Congrats to the Blues, who are now the proud owners of Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway! They also send a prospect and a 3rd in 2028 to Edmonton for future considerations.
If Broberg doesn’t grow into that contract, it could be $13 million between him and Torey Krug getting paid to do virtually nothing - and that’s assuming Krug doesn’t fight IR or LTIR if [when] the Blues move to put him there.
Canadiens take on Patrik Laine. He and a 2nd round pick were traded for Jordan Harris. Harris is a sneaky good younger defenseman. I like this a lot for the Blue Jackets. Laine clearly wasn’t working out and with his big salary not many teams were going to take him.
It’s a big gamble for the Habs, but if it pays off and Laine returns to being a scoring stud then Bravo to Hughes for making the trade
Don’t take Jesper Fast in your fantasy hockey leagues this year.
Carolina is starting to feel like a franchise that had a Cup window open up and had all the pieces to win it all, but something happened every year and it never got close.
If we needed a reality check, this is certainly it.
This story breaks my heart. RIP Johnny Hockey.
The driver who hit the brothers has a lot to answer for.
Good thing Leon took the hometown discount so that Stan Bowman can have some cap room to … oh, no - wait, he didn’t do that. And, apparently he didn’t take deferred money like Seth Jarvis did to lessen the cap hit. [Which, it will end up aggravating player escrow, but who cares about that right now?]
That team is going to have $47.25 million tied up in 5 players for '25-26, $57.5 million tied up in 7 [presuming Kane is still around], and it will probably be worse the year after. They better hope McDavid can put up postseasons like he did last year, if not better, because they’re not winning the Cup any other way.
This just made me realize that hockey stars are very underpaid compared to the other major sports. Jalen Brunson, an all-star but not by any means one of faces of the sport, gave the Knicks a “hometown discount” for 4 years at around 39M per. Draisaitl, one of the better players in the league is getting 14M?!?!
They’re “underpaid” on an absolute basis, but you have to get everything on an apples-to-apples basis. That includes
If you do this analysis for women’s vs men’s sports, then you are branded as a sexist.
with no cap, the leafs would sign mcdavid for 25M a year, if not more. Im wondering if there is more revenue variance in the nhl than other sports. It’s pretty sad that a top player like mcdavid cant play for the leafs and secure the bag.
They have Auston Matthews. Leafs fans on teh interwebs swore he was twice the complete player as McDavid.
As we get ready for training camp, a few roster notes:
Also don’t draft Jamr Jagr since he announced he is retiring (from the Czech hockey team that he owns).
I don’t really know what director of hockey operations does but as long as it is farther away from the actual team on the ice I’m all for a promotion. Rick Nash is a good guy, but having watched him as a player with the CBJ from rookie to trade I don’t think he has the hate to lose/will to win needed to drive a team to major success.
Columbus is an interesting story in “promoting former players into front office spots in the organization.” For a while, it was like every former player who spent more than 3 years there landed in some front office spot where it wasn’t clear what exactly qualified them to be there and it felt more like a post-retirement gig to collect free money. The fact that the Blue Jackets went trending down as that happened more and more was not a surprise. Like, I’m sure Mark Letestu and Derek Dorsett and Jared Boll are nice guys, but what the hell they were doing in player development roles I still have no clue.
And yes, most organizations do this.
Between Presidents, General Managers, and Coaches the CBJ have had only two coaches that were Stanley Cup finals worthy, Hitchcock (2006-2010) and Tortorella (2015-2021). Presidents are mediocre to poor, GMs are mediocre to poor. In those first few years I think Doug MacLean created an expectation of mediocrity with the ownership group who were not steeped in hockey until the Blue Jackets came to Columbus. We have yet to exorcise that taint.
GM Don Waddell and coach Dean Evason have a tough hill to climb but I am at least happy that they seem professional and seasoned enough to do it.
Love these deals. I feel like a lot of them have worked out great over the years.
It wouldn’t be the preseason if we didn’t have injuries.
Doughty missed notable time in 2021-22, the Kings survived that. We’ll see if they survive this season.
I don’t think a knee is supposed to bend that way. I’ll be shocked if Laine plays at all this season.
Define “survive.”
Not as if they’ll get relegated. In fact, they might get a better draft pick for being so unfortunate. Always look on the bright side of life,…
Hard to think of a better defenceman than Doughty over the past 15 years but he has given and taken a lot of hard hits over the years. Hope he has a few good years left as he is one of the opposing players I truly enjoy watching.