- Pierre LeBrun of ESPN: Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky will be a RFA at the end of the season. When they re-signed him to his current two-year deal, it wasn’t easy ($6.25 million salary this year with a $5.625 million cap hit).
“We love Bob, we want to obviously keep him,” Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen told ESPN.com on Tuesday. “We made a fair offer in our opinion and it didn’t go anywhere. We’ll keep after it. He’s an incredibly hard-working player and he’s a leader that way and such a good example. We absolutely want to keep a guy like that and for long-term.”
- Pierre LeBrun of ESPN: The main purpose of Bill Daly visit to Las Vegas wasn’t to look at expansion. Daly via email:
“It was to attend a Sports Lawyers Association Board of Directors meeting. The trip was not ‘expansion related’ at all. But since I was there, I took the opportunity to review progress on the arena. It was nothing more than that.”
- Pierre LeBrun: “Right now, you could argue only Buffalo truly knows and feels it will be selling. Everyone else, even 29th-place Columbus, is still “in”
- Craig Custance of ESPN: 3-on-3 as part of overtime could be talked about at next weeks GM meetings. It’s being used in AHL this season (seven minutes of 4-on-4 and 3-on-3).
“We basically agreed that we would talk about it this year. I don’t know if we’re going to talk about it , I don’t know if we’re going to talk about it in March,” said Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland, a proponent of a 3-on-3 overtime. “We’ve played a month with what we’re trying to do. We can get a brief , it’s such a small sample size. It think realistically in March, once we get a larger sample size, a larger sample size in the American League and in the National League, we can see.”
One AHL coach: “You know what? I’m kind of mixed about it,” he answered immediately. “I don’t mind it.”
One Eastern Conference executive: “I’m converted. I was against it, now I’m for it,” he said. “It gets the job done,” he said. “I think it’s coming.”
One Western Conference executive: “It gets the job done,” he said. “I think it’s coming.”
- Nichols on Hockey: Bob McKenzie on TSN 1050 on Kings forward Mike Richards, and who might be interested.
“So Mike Richards’ name is a guy that is popping up as a potential trade possibility. Now keep in mind, he’s got five years left on his deal after this year. He’s got a cap hit of $5.75 million. He’s got one of those back-diving contracts a little bit that could put the Kings in trouble with some cap recapture. So difficult guy to trade, but that’s one of the options that they would be exploring.”
“Um, not off the top of my head. I don’t know that it’s along that far yet. I mean, the problem they run into is nobody wants to take on five years at 5.75.
“Now, Mike Richards is a pretty good hockey player. But, in fairness to him, he this past summer probably worked out harder and did more training and tried to get himself into a position where he could still contribute on a significant basis. So I don’t think the notion they might be prepared to part with him is necessarily performance-related as much as it is reality-related.
“And that is on a team that’s got Anze Kopitar, Jeff Carter and Jarret Stoll as your top three centers. Do you have room for a guy making that kind of money as arguably a fourth-line center, although he kills penalties and plays the power play.”
Nichols on Hockey: Darren Dreger on TSN 1050 on Mike Richards and Slava Voynov.
“I know that Dean Lombardi, man, he just has so much time for Mike Richards. In so many ways he looks at him as a son. And that’s not stretching it. He flew to meet with Richards in the off-season and tried to get him going. ‘You need to work out better. Prepare.’ All of those things.
“So Mike Richards would be an option to relieve that cap pressure. But the L.A. Kings are also hoping, as they were last week, that they’ll find out this week from the District Attorney’s Office as to what direction they’re going with Slava Voynov. Do they have enough to charge him or at least to continue with the legal proceedings. Will they know that before the case moves into the courtroom December 3. Maybe they just drop it. That seems unlikely, but it’s conceivable and then at that point the Los Angeles Kings aren’t necessarily off the hook, but the problem becomes a little bit different.”
Richards isn’t going anywhere to be a No. 1 or No. 2 center.
“I can’t see it. And is he going to go to Edmonton to be their No. 2 center? Probably not if he has a no-trade or no-move.”