Hockey Rambling

Andrei Markov is moving on from the NHL, as it came out on Thursday that he wouldn’t be signing anywhere in the league. Since getting to the NHL as a 22-year-old in the 2000-01 season, he amassed 572 points in 990 career regular season games. He played his entire career with the Montreal Canadiens. This [...]

  The largest NHL news from Thursday was that Andrei Markov will be playing in the KHL in 2017-18. It's worth noting that the veteran defenseman hasn't ruled out a return to the NHL in the future, but that after failing to ink a deal with Montreal this year, he's bolting for Russia. [...]

A couple days ago, the New York Rangers locked up their current (and future) first-line centre, Mika Zibanejad, for five years with an AAV of $5.35 million. With Derek Stepan now in Arizona, Zibanejad will undoubtedly be given top-line minutes – as far as goes for the Rangers – though his deployment remains to be [...]

Zibanejad signing, players who may have jumped the shark […]

    While the remaining class of unrestricted free agents isn't the be-all, end-all indication of the NHL trend of teams moving to younger and younger rosters, it certainly is telling. Of the 38 UFAs that played at least 40 games in the NHL last season only seven are under 30. Those seven: Dwight King, [...]

Viktor Arvidsson, a restricted free agent, signed a seven-year deal with the Nashville Predators totalling just under $30 million. This contract will carry him through his Age 30 season. The 24-year-old had a breakout season in 2016-17 with 31 goals and 61 points. He added 13 points in 22 playoff games during Nashville’s Stanley Cup [...]

Arvidsson signs long term, other signings, the St. Louis defense debate, plus more… […]

The Detroit Red Wings avoided an arbitrator’s ruling with winger Tomas Tatar by signing him to a four-year deal carrying an average annual value of $5.3 million. That is the same AAV as the recently-signed Ondrej Palat from Tampa Bay. Tatar had 25 goals and 46 points for the Wings in 2016-17. While those 25 [...]

  Clayton Keller is likely to be a polarizing player this draft season. While he's not a sure thing to be drafted in all settings, the rookie projects to be a popular late-round target. The undersized pivot is coming off a dominant season with 45-point campaign as a freshman with Boston University, which also included [...]

Backup goalies are usually an afterthought in fantasy drafts, relatively speaking. They aren’t guys who singlehandedly win you a league like, say, Sergei Bobrovsky could have last year (unless the starter gets hurt and the backup is otherworldly, but those instances are few and far between). They are players, however, that can help sustain your [...]