Jagr, Kovalchuk among questions left in busy NHL free agency
A busy weekend to kick off NHL free agency has left a few prominent players still looking for landing spots and teams still needing to fill some holes.
The leftover list is a who’s who of stars from previous decades, notably Jaromir Jagr and Jarome Iginla, while Montreal likely won’t bring back defenceman Andrei Markov. Now that Joe Thornton has returned to San Jose and Patrick Marleau has moved on to Toronto , much of the intrigue has been taken out of the off-season.
There are still a few big loose ends to address with two months left before training camp, though:
OLD FISH
After Alexander Radulov signed a $31.25 million, five-year deal with Dallas on Monday, the most productive players remaining on the market are on the downside of their careers: Jagr at 45, Iginla at 40, Markov at 38 and Thomas Vanek at 33. Then there are 40-year-olds Shane Doan and Matt Cullen and 37-year-old Mike Fisher trying to decide whether to play another year.
Jagr won’t be back with Florida, and Flyers general manager Ron Hextall said he won’t consider signing him for a second tour in Philadelphia.
A couple of young players worth watching are former top prospects Nail Yakupov and Mikhail Grigorenko, who Florida Panthers’ Jaromir Jagr skates in the team’s NHL hockey game against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Pittsburgh in March. Making official what was suspected for some time, the Panthers revealed that they’re going in a different direction without the future sure-fire Hall of Fame forward.
weren’t given qualifying offers as restricted free agents. Yakupov and Grigorenko are 23, could come cheap on prove-it contracts and still contribute after rocky starts to their NHL careers.
KOVALCHUK BACK TO KHL?
Ilya Kovalchuk has been exploring a return to the NHL, but there’s no evidence that’s going to happen next season. The New Jersey Devils own the Russian forward’s rights for one more year, and GM Ray Shero said it’s first up to agent Jay Grossman to talk to interested teams about Kovalchuk before he even gets involved to potentially work out a trade. That hasn’t happened yet. “I assume at some point in the next few days, we should have a real good indication of
what’s going on or what he’s going to do,” Shero said.
Kovalchuk could play one more season in the Kontinental Hockey League and become an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2018 at age 35, when he’d also be eligible for an incentive-based contract. CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS Washington is making some major changes, which have less to do with an early playoff exit than an impossible salary-cap situation. Either way, the Capitals still need to confront some things. After signing right wing T.J. Oshie ($46 million/eight years), defenceman Dmitry Orlov ($30.6 million/six years) and centre Evgeny Kuznetsov ($64.2 million/eight years), they cleared more than $4.5 million in cap space by trading forward Marcus Johansson to New Jersey, but they can’t be done.
Washington has about $9.2 million to sign restricted free agent forward Andre Burakovsky and goaltender Philipp Grubauer and has enough remaining to fill out the roster with at least five other players.
TRADE MARKET
July has become a popular time for significant trades because teams have more cap space to manoeuvr than at the deadline. Because the expansion draft froze player movement for almost a week in June, there has been plenty of chatter, and the deals are expected to continue.
Vegas has already flipped defencemen - Marc Methot to Dallas, Trevor van Riemsdyk to Carolina, Alexei Emelin to Nashville and David Schlemko to Montreal - and acquired centre Marcus Kruger from Chicago. The Devils are still looking for a defenceman and could use their forward depth to acquire one.
And then there’s Colorado centre Matt Duchene, who was at the talk in February and still hasn’t been dealt. Columbus, epicenter of trade Pittsburgh and Nashville have been rumoured as potential destinations for Duchene.
“I don’t create the rumours and I don’t really comment on them, so it doesn’t really matter to me on rumours,” Avalanche GM Joe Sakic said. “You guys will know if we decide to make a move that we think improves our club.”