On the eve of the free agent frenzy, I decided to run just a few notes I have kept my eye on these past few days. So here we go again in bullet format:
- The Thomas Sabo Ice Tigers Nürnberg made the Chris Collins signing official on their website. It’s a very quick blurb.
- The affiliations are all set for the AHL in 2011-2012. As we had it on Friday, you can see the listings here.
- Michael Fornabaio from the Connecticut Post has a handy list of all restricted free agents not sent Qualifying Offers at his blog. Some NHL names whose time in the AHL is done and some high impact AHL tweeners who could make a big splash in a new city.
- Playing off of the above list, Jonathan Bombulie fine tuned his free agent list and included those who did not receive qualifying offers.
- Some news which can indirectly affect the Hershey Bears goaltending situation as it would appear from this tweet that Semyon Varlamov is off to the KHL. What this could mean is that Braden Holtby could be the back-up to start the season in Washington.
- In keeping up with players to come through the WBS pipeline someday, defenseman Joe Rogalski was traded from the Sarnia Sting to the Soo Greyhounds. Jesse Marshall from Faceoff Factor tweeted me on what this means for Rogalski. Also, according to Seth Rorabaugh from Empty Netters, Tom Kuhnhackl is going to stick with his junior squad, the Windsor Spitfires, for another season.
Finally, the AHL gave its member teams six guaranteed dates this week. Wilkes-Barre has not yet announced their dates. But from what I have seen on the Twitter side from them they are looking to package the announcement on the dates with an announcement on Pensfest II. Stay tuned on that, as I will have something up here on that fairly soon, maybe as early as today.
WBS News
Chirps from Center Ice 