Welcome to July, folks!
The first full month of summer is upon us, and July 1 means the opening of free agency in the NHL. This year’s crop of free agents is…uh…not great.
I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way to guys who are decent players and have had fine careers to this point, but when the top five names on the “big board” are Sergei Bobrovsky, John Carlson (likely signing in Carolina), Jacob Trouba, Anders Lee, and Anthony Mantha, you’re probably not expecting fireworks.
However, it sure looks like free agency could produce some wild deals, considering AJ Greer just signed a $4.5 million AAV contract with the Anaheim Ducks.
That contract includes a 10-team no-trade clause, so…yeah. That certainly was a choice by Anaheim.
Anyways, Happy Canada Day to you fine folks north of the border!
Trade winds continue to blow
While we may have slim pickings in free agency, the trade market continues to be far more entertaining.
Along with all of the moves already made, we still have question marks around the futures of guys like Zach Werenski, Kirill Marchenko, Jason Robertson, Dylan Larkin, and others.
In the latest news, The Athletic reports that Werenski vetoed a trade to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday, but would be open to moving to Toronto or Tampa Bay.
It’s an interesting twist for Dallas, who had Robertson reject a move from Dallas to Seattle last month; now, they were trying to bring in a big fish, only to have that fish decline.
Nice of Werenski to determine that he’d like to go to Toronto or Tampa Bay, who have pretty thin prospect pools and not a ton to offer a soon-to-be-rebuilding Columbus team.
On the Bruins
There isn’t a ton going on with the B’s at the moment, but a few odds and ends:
- Will Moore and Cooper Simpson were named to Team USA’s World Junior Summer Showcase roster.
- After receiving a qualifying offer from the B’s earlier this week, Luke Cavallin will remain with the organization after signing a one-year contract worth $850,000 at the NHL level.
That’s about it for now! We’ll see what kind of interesting things happen across the league today.
With the July 3/4 holiday coming up, we’ll probably use this post as an open thread for the next several days, though we’ll cover any B’s-related news separately.
What else is on tap for today?
