- Ed Tait of the Winnipeg Free Press: The Jets have eight UFAs (Michael Frolik, Drew Stafford, Lee Stempniak, Jim Slater, Jiri Tlusty, Matt Halischuk, T.J. Galiardi and Adam Pardy) this season, and four to deal with in 2016 – Andrew Ladd, Dustin Byfuglien, Jay Harrison and Grant Clitsome. They also have some RFAs that they are going to have to deal with the next two seasons. Ondrej Pavelec put up some good numbers towards the end of the season, but he still has doubters. He’s scheduled to make $4.25 million next year and $4.75 million the following two years. Ladd will be looking for more than $4.5 million on his next deal. The 30-year Byfuglien made $6 million this year, and there is some risk in signing him to a long-term deal. Tobias Enstrom is scheduled to make $5.75 million next season. He has a no-trade clause, but the Jets might be interested in seeing what they could get for him.
- Jeremy Rutherford of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: (chat) Asked Brian Elliott directly if he wanted to come back next year as a backup or if interested being a starter somewhere else, he said: “It’s the playoffs, I’m not thinking about that.”
- Joe Haggerty of CSNNE: Bruins coach Claude Julien when asked if he was glad he signed a three-year contract extension (around $2 million per) in the offseason.
“That doesn’t matter,” said Julien. “Life goes on…life goes on.”
“I’m not getting into that right now,” said Julien, as he opened the door and disappeared into the B’s home office.
Sounds like he may be thinking his days are numbered. Sounding like the Bruins won’t be looking for compensation from the Oilers for hiring Peter Chiarelli. The Bruins will be happy to be getting out from the remainder of his contract.
- Joe Haggerty of CSNNE: The Bruins should explore trading one of Zdeno Chara or Dennis Seidenberg. Chara has a no-movement clause and three-years left at a $6.9 million cap hit. Would Chara be more willing to move now that Chiarelli is gone? Seidenberg has a couple years left on his deal and is capable of playing heavy minutes. There is some talk that maybe the Oilers would try to sign Dougie Hamilton to an offer sheet. The Bruins would have to match it – from the Oilers or anyone else.
- Kevin Kurz of CSN Bay Area: Sharks owner Hasso Plattner said in a letter that GM Doug Wilson did a good job. Wilson later said that Hasso signed off on their plan for the Sharks.
“Hasso signed off on our plan and understands where we are trying to get to, and we are going to continue on with this.
” expect to get better and should have been better this season, but we will build upon our expanded leadership, the integration of our younger players, the strong draft from last year, and the picks that we have in the upcoming draft that is also very strong. We fully expect to bounce back quickly.”
From Plattner’s letter.
“We clearly had a window of opportunity, but the NHL has a very balanced constitution which doesn’t allow for money to become the dominant factor. You can’t buy a team, you have to build it which is very fair. And after you traded picks for ready-to-play veterans, you sooner or later have to start rebuilding the team,” Plattner wrote.
“We had hoped that we can do both, stay competitive and rebuild at the same time. It was close but the other teams in our conference were better, at least throughout the whole season and deservedly finished ahead of us.”
