Nashville Predators News & Notes:
Crickets. C’mon, gentlemen, extend Rocco Grimaldi or something. Colton Sissons. Even Brian Boyle, if you’d like; he was okay for his salary and presumably won’t ask for much more. Give us something.
(It’s too early yet for any news of a Roman Josi extension, but if they’re busy working on that I’ll forgive them for not brightening our days with anything else.)
Other News & Notes:
What Blues miss with Sundqvist suspended for Game 3 | ProHockeyTalk
Game 3 is tonight at 7 PM Central, unless the asteroid gets here first.
Blues’ long-awaited return to Cup Final lifts spirits of St. Louis faithful | Sportsnet.ca
I mean, I guess they have to have something to console them, what with living in St. Louis—have you seen what they do to perfectly good food in St. Louis?—and it being all of [checks notes] eight years since the last major sports championship was won there. Truly, an echoing desert of disappointment.
And then, of course, you have Boston, where it’s been [checks notes again] about thirty seconds since the last major sports championship win. Such hardship. At least the fans have edible food to sustain them in their anticipation and dread.
Oilers part ways with assistant coaches Yawney, Viveiros | Sportsnet.ca
The Oilers are making changes, which is good, but…man. Chiarelli really didn’t leave everyone in an optimal kind of situation. I’m perfectly all right with Connor McDavid not leading a super-team, but I’m told Connor McDavid leading a trash fire is “bad for the sport” and it’s certainly no fun for McDavid himself.
Willie Desjardins says Ilya Kovalchuk was ‘a challenge’ to coach | Sportsnet.ca
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Ilya Kovalchuk is not every NHL coach’s favorite person. Shocked!
Is Jeff Skinner worth $9M to Sabres? | ProHockeyTalk
Comparing Skinner’s potential contract to Sidney Crosby’s, when Crosby a) signed his when the salary cap was much lower (thus signing for a much higher percentage of the cap) and b) deliberately signed a contract for less than he could have asked for in order to make his cap hit 8.7M/year, to go with his birthdate and his jersey number (I think even Penguins fans agree that Crosby is kind of weird), is…interesting.
The rest of this is pretty solid, though. It’s a good look at what kind of team needs can drive a team to overpay—potentially—for a pending UFA.
Evgeny Kuznetsov publicly apologizes for ‘putting myself in a bad situation’ | Russian Machine Never Breaks
The NHL and the Washington Capitals have both said they’re satisfied with Kuznetsov’s explanation of why he and some lines of cocaine were recorded in the same room. (What do we even say these days now that “videotaped” isn’t a thing any more? Do the youths even know what a videotape is? Is this like the icons of floppy drives that mean “save”?)
Beyond The Slow Growth Model | The Victory Press
I had not known any of this about NWHL contracts or the NWHLPA, and it’s deeply unsettling.
NWHL expansion plans in jeopardy, open to talks about “passing the torch” | The Ice Garden
The NHL is waiting for the NWHL to fold before they even decide whether or not to step in to fund a women’s hockey league, while the NWHL says it is as yet unwilling to quit on the players still relying on it, and the star players aren’t willing to return to the NWHL or any other pro league until it has more money than it is likely to get without establishment support.
So you have a wolf, a goat, a cabbage, and a boat that can only carry two at a time, and you have to get all three across the river, but the wolf will eat the goat and the goat will eat the cabbage if you leave them alone together…
(I think that makes the players the cabbage in this metaphor. Please nobody tell Hilary Knight I said that.)
Undersized Hughes stands out as top NHL draft prospect | Sportsnet.ca
Who do you have first on your fantasy draft boards? Jack Hughes or Kaapo Kakko?
NHL Scouting Combine primer: What will players go through in 2019? | Sportsnet.ca
Some information on the combine, for those of you who have interest. Kakko is skipping it entirely, which might be a reasonable choice, after his outstanding performance at Worlds.