- Josh Cooper of Yahoo! Sports: Cooper lists five reasons why it could be a good time for the Predators to look at trading Shea Weber within the next year.1. The offers will be ridiculously in Nashville’s favor – perceived value, especially from the older GMs, may be higher than his actual value.
2. Nashville is strong on the blueline without Weber – they have Seth Jones, Ryan Ellis, Roman Josi and Mattias Ekholm.
3. Was 2014-15 just a down year for Weber? Why wait to find out? – 15 goals last year was his lowest full season total of his career and his 45 points were his lowest point total since 2009-10.
4. Nashville’s 2016 RFA summer – Seth Jones and Filip Forsberg will be up and looking for a nice raise.
5. Turn the franchise over to someone new – Josi, Jones and Forsberg could be their next building blocks.
- Andrew Gross of The Record: The Rangers are currently about $400,000 under this seasons $71.4 million salary cap. Projections on next seasons cap ceiling are not known yet, but the Rangers will have some work to do. Rangers RFAs after this season include Chris Kreider, Kevin Hayes and J.T. Miller, with all three arbitration eligible.This year, the Rangers had to trade Carl Hagelin to create the room to re-sign Derek Stepan. The Rangers will likely not be able to bring Keith Yandle back for 2016-17. Yandle is entering the final year of his five-year, $26.25 million contract. The Coyotes are paying half of Yandle’s salary.
- Kevin McGran of The Star: The Maple Leafs and Jonathan Bernier couldn’t agree to a contract before their arbitration hearing yesterday, which lasted almost six hours. Bernier will get a one year deal from the arbitrator. The Leafs and Bernier had been negotiating a longer-term deal. The arbitrator’s ruling will be delivered by 2:00 pm on Sunday, and the sides can continue to negotiate a new deal. Once the ruling is announced, they are bound to it. His deal will likely be close to $4.2 million.
