On Kyle Palmieri of the New Jersey Devils …
- Tom Gulitti of The Record: Pending restricted free agent winger Kyle Palmieri will be looking for a nice raise from his current $1.6 million salary. The Devils and Palmieri don’t want to have any distractions at the moment by starting contract talks.
“I don’t want to add any distractions if I don’t have to,” the Montvale native said Monday. “For me, right now it’s just focusing on winning hockey games and helping this team make it to the playoffs this year.”
The soon to be 25-year old Palmieri is open signing a long-term deal that would take him into unrestricted years.
“I’m not exactly sure, but the chances of us re-signing him are very good,” Devils general manager Ray Shero said. “I don’t want to put a timetable on it or take Kyle’s eye off the ball here in terms of how he’s playing. When you trade for someone like him, that’s what you’re looking to add to your team and I think it’s been a good fit for him and for us. That’s something we’re hopeful of. Part of the trade was, he’s a restricted free agent at the end of the year with (arbitration) rights. So, that’s something we’d like to move forward with and we’re going to get to that.
“And when we are getting to that, that will be between me and the agent most likely. But, he’s been a good fit for us and we’re looking forward to discussing something with his agent at some point here.”
- Rich Chere of NJ.com: Kyle Palmieri hasn’t ruled out getting a contract extension done before the end of the season.
“I think it might get done before the end of the season and it might not. I’m not too worried about it. I haven’t put myself on any kind of a time line as far as that goes,” Palmieri told NJ Advance Media Monday. “Who knows? It could take until the end of June or July. I don’t want to worry myself about it.”