On the Columbus Blue Jackets …
Aaron Portzline: Leading up to the trade deadline, two names that potential trade partners brought up repeatedly were defenseman Ryan Murray and goaltender Joonas Korpisalo.
On the Toronto Maple Leafs and Valtteri Filppula …
Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun: Valtteri Filppula rejected a potential trade to the Toronto Maple Leafs at the deadline. The Tampa Bay Lightning ended up trading him to the Philadelphia Flyers on deadline day. Talk is that Filppula didn’t want to play for Mike Babcock, who coached him in Detroit for six years.
On the Calgary Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning and Ben Bishop …
Chris Nichols of FanRag Sports: Elliotte Friedman was on Sportsnet 960 radio on Friday and was talking about Ben Bishop and the interest level the Calgary Flames had in him.
“I think there’s a couple of things here,” began Friedman Friday morning. “No. 1, I do think Calgary was in and around Bishop. I think they were looking at the possibility of it. Obviously one of the issues here was that they had their eyes on Lazar too, right. So I think there was the combination of trying to get Bishop and trying to get Lazar and what was the more likely opportunity, and what did they want to do more, and did they have enough assets to do both.
“They traded a second-rounder for Lazar. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s kind of something that Yzerman wanted for Bishop, so I’m not sure they could have done both. So that’s No. 1.”
Bishop thought he was going to be playing with the Flames this season. Something fell through.
“I heard through the grapevine – and again, this is something Calgary has not commented about – but I’ve heard through the grapevine that it was a 6X6-ish offer and he was ready to accept it and he was going. He has said he thought he was going. So all of this – something was done. Where did it fall apart? I don’t know exactly.”