Long night, early day. So, quickie late-night blog:
Once news broke that Colorado moved to 7x$7 million on Gabriel Landeskog and was willing to go to eight years, this one was over. Landeskog loves it there and wants to win. But it was a grind, legit stress.
Lets do some quick predictions:
EXTENSIONS
Brayden Point: The Lighting announce an eight-year extension just under $9.5 million (the AAV for both Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy). Like the other two, Point’s worth every penny. Tampa continues its history of extending players the year before their contracts expire.
Darnell Nurse: Reported Tuesday Edmonton was discussing a four-year extension for him. Both sides want to extend, but there is a debate about the term. We’ll see where it goes.
Carter Verhaeghe: Great year for the Panthers, and something gets done on Wednesday. Not sure yet on Sam Reinhart.
FREE AGENTS
Sticking with my previous picks, although zero guarantees I’m right.
Dougie Hamilton: New Jersey
David Savard: Montreal
Blake Coleman: The prediction is he gets 6×5. Now adding Boston as my guess.
Jaden Schwartz: Seattle
Brandon Saad: St. Louis, Islanders, Pittsburgh or Los Angeles
Kyle Palmieri: Haven’t heard a thing, which means the Islanders probably have him locked up.
Alex Goligoski: Minnesota
Derek Forbort: Boston
Zach Hyman: Edmonton
Ryan Suter: Dallas
WAVERING
Phillip Danault: Initially said Los Angeles takes surprise look. Vegas and Rangers also there.
Vladimir Tarasenko: Initially said Islanders or New Jersey. Not sure now.
NEW
Alexander Wennberg: Seattle
Nick Foligno: Minnesota
Zach Parise: Islanders
Michael Bunting: Toronto
Nick Ritchie: Tough to pin down, a lot of interest
Brandon Sutter: Vancouver. A week ago, didn’t seem like this was going to happen, but that’s changed. Momentum.
Cody Ceci: Edmonton
Frederik Andersen: Arizona, Buffalo or Carolina
Antti Raanta: Carolina
Brian Elliott: Tampa Bay
Jonathan Bernier: New Jersey
In addition to Goligoski, Minnesota looks at Zach Bogosion and/or Jake McCabe. McCabe has been skating for three weeks.
My brain is too fried tonight to have a great feel on Philipp Grubauer, which affects so much of the goalie market. Same for Linus Ullmark.
TRADE
Ryan Strome: Seattle, Vegas or Ottawa.
Ethan Bear: Not sure, but with Tyson Barrie, Evan Bouchard and Ceci in Edmonton, there could be something here. I like Bear, and so do a few teams.
OFFER SHEET
Elias Pettersson: Vancouver was clearly rattled by the possibility of it… and have cleared a ton of cap room. I polled a few agents and executives to see if they thought it was really realistic. Mixed responses. Some yes, some no. But the Canucks thought yes, and their vote matters most.
See you Wednesday.
