- Jason Mackey of the Pittburgh Tribune Review: The Penguins might be thinking about using some of their extra money to improve their bottom-six forwards instead of their top-six.
“I’m not totally convinced that it has to be one (big move),” Rutherford said Sunday after returning from the NHL Draft.
“We talk about a top-six forward, but maybe it’s the group of guys we have that has to step up, and we just continue to try to build more balance in our forwards, which we tried to do last year. We were getting to that point until we ran into injuries.”Rutherford was hoping to land something at the draft, but wasn’t really surprised that nothing got done.
“Getting that depth 1-13 (forwards), where the third and fourth lines are contributing and hard to play against, that maybe is the way it ends up,” Rutherford said. “If a top-six forward is out there that makes sense, then, yeah, that could happen. If it’s not, then we can do it another way.”
The Penguins have had some talks with pending UFA Daniel Winnik, but he’s expected to hit the open market.
- Mike Chambers of the Denver Post: The Avalanche will look to sign a veteran free agent defenseman or two. The Avs are just under $17 million under the cap ceiling (before qualifying RFAs), but they have to take into consideration that defenseman Erik Johnson, Tyson Barrie and Nathan MacKinnon will need contract extensions after next season.
“We have room, but we also have to make sure we’re responsible because we do have some guys coming up next year,” Avs general manager Joe Sakic said Friday. “Obviously, we’d like to get one more defenseman and we’ll see how that goes. We want to be responsible, and hopefully there’s a fit for us July 1. If it doesn’t work out — we don’t have the guy we want, or the guy or two — we know we’ve got flexibility to do something via trade whether it’s in the summer or September.”
The Avs could use a left-handed defenseman, so they may look at Andrej Sekera. Other top-four left-handed options include Christian Ehrhoff, Johnny Oduya and Matt Irwin. Top right-handed defenseman include Mike Green and Cody Franson.
- Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun: The Maple Leafs won’t be going after any of the big names in free agency.
“We’ll be active, but we might have a different set of targets than other teams,” Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said as the NHL draft wrapped up Saturday, “But I don’t know if we’ll be the headline stealers.”
Shanahan then caught himself.
“We’re Toronto, so somehow there’ll be headlines,” he said with a laugh. “So let me re-phrase that, I don’t think we’ll shake the hockey world.”
