Stepan’s agent on trade rumors
Craig Morgan: Matt Oates, the agent for Arizona Coyotes forward Derek Stepan on the trade rumors involving Stepan and the Ottawa Senators: “I have no idea where this report came from,”
Oates added that it’s no truth to Stepan wants out of Arizona.
Ken Warren: “Been saying this makes sense for awhile. Stephan salary is $2M, with a signing bonus of $3M. Coyotes without 1st and 3rd picks in 2021 and Senators have three second round picks….”
Even with LTIRing Kucherov, Lightning will continue to look to move out salary
Ryan S. Clark of The Athletic: Even with Nikita Kucherov and his $9.5 million cap hit going to the LTIR, Tampa Bay Lightning GM Julien BriseBois will continue to look to move out salary.
“We don’t have a lot of maneuverability so that is why I am still going to continue to explore freeing up some cap space,” BriseBois said. “I have had some ongoing conversations with a couple of teams. I will continue to explore those. I will at least now know that if none of those trade talks come to an agreement, at least we will be able to be cap compliant and that roster is going to include a lot of really good players, some high-end players.”
Before last season’s March shutdown, BriseBois said that several teams had called him about Tyler Johnson. Johnson did clear waivers this offseason but no one claimed him and his $5 million per season with four years left. BriseBois called those teams after the season but nothing could be worked out.
“When we came back to Tampa after the playoffs and I started calling teams back, two of them, it just didn’t work for them anymore,” BriseBois said. “Then, a third team still had interest but did not have sufficient cap space. We looked jointly at getting a third party to broker the deal and eat some of the cap space and move Tyler to that specific team. It was just so expensive that ended up being not feasible.”