Offseason NHL News

cshea

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Nov 15, 2006
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The interesting part to me is they just used up more than half their available cap room and Stamkos is still unsigned.

He's been a bit grumpy about that going back to training camp.
 

cshea

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Nov 15, 2006
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Some more front office/coaching news:

Don Waddell resigned his position as GM of the Hurricanes. Eric Tulsky is the Interim GM for the Canes. Waddell is reportedly going to Columbus.

Dan Bylsma is the new HC for the Seattle Kraken. Hasn't coached in the NHL since 2016-2017 but was most recently Seattle's AHL coach.
 

tims4wins

PN23's replacement
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Jul 15, 2005
40,131
Hingham, MA
Down to 6 finalists

Utah Blizzard, Utah Hockey Club (Utah HC), Utah Mammoth, Utah Outlaws, Utah Venom and Utah Yeti.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

has fancy plans, and pants to match
Dope
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Apr 12, 2001
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They said that the sweaters were just going to say “UTAH” for the first year and then have a brand new logo/uniform in 2025-26.

Venom is the only name I don’t like. The others are either good or I can live with.
 

Sandwich Pick

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Sep 9, 2017
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Not very friendly of the Caps to do that.

Where do we go now? Spotrac?
 
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cshea

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What's the value for the Caps in acquiring Cap Friendly? The tech and data, and potentially the employees behind it? Do the Caps really not have their own cap team in hockey ops with a proprietary system so they just decided to buy the best public one? I always assumed there's some sort of "official" Cap Friendly that the NHL hosts and maintains that all the teams had access to. I know teams have used Cap Friendly during interview processes and what not but I always thought they did that because it's public and they didn't want to turn over the real thing until someone was hired.
 

cshea

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What's the value for the Caps in acquiring Cap Friendly? The tech and data, and potentially the employees behind it? Do the Caps really not have their own cap team in hockey ops with a proprietary system so they just decided to buy the best public one? I always assumed there's some sort of "official" Cap Friendly that the NHL hosts and maintains that all the teams had access to. I know teams have used Cap Friendly during interview processes and what not but I always thought they did that because it's public and they didn't want to turn over the real thing until someone was hired.
So to follow up, some answers from Friedman:
  • Caps didn't have an internal salary cap tracking system. Bought Cap Friendly instead of developing their own in-house.
  • NHL had an "icey" relationship with Cap Friendly and views the salary information as proprietary and classified (This is of course a dumb stance). There was no chance they would let the thing stay public after being purchased by a team.
  • This blew my mind but apparently A LOT of teams rely on Cap Friendly and do not have robust internal salary reporting tools. He listed about 10 teams that do have something (Bruins were not one).
  • Sounds like Cap Friendly was liscensing to teams and the word got out about the sale when they told teams they weren't able to renew.
  • Thus, some teams are scrambling.
 

cshea

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I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the NHL is behind the times after the Dadonov no-trade fiasco exposed the lack of a central database of no-trade lists.

I bet the trade call process that they like to talk about is truly how the league processes every transaction.
 

PedroSpecialK

Comes at you like a tornado of hair and the NHL sa
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Dec 12, 2004
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Yeah if the NHL won't fork over $200k to have one mid-level engineer spin up something like this, you can bet the owners that agreed to a salary cap while kicking and screaming won't spend the coin.

Lemieux's garage league comment was over 30 years ago but damn if he wasn't on the money.
 

cshea

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No wonder "trades are hard" is a common refrain. Nobody knows how much anyone is making or how the salary cap works. They're probably still faxing documents.

Edit: Makes me wonder if the NHL is actually monitoring the salary cap or if it's essentially an honor system.
 
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changer591

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Jul 19, 2005
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I just read that the Bruins sent Evander Kane a gift basket after he blasted Matt Cooke years ago. I don't care if Kane is lying about it, I choose to believe that it's the truth.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

has fancy plans, and pants to match
Dope
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Key phrase there is "for it's inaugural season", which I interpret as name is subject to change.
It will. There are six names currently being voted on that will be the name going forward, including "Hockey Club". Once they choose that name (not sure when) they'll design a logo, sweaters, all of that stuff. And the Utah team will finally have a formal name.

Though I'm sure in 20 years there will be a retro night at the Utah arena where the *fill in the blanks* play as the Utah Hockey Club and everyone will get that gooey nostalgic feeling of a time when things were "simpler" and life moved at a "slower pace", etc.
 

mikeford

woolwich!
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Aug 6, 2006
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Markstrom to NJ for Kevin Bahl and 2025 1st (top 10 protected)


Yeesh

Edit: Calgary retains 31.25% of markstrom salary
 
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TSC

SoSH's Doug Neidermeyer
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Oct 25, 2007
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Between here and everywhere.
Markstrom is under contract for 2 years and Calgary is retaining $1.875 million each year.
He’s also 4 years older and a worse goalie than Ullmark.

And that retention means NJ is paying Markstrom just 875k less than Ullmark would be making. Not exactly a lot of money.
 

katnado

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Aug 14, 2016
2,189
Alaska
Bad contract for bad contract.

The Ullmark market shrinking by 2 is not ideal.
He already nixed LA once so they weren't really an option though right? But Devils being out is definitely a hit. Leaves the Sens and Canes as best possible options if they aren't on his NMC I'd assume?