Yesterday’s Hockey Thoughts
from Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet,
- Calgary’s social media team clowned Justin Faulk following the Flames’ 7-1 win over St. Louis on Monday night. Prior to the road trip, Faulk admitted, “I’m not looking forward to going to Canada one bit. But we’ll play some hockey games and get it over with and then come back.” Faulk doesn’t say a ton -- I was surprised he’d be the one to go there -- but he’s highly respected among his peers. He said what a lot of them are thinking, and that’s bad news for Canadian teams at the trade deadline. As I’ve written before, there’s at least one big-time rental who’s indicated he won’t come north of the border. Not everyone will be like that, but it’s a challenge. Might be very good news for Canadian sellers.
- With that in mind, the last time Ben Chiarot was a free agent, Toronto was very interested. It couldn’t work at the time, but it’s something to remember. Calgary, Florida and St. Louis are among the other parties looking into him.
- If Philadelphia had been willing to take a late-round pick for Martin Jones, it’s possible he would already be an Edmonton Oiler. But the Flyers wanted something better and felt the market will strengthen as we get closer to the deadline. Name a goalie -- Alexander Georgiev, Braden Holtby, Ville Husso, Anton Khudobin, Joonas Korpisalo, Vitek Vanecek, Semyon Varlamov -- they looked at it. There undoubtedly are others, rentals, non-rentals, you name it.
GM Ken Holland held. He doesn’t want to trade his first-rounder, and multiple teams indicated that the higher it looked the second-rounder could be, he wasn’t thrilled about moving it, either. (That pick or the Oilers’ third will go to Chicago, pending their playoff performance.) Their fourth-rounder already belongs to New Jersey. Dallas prefers moving Khudobin over Holtby, and several people made a good point about Varlamov. If he goes, there’s no Russian on the roster with Ilya Sorokin -- not a small thing.
many more Thoughts......
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