The Avs have some cap space
Adrian Dater: The Colorado Avalanche have some salary cap space to work with this offseason.
They will be pitching pending free agent Artemi Panarin. If he chooses a team like Florida, it would be more of pure financial decision.
Steven could join the Stars
Bob McKenzie: There has been some talk that former Los Angeles Kings coach John Stevens could join the Dallas Stars.
Stars coach Jim Montgomery and Stevens have worked together before and are great friends.
The Sharks and Suomela haven’t talked contract yet
Kevin Kurz: There have been no contract talks so far between the San Jose Sharks and forward Antti Suomela. He didn’t get much playing time this past season, so it will be interesting to see if he’ll be back. He was well sought after last offseason.
Will the Oilers have a renewed interest in Rieder with Tippett coaching
Jonathan Willis: Have to wonder with Dave Tippett now being the Edmonton Oilers coach would it change their view on Tobias Rieder. Tippett was Rieder’s coach when he had his three best seasons.
Sekera could remain to help mentor the Oilers young defensemen
David Staples of the Edmonton Journal: Oilers GM Ken Holland was on CHED 630 talking with Bob Stauffer on Oilers Now. It’s sounding like defenseman Andrej Sekera will be back next season to help mentor some of their young defensemen.
“I always reflect back on my Detroit days. You know you look at Sekera whose a really good veteran, I look at the impact that Niklas Kronwall had on Dennis Cholowski, had on Filip Hronek. Sekera can have that role. You got to have some veteran well respect people in the locker room that mentor those young kids. So certainly you want to have youth but you need to have some veterans there, certainly on the backend that they can mentor them. I think we’ve got lots of those different options in the organization. We got to sort it out here over the next couple of months.”