On the Chicago Blackhawks and Artemi Panarin…
Chris Hine of the Chicago Tribune: Forward Artemi Panarin is on fire lately and is now tied for 3rd in NHL scoring. The better he does, the more bonuses he triggers for himself. He’ll likely trigger the $850 in “schedule A” bonuses and another $1.75 million if he’s in the top 10 for any of goals, assists, points or points per game. He earned both last year and most of the them are applied to this year’s salary cap as bonus overages.
It was reported earlier this season that he was looking for a deal around $6 million a season, which could be hard for the Blackhawks to fit in, especially with some bonuses likely to carry over again this year.
On the New York Islanders and John Tavares …
Chris Nichols of FanRag Sports: Bob McKenzie was on TSN 690 talking about John Tavares and the New York Islanders. Tavares has said all the right things, that he wants remain with the Islanders long-term. The Islanders continue to fall this season.
“So if you’re John Tavares and you come to July 1 and you’re eligible to sign a contract, you’re going to want to see what direction the team is headed in. And is this a trend that can’t be reversed, or is it one that can be reversed?
“Jon Ledecky and Scott Malkin, the owners of this team – multiple media outlets have been reporting over the course of this season that they are in the process of evaluating, researching, talking to a myriad hockey people about the best way to run an organization. And the likelihood of somebody being hired in an all-seeing, all-powerful hockey operations/president role is quite high between now and the summer. So who is that person, and what do they immediately in both the short term and the long term to convince John Tavares that this is going to want to be a place that he’ll want to commit to long term.”
McKenzie thinks it’s way to early to try and figure out how this will play out.
