On the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins ….
Steve Zipay: Hearing that the Chicago Blackhawks are seriously kicking tires on Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin. It would be interesting to see how they could create the salary cap space.
Steve Zipay: Like other people, hearing that the Blackhawks are just doing their due diligence.
Chris Hine: Malkin has a $9.5 miliion salary and it would take some serious moves for the Blackhawks to fit it in.
Chris Hine: Source said last week that there was nothing to the Malkin to Blackhawks rumors. As always though, things can change.
Chris Kuc: Heard the Malkin to Blackhawks rumor last week. Hine checked into it and said it wasn’t happening.
On the Detroit Red Wings …
Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News: Red Wings GM Ken Holland doesn’t seem that optimistic about having Pavel Datsyuk‘s $7.5 million cap hit.
“We’ll be competitive … but we’ll be comprised by having $7.5 million tied up on a player you don’t have,” he said. “It’s a huge hole and it’s very difficult situation. But we’ll manage it.”
The Red Wings have about $60.3 million committed to 17 players, so moving Datsyuk’s cap hit would really help.
Teams that could possibly take on the cap space include the Coyotes, Devils and Predators.
“I talked to some teams over the last couple of days and we’ll see if I can move the contract,” Holland said. “I’m not overly optismistic.
“Teams are looking for a lot of future assets. There’s a price to be paid to free up the cap space. But it’s going to be one of our top young players or a high draft pick, I don’t know if it makes a lot of sense.”
If the Red Wings can’t land Steven Stamkos, other options could be David Backes, Troy Brouwer, Milan Lucic or Loui Eriksson.
If the Red Wings can’t move Datsyuk, they could consider moving moving Jimmy Howard, Brendan Smith, Tomas Tatar or Gustav Nyquist to possibly land some scoring depth or a top-four defenseman.