On the Minnesota Wild and Vegas Golden Knights …
Michael Russo the Star-Tribune: Restricted free agent forward Erik Haula will be signing with the Vegas Golden Knights according to several sources. Sources saying he agreed to a multi-year deal during Vegas’ exclusive window that closed this morning.
Vegas now won’t be touching Wild defensemen Matt Dumba and Marco Scandella, as well as center Eric Staal.
The Wild will be sending prospect Alex Tuch and a conditional draft pick to Vegas according to sources.
is guessing that after ‘losing’ Haula and trading Tyler Graovac, the Wild will be in the market for a center.
The Wild only have around $13 million in cap space, so they could look to trade a defenseman – maybe Jonas Brodin or Marco Scandella (Lightning?) – unless GM Chuck Fletcher can some how find a team willing to take on Jason Pominville‘s $5.6 million.
On Ilya Kovalchuk …
Chris Ryan of NJ.com: There were some reports that Ilya Kovalchuk had changed his mind and wanted to remain in Russia, but agent Jay Grossman told Devils GM Ray Shero that, that is not the case.
“From my conversations with Jay Grossman, the latest was about 10 days ago. There was some report out of Russia that he might be staying over there, and Jay goes ‘No, that’s not accurate at all,'” Shero told NJ Advance Media. “He talked to him the day before and nothing’s changed. So if something changes, I’ll hear about it, or Jay will, but nothing’s changed from what Jay’s told me on two occasions now.”
Grossman has been talking to other teams and Shero is open to a sign-and-trade.
“If it’s not New Jersey, he’s going to have a number of teams that he’ll want to talk to, and then those teams can deal with him,” Shero said. “If that’s the place he wants to go and it’s not going to be New Jersey, then we’ll approve it, sign the contract and make a deal with the team.”