–Bryan Murray spoke briefly about the contracts for Kyle Turris and Zack Smith:
These are young men that, under current rules, (would have) become free agents in the not too distant future. We’re trying to draft well, or trade for good young players and trying to keep them. It’s hard to keep them for a long time if you don’t make the commitment.
So as I mentioned previously the extra cash is to buy them out of years of free agency.
-Ottawa has finally signed their fifth goalie in the form of Marc Cheverie, a former 7th round pick (7-193/06) of the Florida Panthers. He spent three years in the NCAA at the University of Denver before turning pro and most of his time has been in the ECHL (52 games versus 24 in the AHL). He’ll start for Elmira. He’s likely on an AHL two-way deal.
-A reader asks Adam Proteau why the Sens bought out Bobby Butler and his answer is 100% accurate:
Sens GM Bryan Murray clearly wanted the cap room created by Butler’s buyout and you can see why: although the salary payout to the player is $200,000 both this and next season, the cap hit (as per the invaluable capgeek.com site) is actually only $50,000 this season and $200,000 next year. In this day and age, that’s a negligible amount of money to spend on opening up a roster spot. Why not trade him for a low pick? First, you have to assume there’s a market for the player. And if other GMs were aware Murray was shopping Butler aggressively (as you’d have to imagine he did), they likely realized they might be able to acquire Butler without giving up any assets whatsoever. You can never assume that, just because something didn’t happen – in this case, a trade – nobody attempted to make it happen.
-There have been several stories of late discussing how players on ELC’s would report to Binghamton if the NHL season doesn’t start on time. I have no idea why these are stories–the players have to report somewhere and the team who owns their rights wants them in the AHL. The one piece of information floating around in the context of these articles that’s of interest is that Mika Zibanejad is envisioned as playing left wing as a pro.
-On the random side of things, in the midst of a straightforward article Nichols decides that Andre Petersson‘s future in Binghamton would somehow be jeopardized by the flood of players (Jared Cowen and Jakob Silfverberg) who would play there instead of Ottawa. This is based on…well, it’s just speculation, but even that comes from nowhere. Petersson, who is coming off an excellent rookie season, might have to play behind Silfverberg if he plays on the right side, but otherwise there’s no discernible impact.
–James offers this chestnut:
Sure there are a couple of big strapping dudes like Ben Blood kicking around but speaking frankly, he was drafted in 2007 and Blood probably would have made the team by now if he was going to
James hasn’t made the connection that Blood just graduated from college–this upcoming season is his rookie year, rather like Colin Greening in 10-11, so no one knows if he has NHL potential or not. Varada, in the same article, thinks players like Zack Smith are readably available and so he doesn’t like the term of the contract. I don’t think that’s the case–physical players who can do other things are not common (if they were no one would offer Matt Carkner and his two bad knees 3 years/1.5).
–ESPN Magazine has picked the Toronto Maple Leafs as the worst team in all the North American pro leagues. This isn’t an all-time ranking (the Chicago Cubs presumably win that title easily) and frankly doesn’t mean much of anything, but it does give hockey fans something to talk about.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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