On Saturday, the Flames signed unrestricted free agent Louick Marcotte to a three-year deal. Marcott came out of the Quebec league and he posted 176 points in his last 130 QMJHL games. These productive overage juniors who sign as free agents rarely get a sniff, but occasionally they pan out. See Johnson, Tyler for more details. But it’s how well these guys produce when they are rookies in the AHL that truly give us an indicator.

*

Ian addressed a lot of interesting things yesterday, but I wanted to touch on a couple of things too. And it’s June, so not many options in terms of topics.

The Stamkos ice time thing is nuts. Jon Cooper understands that his top line is the triplets and his top player is Stamkos. Well, he can’t break up the triplets. And as a trio they are by far his most productive. So really, almost by default, Stamkos should see the fourth-most ice time among TB forwards each game. It’s fine.

Gooding opined that Carl Soderberg will go to a new team this summer and he’ll slot in as the third-line center. I disagree. I think he gets second line. And in fact, will get a (miscast) trial on the first line somewhere. Why? The almighty dollar. As you saw with Ville Leino, a free agent who gets huge dollars will see a ton of ice time no matter how poorly they play. It took Leino years to get bought out. So Soderberg will get his five million or whatever, and then the team will try him on the first line with their superstar. That probably won’t work and he’ll be shifted down to the second line. But he’ll get too much money to play on the third line and he’d have to play terrible for a season or two before he gets Dave Clarksoned to a depth line. And I don’t see him playing terrible.

*

It’s looking like Danny Briere will retire this summer. But I suspect Martin St. Louis will as well. I’d like him to, anyway. I love MSL and want him to go out on top (or near the top, I guess). St. Louis was a 52-point player this season with ice time that rolled back to 17:33 per game. It rolled back even further (16:30) in the playoffs, which isn’t a good sign. Now 39, he’s not getting 17 minutes per game next year and that should mean that 45 points will be out of reach for him. With what will probably be a smaller contract ($3 million?), he won’t get the ice time to boost his stats. So I’d rather he retire. He hit 1000 points and won a Cup and a Hart – a HHOF is a certainty.

*

Some great ramblings by Brendan Ross here. Part 1 of a 2015 NHL Entry Draft prep…

*

Sign up for my newsletter here. Right now we only use the “announcements” one. I send out an announcement each time I release a Guide and occasionally if I did a big update in the Guide I’ll let you know. I don’t abuse this – I think in the past year I sent out five newsletters.

*

Don Cherry from Saturday – ICYMI: