made involving Fleury, I feel like it would already be done. Both Pacioretty and Marchessault are quality players but trading them and getting a decent return will be difficult.
Why would a team give up an asset in a trade for a scoring winger when there are still intriguing free agents on the market, like Mike Hoffman?
Seravalli added that if Vegas can get rid of one of their big contracts, then they might look into one of the big-name free agents that are still on the market. Again, if teams know that’s their plan, I can’t see them being too eager to help them out. The bottom line is that the Golden Knights need to clear up cap space before the start of the season and that will be a tough task for GM Kelly McCrimmon to complete.
WHO’S BUYING?
From left: Ken Holland, Steve Yzerman and Christopher Ilitch at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit on April 19, 2019.
Wings Conference2
Wings Conference2
The easiest way to identify who could be buyers is to simply look at who has the most money to spend. Right now, there are just seven teams with more than $8 million in cap space. They are Florida, Columbus, Detroit, Ottawa, Nashville, Los Angeles, and New Jersey.
Of that group, I’m expecting Columbus and Nashville to be big players in the free-agent market. From what I’ve read, they’re the most likely landing spots for some of the marquee free agents that are still on the market.
Detroit and New Jersey strike me as teams who could be good partners for the likes of Vegas and Tampa Bay, who are looking to trade good players with high cap hits. I think Ottawa could be in that mix as well. If they can acquire a quality player in their early-30’s for close to nothing, or potentially get an asset along with them, I’m not sure why they wouldn’t do it.
Here’s a fun exercise: put together a team full of only players who are currently free agents or could be acquired for nothing due to salary cap reasons. It’d be a pretty good team.
COMPLIANCE BUYOUTS
During Tuesday’s edition of ‘Insider Trading’ on TSN, Frank Seravalli said that that there was talk about a fresh round of compliance buyouts before they agreed to stick to the CBA that was agreed to in July.
The stipulation, according to Frank, was that if any compliance buyouts were to take place, they would come off the owners’ share completely and the NHL was not interested in that. Frank added that obviously there were GM”s onboard with this idea, but it’s not going to happen.
It’s fair to assume that Ken Holland and the Oilers would have loved the chance to erase a bad contract from their books.
QUICK NOTES
- The Philadelphia Flyers signed 23-year-old defenseman Philippe Myers to a three-year contract that carries a cap hit of $2.55 million. I’ve always thought that Ethan Bear would get a one year contract for this coming season, but this actually might be a decent comparable.
- Bear isn’t the only RFA that still needs a new contract. Pierre-Luc Dubious (CBJ), Mackenzie Blackwood (NJD), and Vince Dunn (STL) also need new contracts. Dunn would be another player that could be used as a comparable for Bear and the Oilers.
- This will be an interesting month for the current crop of unsigned UFA’s. Mike Hoffman, Erik Haula, Mikael Granlund, Anthony Duclair, and Travis Hamonic are all still looking for a home.
- Hamonic to Winnipeg would make sense and it’s been talked about a little bit. They could use the help on their blueline.
- There have been rumours that Detroit and Tampa Bay could make a trade before the start of the season. If the rumours are correct, it would likely be Tyler Johnson or Alex Killorn going to Detroit, where they would be reunited with former Lightning GM Steve Yzerman.
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