Weekly Rumours – Taxi Squads, Bubbles, and More!
3 years ago
We are now less than a month away from the expected start of the NHL season and still, there are a lot of unanswered questions. The league and the players appear to be on the same page and both seem to want to drop the puck in mid-January but there are big issues that need to be sorted out.
I think it’s safe to assume that we should get some answers in the next week or so, granted we’ve been saying that for a while. If they want players to report to camp by the end of the month and are still aiming to start the regular season on January 13th, then they need to start rolling out a concrete plan sooner rather than later.
This past week, we have heard more talk about modified bubbles. Commissioner Gary Bettman told NHL.com that “Right now, we’re focused on whether or not we’re going to play in our buildings and do some limited travelling or play in a bubble, and that’s something we’re working on and getting medical advice on.”
Elliotte Friedman added that Vegas, Newark, and Columbus could be the hubs for three American divisions while the Canadian hub would be in either Toronto or Edmonton.
No one has really said how long the hubs would last, but I can’t imagine the players signing up to be in a hub for more than two or three weeks at a time, which I think is fine. If you have teams in one location for 14 days at a time, you could probably have them play seven or eight games in that span. I don’t think that’s an unrealistic expectation.
Another big question is centred around the idea taxi squads. Frank Seravalli touched on this during Insider Trading on TSN. He said that bringing players from the taxi squad to the NHL roster would be the same as a normal AHL transaction. If they’re on the roster, they count against the cap and if they’re on the taxi squad, they wouldn’t count towards to the cap. If they’re on the taxi squad, then everything except for $1.075 million of the players’ salary would count against the cap. Frank added that none of this has been officially decided yet.
So even though a player is on the taxi squad and is still travelling with the team, for salary cap purposes he would be considered “in the minors”. That’s at least how I’m interpreting the rumours about taxi squads.
Darren Dreger raised a couple of important questions as well. He asked whether or not players would be required to go on waivers when being put back on the taxi squad? Also, how many players can each team keep on their taxi squads? It will be interesting to see how that’s handled.
Depending on how many taxi squad spots each team gets, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Oilers add a veteran defenseman and potentially even bring back Riley Sheahan. It will be interesting to see how a finalized plan sparks the free-agent market because right now, there isn’t a lot happening.
Here are some rumours on the big-name free agents still on the market.
REMAINING FREE AGENTS
This is the part of the weekly rumours blog where I’m going to say that Columbus and Nashville are both likely going to add some scoring help before the start of the season. This week during a ‘UFA Matchmaker’ segment, Dave Poulin of TSN said that the Boston Bruins would be the best fit for Mike Hoffman. It would be interesting to see if the Bruins can move the cap space to make that work.
Poulin also said identified the Toronto Maple Leafs as the best landing spot for Ontario product Corey Perry.
Elliotte Friedman reported that the Vancouver Canucks were interested in veteran defenseman Travis Hamonic before acquiring Nate Schmidt. Friedman said there still could be interest there while Bob Marjonovish of TSN 1040 in Vancouver said that both the Canucks and Calgary Flames have interest in Hamonic. I still think Winnipeg would be a good spot for him. It does sound like he wants to stay in Western Canada though, which isn’t a surprise.
As for the Oilers, if you’re hoping for Ken Holland to make one more splash, I wouldn’t hold your breath. The Oilers need to get @Ethan Bear done and sort out their salary cap situation first. Also, they have a plethora of NHL calibre forwards signed and there’s simply not enough room for another top-nine forward.
Like I said earlier, I could see Holland adding a couple of veterans to the taxi-squad once that’s sorted out, but I’d be stunned if he did anything more than that.
QUICK NOTES
- Travis Yost of TSN mentioned both the Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings as two teams that could help out the cap-strapped Vegas Golden Knights. Personally, teams with cap space should be getting very aggressive right now. There are good players to be had for close to nothing.
- It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it sounds like the Islanders will be forced to go the ‘bridge’ route with RFA centre Matt Barzal. The expectation is that it will be somewhere in the area of $6 million, which is around what Brayden Point got on his bridge deal.
- I wonder if we’ll see more key RFA’s wait until the official beginning of the season so that teams can maximize LTIR space before signing them to new deals. I’m not an LTIR expert by any means, by I think it would make sense.
- We are likely going to be hit with a flood of moves at some point, it’s just a question of whether or not it will come before or after Christmas.
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