- Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun: Senators GM Bryan Murray has had some serious talks with teams about Robin Lehner. Teams will be continuing trade talk in Vegas at the NHL Awards.
“When you sit down face-to-face, everybody knows everybody’s players today, so when you make an offer or suggest a trade we know if it’s going to help them or not and we know whether a return is fair or not,” Murray said during the club’s pre-draft availability last week.
“So, I think it’s easier when you can sit down and look the guy in the eye.”
The Sabres and Oilers have shown the most interest, with a potential deal involving draft picks. Aside from the top picks, the Oilers have the 16th, 33rd and 57th and the Sabres have the 21st, 31st and 51st.
The Senators would like to get a forward back, but there has also been some talk that it could expand to include a defenseman. It is thought that David Legwand or Colin Greening could be included in a deal.
The Stars, Sharks, Blues and Flames are also looking for a goaltender. The Stars and Flames have shown Mild interest in Lehner. The Sharks and Blues have talked to Senators about Craig Anderson.
“Lehner is the guy they want to move,” said a league executive Monday.
The goalie market is crowded with Cam Talbot, Eddie Lack and maybe Martin Jones and pending UFA Devan Dubnyk.
“The problem we have with this thing is we don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “We go to Las Vegas, we’ve got the GMs meetings and then a lot of guys are going to leave right after the meeting to go to Florida.
“I’m going to stay because of the awards and our three players in the awards unless the flights are late for some of the GMs Tuesday afternoon you don’t get that contact time that you sometimes want and sometimes need.”
- Jonathan Willis of the Edmonton Journal: Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli on offer sheets.
a tool in our toolbox. I was faced in it in Boston on a couple of occasions, one very public one not public and it’s something you accept as a manager if you’re on the other end. Now I may be on the other side of that and it’s something you can use and I certainly wouldn’t rule out using it.
Chiarelli on the No. 16 pick.
There’s going to be a really good player with that pick. Instinctively you want to keep the pick, especially as the draft approaches you get a little more pumped about that pick and that player. Those picks are valuable on a number of levels, and the other level is that it can get you a pretty good player. Instinctively, yes, I’d like to keep it.
Chiarelli on trading their 2nd round pick for a goalie.
There are goalies out there. We’ve had discussions with teams. We’re in a group of my guess is two or three, maybe four teams that are looking for goalies. There are more goalies than those number of teams, so we’re in a bit of a buyers’ market. Having said that we’ve got multiple picks so I seem to be a popular potential trading partner on that front. Would we trade a second-round pick? Yeah, sure, I’d look into doing that possibly.
Chiarelli on the goalie market being a buyers’ market.
There’s a couple of groups of goalies out there. I’m not averse to either of the types of groups. You’ve got some younger, smaller sample size guys, you’ve got some more proven guys. For me it’s about fitting in too how we improve our D and how we’re going to play defensively. At the end of the day it takes two to tango so you’ve got to get the right deal in place. I’m not averse to going to the free agent market either, whether it’s the trade market or the free agent market. We’re going to play better defensively, we hoped to improve our defence. Our defensemen will improve, the defensive lay will improve. This goalie thing we’ve been looking at it very closely and it’s tough. You see some of the trades of goalies in the past, you don’t know how they’re going to pop. We ended up getting Rask in Boston and we were able to bring him along slowly until he was ready. Sometimes you’re not. At the same time we weren’t able to bring Michael Hutchinson along slowly and he popped for Winnipeg. It’s a real inexact science and you’ve really got to go to the character of the goalie and how the team’s going to play defensively. My guess is we’ll probably be able to do something before the draft but I’m not completely sure.