- Elliotte Friedman of CBC: Matt Niskanen declined his qualifying offer. The Hurricanes would like Jordan Staal, but there is no guarantee that Pittsburgh is dealing him yet. They may make a play on Rick Nash. The Blue Jackets may be thankful that Zach Parise said he’s not interested in joining the Rangers, increases the Rangers interest in Nash. There is a lot of talk that Flyers Matt Carle would prefer to play close to his home in Alaska. Ryan Suter’s agent denied reports that he’s not interested in playing for an Eastern Conference team. 2 teams discussed a trade with Blue Jackets about Nash and found there was no match. Friedman wonders if teams would ask Capitals GM George McPhee if they’d be interested in trading the rights to Evgeny Kuznetsov. A couple GMs said they haven’t heard if Evander Kane is available, but would be interested if he was. There seems to be more interest in trading down in the draft rather than up.
- Joe Haggerty of CSNNE: Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli said trade talk has been flowing freely in recent days, but added it’s unlikely that they make any deals this weekend.
“The reality is that the trade market right now is the most active. What’ll happen is, come July, that will take a bit of a backseat to free agency. Then once we go through that first tranche of free agents, then the trade market will re-emerge,” said Chiarelli. “With the trade market the way it is, I’ll make some calls . . . but, frankly, I’m probably more apt to wait till the free agent market and then the secondary trade market.
“I call it the secondary trade market, but it’s fairly significant. So my objective will probably be to wait unless something falls in my lap.”
- Mike Harrington via twitter: “The Ryan Miller deal-was-done tweet from Philly is silly. He was never asked for a list of teams to be dealt to. Confirmed that multiple x”
- Mike Harrington via twitter: The Ducks and Sabres did talk about Ryan Miller, but it never got close to the Sabres approaching Miller about it.