NHL News: St. Louis Blues, Edmonton Oilers, and the Seattle Kraken
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Blues coach expects Tarasenko back

NHL.com: Sts. Louis Blues head coach Craig Berube said on “The Cam & Strick Podcast” that he expects that Vladimir Tarasenko will be playing for the Blues when the season starts.

“I expect ‘Vladi’ to play for us. I’m going to treat him like every other player. And yeah, he asked to be traded, and things happen, but again, you know, we want Vladi to play good hockey for us. … He’s going to have a role on the team like he always has, we’ll deal with it internally and we’ll go from there.

“You only can control so many things and there’s things you can’t control sometimes. So you just focus on what you can control. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

The Athletic reported that Tarasenko is skating with some of his teammates at the Blues practice facility.

Oilers coach on their offseason forward additions

Mark Spector of Sportsnet: Edmonton Oilers coach Dave Tippet on their offseason forward acquisitions – Zach Hyman, Warren Foegele and Derek Ryan.

“It’s a combination. You take Zach Hyman, Foegele, Derek Ryan, the continued growth of (Jesse) Puljujarvi and Yamo (Kailer Yamamoto)… The one thing that’s different between the regular season and a playoff series is, you have to be able to score grinding goals where you create off the forecheck. It can’t all be off transition and rush and power play. You have to be able to score off the cycle. Hard goals. And those guys I just mentioned, they’re all players who will enhance our group in that part of the game.

We don’t need more scoring off the rush. We’re fine there. I’ll take all the pretty goals we can get, but you have to be able to score hard goals also.”

The Kraken sign Donato

Cap Friendly: The Seattle Kraken have signed forward Ryan Donato to a one-year deal with a $750,000 salary cap hit. Donato will be an RFA after this season.