- Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News: The Stars put Aaron Rome on unconditional waivers for the purpose of using the first of their compliance buyouts. Rome had a year left on his contract and was scheduled to make $1.6 million. Instead, he’ll receive $528,000 in each of the next two seasons.
“We’re not a cap team or a floor team, so it wasn’t necessary to do it this way,” said Stars GM Jim Nil. “We just decided to take this path.”
“We have a lot of young defensemen who are making a good push and we need to create room for them,” Nill said of the Rome decision.
The Stars won’t use their last compliance buyout, despite the talk that they could use it on Erik Cole (one year at $4 million) or Sergei Gonchar (one year at $5 million).
GM Jim Nill said that they made an offer to center Vern Fiddler, but it was rejected. Fiddler will test the open market. They won’t be making offers to Ray Whitney or Tim Thomas.
- Terry Jones of the Edmonton Journal: The Oilers could be busy this offseason.
“I’d like to add four or five players — one or two through trades and two or three unrestricted free agents,” said MacTavish.
They would like to make some trades before free agency starts.
“The managers meeting at the final really gets everybody talking a little bit more. This week will be a busy week for everybody to see what the fits are out there.
“This year there are not so many top free agents available. The guys who would normally be secondary targets are now the primary targets. It’s a good year to be a UFA.”
They are in a good salary cap position, and will be looking for puck-moving and a defensive defenseman.
“We need help on defence. We’re looking for a puck-moving defenceman, a guy who can carry the puck north and continue into open ice.”
“We also need a defending defenceman. We’re not going to compromise our young prospects on defence,” he said of forcing the likes of Darnell Nurse, Oscar Klefbom, Martin Marincin, etc. into the line-up until they are ready.”
Core players in Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Justin Schultz won’t be going anywhere. The Oilers won’t be using their compliance buyouts.
