On the New York Islanders …
Arthur Staple: IF the Islanders decide to trade John Tavares at some point, there is zero percent chance he’ll be moved to a team in their division.
Arthur Staple: Nothing has been decided with regards to Tavares and the Islanders. is still hearing that Tavares is leaning towards staying.
On the Columbus Blue Jackets …
Aaron Portzline: There is a growing sense that the Blue Jackets already have a deal in place with the Vegas Golden Knights.
Aaron Portzline: If the two teams have a deal in place, the Blue Jackets protection list is irrelevant.
On the Minnesota Wild …
Bob McKenzie: There is lots of trade talk involving Jonas Brodin coming out of Minnesota. Brodin would be the type of defenseman the Canadiens could be targeting.
Michael Russo of the Star Tribune: The Minnesota Wild are “definitely actively listening” to calls on their defensemen before the trade freeze tomorrow.
Sources say that the Wild have received “quality trade offers” for both Jonas Brodin and Matt Dumba. They may move one of Brodin or Dumba instead of losing them for nothing to the Vegas Golden Knights.
As of earlier this week, GM Chuck Fletcher said they didn’t have a deal in place with the Golden Knights to select/not select someone.
One source saying they’ve received strong offers for Brodin.
The Wild had shown some interest in Jonathan Drouin in the past, and have been interested in Canadiens Alex Galchenyuk. Bob McKenzie tweeted that Canadiens could target someone like Brodin.
The Wild already have Nino Niederreiter and Mikael Granlund as restricted free agents, so it would be hard so see how they could fit the also RFA Galchenyuk in. Would they then have to move one of Granlund, Niederreiter or Charlie Coyle out or somehow find a way to move Jason Pominville‘s cap hit.
“Things can change,” he said. “We have until Saturday at 4 o’clock. There’s no sense of putting the list in early. We may as well take all the time we can and why make a decision when we could put it off until the last minute? So that’ll be our motto for this process.
“In my mind, I’m already pretty confident I know how we’ll look coming out of , and it’s still a heck of a hockey team.”