- Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun: The Senators will likely shop center Jason Spezza this offseason. If they don’t get the pieces they want for him, they won’t trade him for the sake of trading him. Spezza does have a no-trade clause. Source saying that in July of 2012, Spezza had to submit a list of 10 teams that he didn’t want to be traded too. Senators GM Bryan Murray.
“He’s our captain, at this point, he has a year left on his contract. We’ll see where we go with him,” said Murray in his post-season availability last Tuesday.
Spezza has one year left with a cap hit of $7 million but a salary of $4 million. The Sens don’t have any plans to sign him to a contract extension at this time. SportsNet’s Doug MacLean cautioned the Senators if they want to trade him.
“There’s some things you have to look at before this deal,” said MacLean during a break in the Montreal-Tampa series last week. “No. 1 is somebody ready to replace the points. Like him or not, he’s still an 80-point scorer in the league.
“That’s the challenge. Is (Mika) Zibanejad capable of stepping into that spot and picking up some of that slack? They like him a lot and they’d like to see him move up the lineup but is that taking a step back?
“It’s fine to say we want to say goodbye to (Spezza) but you’ve got to have people who can replace him essentially.”
- Sarah McLellan of the Arizona Republic: Coyotes Keith Yandle’s name has been in the rumor mill for past two years. He has two years left with a $5.25 million salary cap hit. Trade talk is likely to continue.
“Like I’ve always said, it’s a good thing if teams are wanting you and I think it’s when teams don’t want you you’ve gotta be a little bit worried,” Yandle said. “For me, it’s been so long that I’ve gotten a little immune to it.”
“Coming into July 1 and obviously the draft and stuff like that, you look at your team,” Yandle said. “You want us to get better, and you want to go out and get free agents and draft well, obviously. But you never know what’s going to happen, and that’s the nature of the business.”
- Josh Cooper of the Tennessean: Predators pending RFA Michael Del Zotto.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen,” he said this week. “Obviously I’m not too happy with how this year has gone for me. I have high expectations for myself, and being traded here I wanted to prove I could play to the best of my ability and how I had in the past. We’ll see what happens this summer and just take it one day at a time.”
Del Zotto is coming off a two year, $5.1 million deal. It seems unlikely that the Predators wouldn’t bring him back.
- Michael Kelly of the Star Tribune: Avs Paul Stastny was getting anxious at the trade deadline about the possibility that he would be traded.
“To me it was kind of a sign of confidence that they want me and I’m an important piece,” Stastny said. “For a couple of days you think about it; it’s hard not to. We have such a good group of guys. They see that.”
The Avs didn’t really have any plans to trade him.
“Honestly, it was not even close for us to move Paulie,” Roy said. “We said all along we didn’t want rental players.”
Coach Patrick Roy hopes the pending UFA will remain with the team.
“We believe Paul wants to stay as an Avalanche next year and we think there’s a good chance he can sign with us,” Roy said. “How it happens, that will be up to Joe and agent to discuss. I think Paul has the Avs in his heart, he loves to be in this town and he loves these fans.”
- Dennis Bernstein: Kings Mike Richards needs to have a good playoffs to remain with the team.
- Igor Eronko: Anton Belov on why he left the Oilers for SKA of the KHL: “Didn’t want to play under that coach”