Hockey Rambling

There was a video conference with Montreal coach Claude Julien. Early on, John Lu from TSN tweeted that Julien had lost weight and started some lifestyle changes following his cardiac event a couple months ago. That is great news and best wishes to Julien. The second salient point, which is important for fantasy hockey, is [...]

There will be a brief discussion on one of the Nashville centres a little later, but it’s worth talking a bit about their current winger situation, too. Both Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson had down years (for different reasons) and there just isn’t a lot to speak of offensively beyond that with Granlund and Smith [...]

The Canucks signed a couple of bottom-six players on Monday. They inked 24-year-old, UFA, Jayce Hawryluk to a one-year contract for $750K and then re-signed Adam Gaudette to a one-year deal worth $950K. Here’s the thing, one or even both of them could see time in Vancouver’s top six. Gaudette is the most obvious one. [...]

Doc Emrick, the long-time NHL play-by-play announcer, announced he will be retiring. He has done much more than just NHL, having announced international competitions as well, in particular the Olympics, so he will be familiar even to those outside of America. For those in America, he is likely your voice of hockey. He announced his [...]

The first NHL game I attended was between the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs. Carey Price has always been my favourite player, so 10-year-old me was absolutely ecstatic to see him play live. I’ll never forget the feeling of disappointment I experienced after finding my seat and seeing Alex Auld in net for the [...]

The Bruins were able to avoid arbitration with Matt Grzelcyk, signing him to a four-year contract with an AAV of $3.6 million. Grzelcyk recorded a career-high 21 points (4g-17a) in 68 games last season. If that doesn’t seem significant, there’s the potential for a lot more given the Bruins’ situation in 2020-21. Because they haven’t [...]

It’s going to look weird after 15 consecutive years in teal. Joe Thornton has signed a one-year, $700,000 contract with the Leafs. Thornton is the NHL’s active leader in points (1,509), but at age 41 he might have to battle fellow aging veteran Jason Spezza (among others) for a spot in the lineup. The Leafs [...]

After a flurry of activity over the first few days, the free agent frenzy period has officially cooled off. We were treated to one significant signing on Thursday, however. Evgenii Dadonov signed a three-year contract with Ottawa with a cap hit of $5 million. You can read Mike’s Fantasy Take here. This was a signing [...]

Montreal signed goalie Jake Allen to a two-year extension carrying an AAV of $2.875M. With the expansion draft a year from now, any goalie signing a deal longer than one year but shorter than, say, four years is almost certainly being done because of expansion. It seems as though teams learned from the Anaheim debacle [...]

It is my privilege to be making my Ramblings debut pinch-hitting for Cam Robinson, but I’ve been told by my children that I’m very good at rambling on. A Busy Day 4 of Free Agency, Not So Much on Day 5 Not much happened Tuesday (Aaron Dell signed in Toronto), but Monday was certainly a [...]