Towards the stars and then the shadows free#

The Oilers cleared Zack Kassian’s contract off the books and are in the process of freeing up more dollars so they too can compete for a high-priced, high-profile addition.

Towards the stars and then the shadows free#

Toronto opened up a roster spot by moving the final two years of Petr Mrazek’s contract to Chicago, which should free up enough dollars to make a competitive bid on either retaining Campbell or wading into the trade market. Marc-Andre Fleury took a discount to stay in Minnesota and share the net with Cam Talbot next season, assuming Talbot is OK with that. Some of the other would-be-objects of their affection also disappeared from the marketplace. Is Kuemper an option in Edmonton? Or possibly Washington, where the Capitals opened up a spot on their roster by trading Vitek Vanecek to the Devils? Kuemper, meanwhile, will test free agency and that’s where the fun will start. Sometimes, for the best teams, good goaltending can be good enough.

If they can keep most of their core together by not paying Kuemper, internally, they believe they can do it again with the new duo. Colorado didn’t need Andrei Vasilevskiy-caliber goaltending to win the Stanley Cup. The hope is that Georgiev, given the opportunity to step out of the shadows of Igor Shesterkin, can legitimately develop into a true No. Pavel Francouz has proven to be an adequate backup, but he’s nobody’s idea of a starter. On the other hand, if it doesn’t work out – or there’s an injury along the way – there’s nothing to prevent the Avs from finding a supplementary goaltending piece at the 2023 deadline. For the level of goaltending that Kuemper provided – he was wildly up and down in the playoffs – the Avalanche felt they could manage with two essentially untried netminders, which is not the textbook way to begin a title defense. The Avalanche set the goaltending dominoes in motion by acquiring the Rangers’ backup Alexandar Georgiev. There won’t be as many free spaces on the bingo card as in the past. The bottom half of the Atlantic Division was a mess last year it’s going to tighten up some next season.

That’s a win for Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman, who keeps zeroing in on key, helpful targets and finds a way to bring them into the fold. Husso went off the market after Detroit acquired his rights from the Blues for a third-rounder and then signed him to a contract extension that convinced him not to test free agency. Unless, of course, they do what pending unrestricted free agent Ville Husso did. This past week, the dominoes started to fall – and the picture won’t be completed until shortly after the free-agent season opens because some of the key figures – Toronto’s Jack Campbell, Colorado’s now ex-starter Darcy Kuemper – probably won’t find new homes before then. Other than Marc-Andre Fleury, traded from the Blackhawks to the Wild, no one of real consequence moved. In a 32-team league, there are 64 openings for goaltenders, so it’s a far different equation than that for position players.īack in the spring, at the 2022 trade deadline, there was an entire tier of said-to-be available goaltenders.

So, let’s start there because the NHL goalie market is always interconnected. At a time when all 32 teams are beginning their resets for next season, what’s important is winning and adding the type of players that will contribute to winning.Īnd so, when the dust settled after two days at the Bell Centre in Montreal, if you compared the rosters of teams before they came to town to what they had when they left for home, who is closer to winning?Īnd the answer is A) the Senators B) the teams that either sorted out their goaltending or took the necessary first steps toward sorting out their goaltending, either by improving their salary-cap picture, or dumping an underachieving netminder, or both. It’s easy to get distracted by the smoke and mirrors and the noise and lose sight of what’s actually important. Seeing the NHL Draft unfold is a little like watching a magic show.