- Tom Gulitti of The Record: The Devils lone remaining restricted free agent is 22-year old Adam Larsson. Larsson is scheduled to have his arbitration hearing on July 29th, but GM Ray Shero hopes to get a deal done before then. They have been working on a long-term deal. Larsson would be eligible to be an unrestricted free agent following the 2017-18 season. They will fallback to a two-year deal if they can’t agree on a long-term contract.
“I think it’s going in the right direction,” Shero said. “Until these things get done, you don’t know. We’ll get back at it early next week. The urgency is July 29, but it’s one of those things we’ve worked at pretty hard and we’ll kind of get to see where we are and different options. Hopefully, next week we’ll kind of know exactly and then we’ll try to wrap something up one way or the other.”
The sides have 10 days to get a deal done, but it sounds like Shero doesn’t think it will take that long.
“I would hope so,” he said. “We’re not going to work at it the next 10 days. I can tell you that. If we’re on it the next 10 days, we’ve got some problems. So, we’ve got a few more conversations for sure and we’re more or less giving it the weekend and we’ll get back together early in the week and we’ll see where we are. Hopefully, it gets done. If not, he’ll be under contract one way or the other. We’ll get him under an arbitration contract or negotiated.”
- Tom Gulitti of The Record: To play for the Devils this year, Pavel Zacha needs to sign an entry-level contract by 5 pm on August 18th. The Devils will owe Liberec a $100,000 transfer fee since they didn’t sign him by the first deadline of July 15th. GM Ray Shero said that talks have been positive and there are “no red flags.”
“I just tried to do my best here and I if play well, the contract will come,” Zacha said. “I’d really like to sign as soon as I can, but my agent is working on it now and we’ll see.”