- Craig Custance of ESPN: Source saying that are 14 teams that have a strong interest in signing Boston University free agent goalie Matt O’Connor. Five of those teams have already offered him the opportunity to play in the NHL this season, which would burn a year off of his two-year entry level deal. This would indicate that they are a non-playoff teams. The Sabres are aggressively going after him. Would think that the Oilers, Hurricanes and Coyotes are among the interested teams. The Stars are interested.
“If I was his agent, I’d be looking at opportunity in the American League where I can go play 40 or 50 games in the AHL next year,” said the scout.
- Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News: (from a ‘chat’) The Stars need to spend their offseason money on their blueline. The Stars might look trading Kari Lehtonen in the offseason, but they are also considering improving their blueline and seeing if Lehtonen can find his game again. Keeping Lehtonen is a serious option at the moment.
- Nichols on Hockey: Pierre LeBrun on TSN 1050 on the salary cap situation for some teams heading into next season.
“It’s going to be a fascinating off-season from that perspective. There are teams that are going to be forced to trade players they didn’t want to move. Okay. The Rangers, the Blackhawks, the L.A. Kings – there’s about six or seven teams that aren’t going to be comfortable with their situation this summer and they’re going to have to do something interesting.
“There are other teams lurking in the weeds. And I’ll give you an example of one of the teams. The San Jose Sharks have made this their off-season plan. They were pretty quiet at the deadline. They’ve had a quiet year. They’ve kind of done this transition, one foot in one foot out type of year where they’ve gotten younger, but they haven’t bottomed out. They’ll probably miss the playoffs, but they haven’t been terrible. Their plan of attack is they want to go after teams who are in cap trouble because they have tons of cap room in San Jose. And that’s their plan.
“They’re not alone. The Calgary Flames plan on doing this this summer. They kept their eye on the future at this deadline and they didn’t do anything foolish, but part of their thing is they have all of these draft picks they accumulated over the last year for this draft. And they have cap room. Which sets them apart compared to a lot of Canadian teams.”