Many moving parts in Buffalo
Buffalo’s Terry Pegula, owner of the Sabres and Bills, continued a reorganization on Monday, announcing that he’ll assume wife Kim Pegula’s spot as the hockey team’s president, the same spot he holds with the Bills.
Kim Pegula still faces challenges in her recovery from a cardiac episode she suffered some 14 months ago.
As part of the transition, the clubs’ holding company, Pegula Sports & Entertainment, was dissolved. The point of the reorganization, noted Terry Pegula, is to allow each club a sharper focus and vision, in part why he canned Ron Raccuia weeks earlier as the executive vice president and chief operating officer overseeing both clubs.
Announcement of the streamlining had fans in western New York speculating that it could be a precursor to the Sabres being put up for sale. The Bills’ new stadium, under construction, now projects to cost $1.7 billion, some $300 million over earlier estimates. For the moment, though, there are no signs that Pegula is selling the hockey team he purchased in 2011.
Delaware North, the Buffalo-based concessionaire helmed by Jeremy Jacobs, owner of the Bruins, recently lost its decades-long deal to sell its food and beverages at Bills games. Delaware North still is on-site with soft drinks, hot dogs, and pizza at KeyBank Center.
Saving their best for this season?
A couple of former Boston College goalies, Spencer Knight and Joseph Woll, hope to pick off significant market shares of the net with their NHL clubs this season.
Knight, 22, who turned pro with the Panthers in the spring of 2021 after his two seasons at The Heights, exited the lineup after appearing in only 21 games last season. He resumed practice in July, attending the Panthers’ development camp, after an extended stay in the NHL/NHLPA players’ assistance program. He has yet to reveal what led to the career interruption.
He talked of “embracing uncertainty” when he spoke briefly with Panthers beat reporters in July.
“Who knows what’s going to happen?” Knight said, noting the delightful surprise it was to see the Panthers overcome struggles and reach the Stanley Cup Final. “But I’m cool with [uncertainty], and I think I’m going to become a better person and goalie from that.”
Knight is expected to be front and center when the Panthers open camp in three weeks.
Ex-Yalie Alex Lyon delivered big time for the Panthers down the stretch of 2022-23, prior to Sergei Bobrovsky finally resuming his No. 1 mantel in the playoffs. Lyon packed up July 1 as a free agent and signed a two-year deal ($900,000 AAV) with the Red Wings and will enter camp as insurance behind Ville Husso and James Reimer.
Woll, 25, played three seasons for
Jerry York at BC, before turning pro in the spring of 2019 with the Maple
Leafs. He’s finally on a one-way deal ($775,000 AAV) but will enter camp more in the Lyon wait-and-see role, with Ilya Samsonov and recently signed
Martin Jones slated for the 1-2 spots.
But Woll learned last season plans can change quickly. The 6-foot-3-inch stopper won six consecutive starts, beginning Feb. 18, allowing only 11 goals. Samsonov, awarded $3.55 million in salary arbitration this summer, will enter camp as the No. 1. But if Woll can resume the traction he finally gained late last season, he could push Jones to the bullpen.
Is Khudobin all done?
Absent a PTO offer, it looks like exBruins netminder Anton Khudobin won’t be seen in an NHL camp for the first time in some 15 years.
Khudobin, 37, was dealt from Dallas to Chicago at the March trade deadline and lost his one start with the Blackhawks. The ex-Wild draft pick (No. 206, 2004) finished with a good late kick to the pay window, securing a three-year/ $10 million deal with the Stars off of his strong work in the 2020 postseason bubble that helped deliver Dallas to the Cup Final against the Lightning.
He ultimately lost his job in Dallas to ex-BU goalie Jake Oettinger and went a lackluster 15-15-8 with the Stars over the course of that $10 million deal. For his career, Khudobin played in 27 playoff games, all but two in that 2020 playoff run in which he went 14-10.
“Goaltending . . . sometimes you are on top of the horse,” a realistic Khudobin once said during his time in Boston. “And sometimes you’re under it.”
Big slices of the pie
The deal Auston Matthews recently signed in Toronto, a four-year extension with a $13.25 million cap hit, should make him the highest-paid NHLer when the deal begins in October 2024. It represents a 13.8 percent bump over his expiring pact at $11.64 million.
Worth remembering: No NHLer has signed a max contract, defined in the cap era as the equivalent of 20 percent of a team’s maximum payroll in year No. 1 of the pact. That figure would be $17 million if the cap for 2024-25 is set at $85 million. If so, Matthews at $13.25 million will be a 22.1 percent discount from that $17 million max.
Connor McDavid, the game’s No. 1 force, has a cap hit of $12.5 million for the next three seasons. Upon expiration of the deal, he will be 29 and possibly poised to become the NHL’s first max player. If the cap figure has reached $90 million by then, he could be looking at eight years at $18 million per season.
Yes, that’s good living in the neighborhood, but each year of the NHL cap system, the game’s biggest stars increasingly look underpaid when compared with their counterparts in MLB, the NFL, and NBA. The larger that disparity grows, the greater the possibility the NHL rank-and-file look for a substantial shift in the pay paradigm.
Loose pucks
The Ducks still have not secured contract extensions with prized restricted free agents Trevor Zegras, C, the ninth pick in the 2019 draft, and Jamie Drysdale, D, No. 6 in 2020. Per CBA terms, they must be under contract by Dec. 1, 5 p.m., or they are ineligible to play in the 2023-24 season. Protracted holdouts generally don’t turn out well. In Toronto, William Nylander held out until Dec. 1, 2018, before signing a long-term extension. He played in 54 games, but his production in 2018-19 dropped by roughly one-third compared with his previous two seasons. That deal, by the way, carried a $6.96 million cap hit and will expire at the end of the coming season. The Ducks, with new coach Greg Cronin, will play 23 games prior to Dec. 1 . . . No telling if it’s because Marty Walsh is the new executive director of the Players’ Association, but both the league and union finally sound optimistic about forging an agreement for international play that would return the players to World Cup and Olympic play. The return to Olympus would be in February 2026 (Milan), followed by a World Cup in the fall of 2028. Rinse and repeat for 2030, 2032 and then to infinity and beyond (best said in Buzz Lightyear voice). Some hybrid tournament could be held as soon as February 2025, but the sides have not finalized details. One huge sticking point: the IIHF ban, barring all players from Russia and Belarus, in place since soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 . . . Congrats to Laney Byler, whose perpetual smile lit up the Bruins’ media relations department the last few seasons. A 2019 Michigan grad, she’s headed home for a higher-profile gig in Detroit as part of the Red Wings’ media machine . . . Kayla McAvoy, a.k.a. Charlie McAvoy’s kid sister, landed a new gig with the Rangers as assistant sports scientist. Over a stretch of seven years at Queens College in Flushing, N.Y., she earned her undergraduate degree in nutrition and exercise science and then a master’s in exercise physiology. Growing up on Long Island, the McAvoy clan was all about the Broadway Blueshirts.