Scratch the Cats
When and if Holland trades Puljujarvi’s rights, it likely won’t be to the Florida Panthers
Everybody wants to know where right-winger Jesse Puljujarvi is going.
Here’s one non-destination: Florida.
Even though it might seem like a crackerjack idea, the Edmonton Oilers dealing Puljujarvi to the Panthers for a fellow Finn, centre Henrik Borgstrom, when the 201920 NHL season ends, its likely not happening.
OK, unless Borgstrom’s agent, Markus Lehto, who also does the bidding for Puljujarvi, comes upon a major falling out with Borgstrom and the Panthers while the kid decides to sign in Finland, like Puljujarvi.
But right now, the Panthers feel centres are more important than wingers, something not unusual for most NHL teams, and after trading Vincent Trocheck to Carolina for four pieces, they still feel Borgstrom is, at worst, a topnine forward.
Plus, the Panthers don’t really need Puljujarvi. They have fellow right-winger Owen Tippett pencilled in for regular work, and they just signed Russian Grigori Denisenko, who might also be an NHL right-winger.
While some have also floated a Tippett-for-Puljujarvi trade, because both are first-rounders from the 2016 NHL Draft, sources say that’s a total non-starter, even if Puljujarvi has played 139 NHL games and Tippett just seven.
Tippett (10th overall selection), had 40 points in 46 games with Springfield (Mass.) of the AHL this past season before his campaign was cut short due to a broken wrist.
Borgstrom, who played two years at Denver University with Todd McLellan’s son Tyson, had a so-so first NHL season in 2018-19 and didn’t have a good camp last September before being sent to their AHL farm. Then he got a lacerated kidney.
They still feel he’s got the tools to be, at worst, a thirdline NHL centre, although there was a report that Jari Kurri’s Jokerit KHL team was trying to sign the Helsinki-born Borgstrom for the 2020-21 season.
“Naturally, numerous top teams in the best European leagues would definitely like to have him, but it’s too early to discuss that. The NHL is his top priority (when the league gets back to playing),” Lehto said a few days ago.
Puljujarvi (fourth overall pick in 2016) went back to
Oulu, Finland, this season and lit it up after wanting out of the Oilers organization. But he hasn’t proven he’s a top gun in the NHL. More like a top-nine, not a top-six winger. “Kind of like (Kasperi) Kapanen in Toronto,” said one NHL general manager.
That is how he’s been sold after 53 points in 56 games back in Karpat in Finland this past season, not as a failed first-round draft pick who just turned 22.
“He’s a third-line NHL right-winger,” said a longtime NHL head coach.
Good tools, big, but hockey
IQ needs work.
The other idea floated was the Oilers trading Puljujarvi’s rights to Ottawa for its third first-round pick (21st overall, the Islanders’ original choice they gave up for Jean-Gabriel Pageau). That could give the Oilers the 20th and 21st picks, but sources say the Senators are lukewarm on Puljujarvi because they are deep in farm forwards ready to make the NHL jump.
Oilers GM Ken Holland hasn’t been talking to other GMs about Puljujarvi’s rights and won’t until hockey resumes. Like everybody else, playing hockey is on his mind more than a trade.
DRAFT DAY?
It’s looking like the pushback from general managers on the NHL idea of a June draft even with no completed season might come to fruition, even though the league really wants to capitalize on the excitement of the NFL Draft on TV.
A number of GMs would like to have it after the playoffs, in large part, so they can make player-for-draft-pick deals to unload salary.
“The players are excited and nervous. I know one of our players, Seth Jarvis, must have had 100 meetings over Skype or whatever. There’s no upside for the players to wait,” said local agent Gerry Johannson.
RETURNS FOR HEMSKY
When the Oilers dealt the just-retired Ales Hemsky to Ottawa in 2014, then-GM Craig MacTavish got a fifthrounder that June that the scouts used on Vernon Vipers forward Liam Coughlin, of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League, and a thirdrounder in 2015.
GM Peter Chiarelli ended up trading both in 2015 and did very nicely. He sent the Boston-born centre Coughlin to Chicago for the rights to goalie Anders Nilsson and used the third-rounder in a package of picks to the Rangers for Cam Talbot. Coughlin, 26 in September, spent four years at the University of Vermont and this past season mainly in the ECHL.
THIS ’N’ THAT
Colby Cave, who tragically died of a brain bleed five weeks ago, would certainly have been one of the Oilers’ call-ups from Bakersfield … Johannson’s agency is adviser to Carter Savoie, the St. Albert-born winger who played for the Sherwood Park Crusaders and is off to Denver University … Hard to believe Kurri turned 60 on Monday. A lot of water under the bridge from when he showed up as an Oiler at 20, learning how to speak English watching Happy Days on TV. “Inside Jari’s head were 24-hour reruns of Richie Cunningham down at Arnold’s,” said Gretzky at Kurri’s Hall-of-Fame induction. Gretzky is godfather to Jari’s sons, Ville and Joonas … Almost 20 per cent of the NHL player workforce comes from Europe and those players will have to self-quarantine for two weeks when they return.