Rip The Mesh

Treliving has had eyes for Tanev since the executive left Calgary. 

Why wouldn't he?

Tanev is precisely the type of heart-and-soul defender the Leafs should target.

The right shot (and GTA product) can help stabilize a risk-taking lefty (ask Quinn Hughes), take on 18 or 19 minutes of tough defensive assignments, and busy himself with the unpleasant business of killing penalties, D-zone starts and eating three square meals of pucks a day. Health can be a concern for the 34-year-old veteran because he plays such a gritty, honest game. 

The catch here is twofold: (a) Tanev wants term, which is a risky proposition considering the wear on the player's tires, and (b) he has plenty of suitors (Dallas, Ottawa, Vancouver among them) which could drive up the price.

After dealing for Tanev's rights Saturday, Treliving is said to be pressing the defenceman to sign a six- or seven-year deal with a friendly cap hit.

Treliving tried trading for a Tanev-Zadorov package in the fall, when the six-foot-six Russian ended up in Vancouver.

Again, the GM knows the player. Loves the player.

Zadorov's superb performance in the playoffs (four goals, eight points in 13 games) only ratcheted up his stock ahead of his best chance to get paid.

The Canucks would like to keep him. Is he not a Rick Tocchet type player? But Zadorov's asking price — $5 million times six years — is steep.

We like the player. We'd like him a lot more if that price drops.

2 minutes ago, EB43 said:

I would rather get Stamkos shorter term, so this is good news

Think he's come to the west coast? Guess it depends on the scratch..

My Gaud! Team-mates with pug face Austin! Yuck  

Such a heavy piece of metal. Everybody gets a chance to carry a little ways. Are we jealous ?

No player drafted after the first round of the NHL draft is perfect.

Heck, even most of the players drafted in the first round aren’t.

The difference, of course, is that as the draft progresses, the players available just don’t have as much talent to work with.

Once upon a time teams could take a late-round roll of the dice on a smaller player who had high-end skill, but as teams have got better at drafting, especially over the past decade, players like Henrik Zetterberg — who fell to the seventh round in 1999 despite already having played one season of men’s hockey and having scored plenty at that — just aren’t there to be found anymore.

“On average their third round pick will have a 25 per cent chance of playing 200-plus NHL games,” draft expert Shane Malloy said. “The fourth to seventh rounders have less than a 12 per cent chance. Not to sound negative, it’s just the historical probability.”

And that means the task of picking in the latter stages of the draft fit into a pretty standard maxim: all prospects are bad.

This is not far from the truth about free agent contracts that Lou Lamoriello was heard to exclaim more than once: every contract is a year too long and a million too much.

That is, nothing in hockey, or sport for that matter, is as it should be.

Most players picked in the draft don’t make it. That doesn’t mean they’re bad players — there wouldn’t be a closet industry of draft-watchers if there wasn’t any fun in watching young kids try to figure out the world’s fastest team sport — it just means the odds are against them. There are only 700-or-so jobs in the NHL and only a few of those spots open up every year.

So if you’re going to take stab at picking a player who probably isn’t going to make it but, maybe, just maybe, might, you do need to focus in on what the player can do and whether it’s reasonable to think you can add what they don’t have but will need to make it as an NHLer.

And in four of the five picks, it’s clear what the Canucks think. They went for players that either think the game well or have excellent skating already.

Elite Prospects editor-in-chief notes that in their prospect grading system, the kinds of players you’re finding are C-grade players. There’s a lot missing in their games, even if the top-line elements intrigue.

“Melvin Fernström didn’t find a spot on our board, but his dual-threat scoring ability, supporting skills, and production were such that we assigned him a C-grade, meaning we still rated him as about third-round talent,” J.D. Burke noted about the player Vancouver selected 93rd overall.

He can score — he was a top scorer in the Swedish junior league — and he’s good at finding space off the puck, but he needs to improve his skating and his overall puck battle skills.

The next two picks were another pair of top-line standouts who have work to do: one of the top-scoring rookies in the Ontario Hockey League (Riley Pattersson, 125th overall) and then the OHL’s leading goal scorer (Anthony Romani, 162nd overall).

“They got Riley Patterson and Anthony Romani much higher than they were on our final board, and each has a well-defined offensive identity and a commendable statistical profile; Patterson as a north-south rush creator and Romani as more of a triple-threat scorer, most effective during sustained pressure,” Burke noted.

The Canuck’s fourth pick, 189th overall, was an intriguing B.C. kid, Port Moody’s Parker Alcos, a lanky defender from the Edmonton Oil Kings.

“We ranked Alcos 93rd overall because of his size, mobility, and good tracking data that accounts for things like transition plays, passing, defensive plays, etc,” Burke explained.

The Canucks’ final pick, one of the last of the draft, 221st overall, was a very odd one though. The chance of a seventh rounder even playing an NHL game is very, very small, so small that there’s a strong case that the draft should be shortened in length.

The final pick by Vancouver was big Swiss defenceman Basile Sanssonens, who physically looks like an NHL player — but he has no offensive game to speak of and even the hard-edged defensive players in the NHL were productive players in junior. Sanssonens, on the other hand, scored just one goal in the Swiss junior league last season, a league not exactly known for churning out NHLers.

But other than that last pick, there were intriguing signs of the influence of the Canucks’ small but hard-working analytics staff.

“They seemed to covet the players that shine in most analytic draft models, which hasn’t been the case at all in the last two or three drafts,” Burke noted. “We know Ryan Biech is pretty embedded on the amateur side, and you have to wonder if his influence at the draft table hasn’t expanded with time.”

The Steven Stamkos era with the Tampa Bay Lightning could very well be coming to an end.

After opening up significant salary cap space by trading defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to the Utah Hockey Club and forward Tanner Jeannot to the Los Angeles Kings, Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois met with Don Meehan, the representative for the long-time Tampa Bay captain, during Day 2 of the 2024 Upper Deck Draft at Sphere on Saturday. The conclusion from those discussions: Stamkos is poised to seek greener pastures.

“The plan is for Steven to test the free agent market,” BriseBois said. “Our respective positions haven't changed following today's trades and I understand that when you get this close to free agency, it can be tempting to see what the market has to offer to you. That was a risk I was taking when I didn't go to Steven a year early to try to lock him up and get a contract done.

“And to be fair I did tell Donny today that I think it's in the best interest of our organization to explore all options in the coming days, whether it be via trades or by getting to free agency and seeing how we can use this cap space to improve the makeup of our team.”

The 2023-24 season was the last of an eight-year, $68 million contract ($8.5 million average annual value) that Stamkos signed on June 29, 2016, and he can become an unrestricted free agent when the market opens at 12 p.m. ET on Monday.

"As of now, we've both agreed to get to July 1,” BriseBois said. “It doesn't mean we can't circle back to one another, but we're both going to go ahead and follow through with our due diligence, seeing what's out there and seeing what's best.

“My responsibility is to see what's best for the Lightning organization, and Steven has to do what's best for him, his career and his family. So, unless something changes between now and July 1 -- and it doesn't look like it will -- we will get to July 1.”

Stamkos was vocal with his displeasure at the beginning of last season that the Lightning had opted not to give him an offer of an extension last summer. Obviously the disappointment still resonates with the 34-year-old.

“Steven's earned the right to test free agency,” BriseBois said. “I didn't go to him last season to get a deal done. I did go to him quickly after this season, and I was taking a risk by doing that that we may end up here, and now here we are. And to be fair, I think both parties have tried to get a deal done up to this point. We just haven't been able to yet.”

If the projected parting of the ways between Stamkos and the Lightning does occur, it closes one of the most storied chapters in franchise history.

The Markham, Ontario native was the face of the franchise before he’d ever played for the team. Months prior to the Lightning selecting Stamkos first overall in the 2008 draft, the slogan “Seen Stamkos?” was omnipresent in the Tampa area, splattered on T-shirts and on billboards.

He didn’t disappoint.

Named captain on March 6, 2014, he has been a member of the Lightning for the entirety of his 16-season career, playing 1,082 games and scoring 1,137 points (555 goals, 582 assists), including 81 points (40 goals, 41 assists) in 79 games this season.

He’s Tampa Bay's all-time leader in games played, goals, points, even-strength goals (336), even-strength points (707), power-play goals (214), power-play points (422), overtime goals (13), game-winning goals (85) and shots (3,332). He was a member of the Lightning’s Stanley Cup-winning teams in 2020 and 2021, and has 101 points (50 goals, 51 assists) in 128 playoff games.

With Stamkos looking to be headed elsewhere, BriseBois said the Lightning are looking to get stronger up front, given the newfound financial flexibility the team has.

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported Saturday that the Lightning could be eyeing free agent wing Jake Guentzel, who has 227 goals in 520 career games.

Another path could be via trade for Maple Leafs wing Mitch Marner, who Lightning coach Jon Cooper said in the past is one of his favorite players after coaching him while the two represented Canada at the 2017 World Hockey Championship. Marner is entering the final season of a six-year, $65.358 million contract ($10.893 million average annual value) he signed Sept. 13, 2019.

Whatever direction the Lightning choose to go, BriseBois said the team now has more options to improve.

“As a group, we got younger and we now have a war chest of cap space to go out and improve our team in free agency,” Brisebois said. “And the hope is that this newfound cap space, our favorable taxation situation, the opportunity to be on a competitive team and to play with some great players, should make us an appealing destination when free agents have to make decisions on where to sign come July 1.

"The unexpected consequence of this newfound cap space today is that a number of teams are now reaching out about players that might be available. ... That's another avenue that we will be exploring in the coming days here.”

As for the trades earlier in the day, the Lightning acquired defenseman J.J. Moser, forward Conor Geekie, pick No. 199, used to select wing Noah Steen, and a second-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft from Utah in exchange for Sergachev.

Not long afterward, Tampa Bay netted pick No. 118, used to select defenseman Jan Golicic, and a second-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft from the Kings for Jeannot.

“I don't know exactly how we're going to use our cap space,” BriseBois said. “I just know that we had very little of it this morning, and now we have more of it to invest in improving our team.”

A team that likely won’t feature arguably the greatest player in franchise history in Stamkos.

You go, Big man !!!

It seems like the dream of a Jake Guentzel extension in Carolina is all but dead.

On the most recent episode of Elliotte Friedman's 32 Thoughts podcast, Friedman stated that it is his belief that Guentzel will be going to market.

Friedman stated that Guentzel's camp initially asked Carolina for an eight year, $64 million deal and that while the Canes did try to haggle and negotiate, they eventually agreed to that ask on Thursday.

However, it is believed that that 8x8 deal was an earlier ask and with the market changing, i.e. Tampa Bay shedding a ton of cap space, and with how close free agency is, that Guentzel has decided to just go to free agency anyway.

Now that isn't to say that the Canes are completely out of it as Guentzel could always circle back, but at this time it is believed that Tampa Bay would be the front runners with the cap space to offer him a larger contract on top of Florida being a tax-free state.

Also, as soon as July 1 hits, Carolina can no longer offer Guentzel an eight-year deal so they'll be on the same footing as everyone else.

Again, it isn't completely dead, but it seems that the Hurricanes front office and ownership flew a bit too close to the sun on negotiations and they may be left at the dance without a partner.

Already with the majority of the Hurricanes' other free agents also expected to go to market as well as Martin Necas wanting out, this offseason could be a painful one, even more so with Guentzel leaving when the team could have had him at asking price.

That's a big swing if the Canucks want to try!

Zadorov is now linked to the worst place on the planet.  He may be playing along side fat face Austin. Ick. Still speculation at this point.

But Tanev could come back. I was against Chris coming back but now it doesn't sound so bad. No long term stuff though, that could be a stickler..