- Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News: The Sabres could use another left-handed defenseman and there has been talk that they made a big offer to Johnny Oduya.Oduya would like to remain with the Blackhawks, but they still have cap issues and still have re-sign Marcus Kruger.
Oduya’s most likely landing spot is the Sabres, maybe the Bruins. He might be expecting a new deal in the $4 million range, maybe closer to $5 million. GM Tim Murray said that he hasn’t moved on from Oduya just year.
If the Sabres can’t land Oduya, they may do what the Islanders did last year and wait for a team needs to unload some salary – Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuk.
- Brian Hedger: If the Blackhawks are not able to re-sign Johnny Oduya because they traded for Trevor Daley, Oduya could sign with the Stars as he was looking there before while waiting for an offer from Blackhawks.
- Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News: Stars GM Jim Nill on the timetable of the Patrick Sharp trade.
“These things start two or three months ago. You start having your pro meetings and you start analyzing things. You have to analyze the cap situation. First thing I want to get out there is I got so much respect for Chicago. That’s what we want to get to and it’s no secret to anybody what their situation was going to be with their cap situation and there’s probably seven or eight other teams in the league like that. We knew they would have to move some players, so I’ve been talking to Stan in the last two months. We touched base a little bit at the draft. I’ve talked to other teams also and the more Stan and I talked, we were looking more to a hockey trade. It was going to be he needed something, I needed something. In the end, it worked out that we both got what we were looking for. He needed a top-four defenseman in his lineup. I was looking for, to add a guy like Patrick Sharp, we’re a very young team, to get that leadership. Anytime you can add someone whose won Stanley Cups, you can’t replace that and then Stephen Johns was a big part of the trade because of that type of player that he was bringing to our organization.”