NHL Network: Elliotte Friedman on NHL Tonight talking about Vladimir Tarasenko changing agents, what it means for him and who could be interested.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Jamison Coyle: “Vladimir Tarasenko changing agencies. What does that mean for his free agency that he’s currently in the midst of?”
Friedman: “Well I think Tarasenko had a really tough time. I think he was disappointed by the market for him.
I should say this. I don’t think his is all, I know a lot of people are going to say it’s the agents fault. I don’t necessarily believe that. I think that, number one, it’s been a really tight market. Like you guys just talked about Toronto. Who would have thought a week ago that Tyler Bertuzzi would be signing for one year, $5.5 million. Like, it’s tight out there. Really tight out there.
And secondly, I always think as a player you have to look at it and say, is there anything that I could have done differently here that could have made myself a better option. And I do think that in this particular case, some teams looked at Tarasenko’s play the last couple years and said, ‘Are we really sure about this?’
So I think both player and agent, it’s not one persons fault. And even though there’s going to be a new agent now, JP Barry and Pat Brisson, I don’t think you can look at this say, ‘Oh, it’s all the last agents fault.’ It doesn’t work that way.
What I think it means though Jamison is that they basically start all over again. The new agents, they call the teams. They find out who’s interested. They find out what was on the table and they go from there.
I think Carolina was definitely interested. I’ve heard San Jose has interest in Tarasenko. I’ve heard at times that Nashville did. And I think also Ottawa once the DeBrincat trade comes down. I think they had some interest.
But I don’t think Tarasenko’s found the market out there to be what it wants. I don’t think that’s going to change. I think that one of the things that is going to happen here though was maybe they could find a new situation or a new team that he might want to go to.”
Vladimir Tarasenko has switched agents as his search for a new team continues.@FriedgeHNIC talked about what the process is for Tarasenko after changing agents. @JamisonCoyle | #NHLTonight pic.twitter.com/VcAld91Vz1
— NHL Network (@NHLNetwork) July 5, 2023