The Stanley Cup Finals are still in progress, but it feels as if the off-season has begun for the 30 other teams in the National Hockey League.
Wednesday was a busy day for the National Hockey League, as there were three trades and a waiver claim. On Thursday, a netminder re-signed and the Los Angeles Kings have a new logo! We’ll also look at a news piece from the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers series.
Let’s dig into the latest edition of Around the NHL!
A busy day on Wednesday
Wednesday morning started off with a bang, with the Calgary Flames trading netminder Jacob Markström to the New Jersey Devils in exchange for a 2025 top 10 protected first-round pick and defenceman Kevin Bahl. The Flames will retain 31.25% of Markström’s $6 million AAV.
Shortly following that, the Dallas Stars traded Tyler Dellandrea to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for a fourth-round pick. Dellandrea was selected with the 13th overall pick in 2018, but hasn’t broken out as of yet, scoring two goals and nine points in 42 games last season. In 2022-23, he had a career-high nine goals and 28 points in 82 games, but he’ll have a top six role with the abysmal Sharks.
The Kings traded Gabriel Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari, and a 2024 2nd round pick for Pierre-Luc Dubois before free agency opened in 2023. They re-signed him to an eight-year, $68 million deal, and less than a year later, have traded Dubois to the Washington Capitals in exchange for netminder Darcy Kuemper. Dubois has a cap hit of $8.5 million and scored 16 goals and 40 points in 82 games with the Kings.
Wednesday’s last major transaction came around noon, as the Sharks claimed Barclay Goodrow off waivers from the New York Rangers. After winning back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021, and scoring 13 and 11 goals in 2021-22 and 2022-23, Goodrow scored just four goals and 12 points in 80 games with the Rangers.
While he had an impressive showing in the postseason – six goals and eight points in 16 games – Goodrow has a cap hit of $3,641,667 for three more seasons, prompting the Rangers to waive him. Goodrow returns to the team he started his career with, having played with the Sharks from the 2014-15 season until he was traded during the 2019-20 season.
Alex Nedeljkovic re-signs with Pittsburgh
From trades and waiver claims to a contract extension, the Pittsburgh Penguins re-signed netminder Alex Nedeljkovic to a two-year deal with a cap hit of $2.5 million.
The 28-year-old made his NHL debut in 2016-17, but didn’t become a mainstay in the league until 2020-21, serving as the Carolina Hurricanes back up. That season, he posted a .932 save percentage and a 1.90 goals-against average in 23 games while playing in nine postseason games for the team.
That off-season the Hurricanes traded him to the Detroit Red Wings, where he started 59 games and posted a .901 save percentage and a 3.31 goals-against average. He spent the 2022-23 season in the organization, playing 15 games with the Wings before being demoted to their American Hockey League team.
Signing with the Penguins in the off-season, Nedeljkovic posted a .902 save percentage and a 2.97 goals-against average with the Penguins in 38 games.
Los Angeles’ new logo
The Los Angeles Kings have had numerous logos since their inception in 1967. Well, they have a brand new one based on their 1988 logo.
For the first 20-odd-years of the franchise, they used a gold and purple scheme similar to the Los Angeles Lakes, before changing their logo and their colour scheme in 1988 with the arrival of Wayne Gretzky. Shortly before the turn of the millennium, they went purple, black, and silver, which remained until the 2011-12 season.
With that season came a whole new logo, as well as dropping the purple in their colour scheme. It seemed to work out, as they won the Stanley Cup their first season with this logo, as well as a second one in 2014. That logo was tweaked in 2019, nothing major though.
Connor McDavid has a new record
Speaking of the Kings, the captain of the team that has beaten them in the past three first rounds has set a new record.
With his second four-point game in as many games, Connor McDavid has set the record for the most points in a two-game span, eight. On top of that, he has 11 points in his past three games.
The 27-year-old has already broken the single-postseason assist record, but is in reach of breaking the National Hockey League postseason point record of 47 points. Set by Wayne Gretzky in 1984-95, McDavid is just five points back of matching it with potentially two games remaining this postseason.
Even if the Oilers don’t win the Stanley Cup, which isn’t likely assuming the Florida Panthers make the necessary adjustments heading into Friday’s Game 6, there’s still a good chance McDavid will win the Conn Smythe Trophy.
The last time a player on the losing team won the Conn Smythe was in the 2003 postseason, when the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim’s Jean-Sébastien Giguère won it in a losing effort. The player on the losing team has only won it five times, with only one skater winning it, all the way back in 1976 when Philadelphia Flyer forward Reggie Leach won it.
Hopefully, Canada’s Team, the Florida Panthers, can put an end to the hopes of the Oilers’ dreams of winning a Stanley Cup.
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