- Hope Smoke: Bob McKenzie said that the “Blues are looking for 8 years at $6 million for Pietrangelo while the player wants $7 m if he’s going to commit for that long.”
- Jeremy Rutherford: Blues GM Doug Armstrong on the Alex Pietrangelo situation: “I’ll take Alex’s perspective … he thinks he’s made us a hell of an offer. I disagree. We think we’ve made him a hell of an offer…he’s disagreed. That’s where we’re at.”
- Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The Blues will start camp without Alex Pietrangelo. Talks broke off Tuesday night.
“We’ve worked in earnest with his representative trying to get him into training camp,” Armstrong said. “We gave it a last-ditch kick at the can around 8 or 9 o’clock at night. It didn’t hold. So from this point forward, he’s not in camp and we treat him like an injured player.”
“Sidney Crosby missed a lot of time with concussions (and) the Penguins went on. That’s our job responsibility. If he misses a week, a month, a year, we’re not really sure … but he’s not here now and we have to move forward.”
- Darren Dreger Insider Trading: Henrik and Daniel Sedin’s agent will meet with management today to work aggressively on a contract extension. They carry a $6.1 million cap hit and could be in for a nice raise. It’s unlikely that the Maple Leafs move from a two-year offer at over $2 million per season to the a one-year deal that Cody Franson is requesting. The Leafs may want to avoid a one-year deal as they have several defenseman who have expiring contracts after this season: Dion Phaneuf, Jake Gardiner, Paul Ranger and Mark Fraser.
- James Mirtle: Maple Leafs GM Dave Nonis on Cody Franson: “There’s the realities of where you are. We have x amount of cap space. There’s only so much we can do to get a deal done”
- Chris Johnston of SportsNet: The Maple Leafs will have to hold firm on Franson negotiations as they don’t have a lot of cap space left.
- Brian Hamilton: Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman on Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane: “We’re going to keep them around for a long, long time.”
- Tracey Myers: Toews on his Blackhawks future: “Right now, it’s tough to find a reason to play somewhere else.”
- Tom Gulitti: Devils center Andrei Loktionov said yesterday that he turned down a $3 million offer to remain in the KHL before he re-signed with the Devils. On the offer: “Some teams they wanted to give me that money, a few teams actually. The money is not interesting for me right now. I’m more interested in playing in the NHL. I know money is very important but to me I wanted to play here.”