- Joe Haggerty of CSNNE: Things are quiet regarding Torey Krug and the Bruins. Krug and Reilly Smith don’t have a lot of leverage as they are coming off their entry level deals with no arbitration rights and are not able to receive offer sheets. It was initially thought that they were looking for second contracts in the Ondrej Palat/Tyler Johnson range, three-years and $10 million. It’s more likely that they sign one or two year deal worth between $1 and $2 million per season. Jake Gardiner’s five-year, $20.25 million is good news for Krug as he could be a comparable.
- Andy Strickland: Talk is the Ducks and Pat Maroon are close to a contract extension.
- Aaron Portzline: No truth to the rumor that Blue Jackets Nathan Horton is having back surgery according to Jarmo Kekalainen.
- Michael Russo of the Star-Tribune: Wild GM Chuck Fletcher on Nino Niederreiter and Darcy Kuemper:
“We’ve been sort of working our way on both files, certainly had more conversations with Niederreiter’s representative and we’ve talked about bunch of different scenarios, the process is ongoing. We haven’t had as much time on Kuemper’s file I think in part because we thought he may have filed for arbitration and then he didn’t so we thought that would be a scenario where we would prepare to go to arbitration and have a chance to have several conversations over a short period of time and when that didn’t come to pass, it sort of slowed down a little bit. We will see. There’s a long time until training camp and the Group 2 marketplace right now seems to be focused more on the arbitrations. As those contracts come in typically teams get to work a little bit more on their non-arb guys, so we will just see how it goes. I think the agents for those players are trying to see where the market will settle in at and there really just isn’t much rush right now.”
Russo thinks that Neiderreiter will sign a two- to four-year deal later this month or early September.
Fletcher on Kuemper:
“I don’t know, that’s hard to say,” Fletcher told me on KFAN. “I wouldn’t say there’s been enough conversations to say it’s going to be a battle. I mean I guess every negotiation is a battle, but the agent is always trying to get the best contract he can for the player and we are trying to do what is right for the team. It’s always a little trickier I think on our side, the agent obviously wants to represent his client. We have an obligation to every player on our team and if we do a bad contract or spend too much money on a player it impacts our ability to be competitive in other areas. It’s not that we’re trying to fight the player, we’re trying to protect the team. It’s a pretty big obligation. We are certainly going to take our time to get the right deal.”