On the St. Louis Blues …
Jeremy Rutherford: Hearing that Mike Van Ryn (head coach in Tucson AHL) will be joining the Blues coaching staff this year.
On the Vegas Golden Knights …
TSN Radio: Darren Dreger on John Tavares: “I keep hearing more and more, if John Tavares truly enters the market, why wouldn’t Vegas be on his short list?”
Pierre LeBrun: The Capitals hope they’ll be able to re-sign pending free agent John Carlson, but if they aren’t able to, Carlson would “be a heck of a fit” with the Golden Knights.
On the Vancouver Canucks and Noah Hanifin …
TSN Radio Vancouver: Darren Dreger: “I don’t know specific to Vancouver..but I feel safe lumping Vancouver into a large number of teams having interest in Hanifin. I think you could put a number of Canadian teams in that list. But what is Don Waddell going to want in return?”
On the Calgary Flames …
Chris Nichols of FRS Hockey: Calgary Flames assistant GM Craig Conroy was on Sportsnet 960 earlier this week and said that they don’t really have any draft picks, but could be looking add more (they don’t pick until No. 105).
“The way we’re going through it is hey, what if make a deal and we get a couple of seconds or get a first. You have to go through… are we going to talk to the top guys? Brad’s talked to a lot of the top teams and to be honest, they’re not moving the picks. They want to pick. So there’s no point talking to the top four or five guys right off the hop. It wouldn’t make much sense. So we just try to narrow it down. If we get some second-round picks, Todd’s put a pretty good list together. We’re busy every day…”
Conroy said that GM Brad Treliving has had some talk about getting back into the first three rounds, but it becomes at what cost.
“I mean, what I want to say right now 60/40 we get picks. I would say it’s somewhere around there. But with that said, could I see us going and not getting any? That could happen too.”
Conroy adds they need a scoring winger, that most of their team will be back, and they may need just a couple new pieces.