- Toronto Sun: Martin Brodeur said he’s 80 percent sure that he’s coming back this season.
“I would like to play one last season before retiring and I want to have fun doing it,” said the three-time Stanley Cup winner. “If the Canadiens made me an offer, it goes without saying that I would listen to what they have to offer me.”
Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin han’t been in contact with Brodeur this offseason.
- Tim Panaccio of CSN Philly: Flyers GM Ron Hextall on this past summers free agency:
“I think I said on July 1 after seeing some of those deals, not having any space may have been a good thing . When you don’t have space, you don’t have space. But part of not having space is that we have a pretty good hockey team. If we didn’t have a good team and didn’t have any space, then we have a problem. But when you have a good team and no space, I can live with that. I didn’t have a problem with July 1. I really didn’t. Would I have liked to have taken a shot at a couple guys? Yeah, but we couldn’t. We have to find other ways to get better. That was our focus.”
Hextall on the Vincent Lecavalier situation:
“Vinny is on our team and he’s going to be on our team and that’s the reality. So, we’re gonna do everything we can to put Vinny in a position to be successful. Vinny has to come back and play better 200 feet of hockey than he did last year. He did some good things. No doubt about it. He scored 20 goals which in this day and age is nothing to scoff at. I think he had 37 points. Those are decent numbers. There are just areas of his game where he has to be better.”
- Jason Botchford of the Vancouver Province: Canucks goalie Jacob Markstrom is now third on their depth chart after they brought in Ryan Miller this summer. Canucks GM Jim Benning admitted this summer that he was exploring Markstrom trade possibilities. Some teams were interested but a deal couldn’t be made.
- Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: (mailbag) The Blues have about $2.7 million in cap space and GM Doug Armstrong has indicated that he thinks he can get Jaden Schwartz signed and still have some room to spare. Later noted that signing Schwartz would put them at 24 players, so one more player would come off the $2.7 million.David Backes, Paul Stastny and Jori Lehtera will start at center according to Ken Hitchcock. Two-somes that will start off at camp: Backes-Oshie, Stastny-Steen, Tarasenko-Lehtera and Schwartz-Jaskin.
Potential Blues defensive pairings: Bouwmeester-Pietrangelo, Gunnarsson-Shattenkirk, Jackman or Leopold-Cole … then Butler.
On the Patrik Berglund trade rumors: the market for Berglund is likely the same in November or December than it was in the offseason. The Blues need to find out what they have in Lehtera and Joakim Lindstrom first.
