Chirps from Center Ice

It was a pretty quiet first day of NHL Free Agency for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Before the market opened at noon, the Penguins announced that they re-signed Garrett Wilson to a two year deal.

Then fans on Coal Street waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Then around 6 p.m., the floodgates opened.

–

All four guys I did not have ranked in my Top 100 on my AHL Big Board.

Chris Summers: Played on a bad Hartford team last year. Slowly rounding into form as a pro. I always liked what I saw from his play.

Jarred Tinordi: 102 PIMs with Tucson last year, second on the team.

Zach Trotman: Veteran of 67 NHL games, only played 9 games with AHL Ontario last season. You may remember him playing with the Providence Bruins.

Greg McKegg: 46 NHL games split between the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Had some success with the Portland Pirates and scored 22 goals with the Toronto Marlies in 2014-15. I always liked his play too.

In all, a nice crop of players picked up by the Pittsburgh Penguins, setting up the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins for success come the Fall.

But they weren’t done.

–

Biggest name in the group will end up being the steal of the day, Casey DeSmith. I had him number 10 on my board, knew he was going to play his way into an NHL contract, did not think for a second that the team to sign him would be the Penguins.

So now the Penguins have Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith ready to tend the nets on Coal Street again for another run, with a reloaded defensive corps dynamic forwards in Zach Aston-Reese and Daniel Sprong most likely starting in Wilkes-Barre with veterans like Tom Kostopoulos and Garrett Wilson. The signings today weren’t as explosive like in Buffalo for Rochester and Minnesota for Iowa, but they didn’t need to be because the Amerks and Wild were literal AHL doormats. The Penguins have been a good team for years and it helps that your parent team just won back to back Stanley Cups.

–

On DeSmith…

–

There are always moves made on Day 2. I don’t know for certain if there will be any more made from Pittsburgh for Wilkes-Barre, but if there is, I’ll have a blog about it here.

My AHL Big Board has now been pinned to the top of the site and will update for as long as it needs to be. Link here.

The 2017 NHL Draft has come and gone and the immediate impact felt by the Penguins was a trade on Day 1 on Friday that saw Oskar Sundqvist get dealt to the St. Louis Blues for Ryan Reaves.

Set aside whether or not you think Reaves is a serviceable NHL player. I think, as was pointed out by many last night in the wake of this news, that the Penguins organization are sending a strong message to both the NHL and the rest of the league that they need to protect their stars. Sidney Crosby and Evegni Malkin take massive abuse shift after shift. You don’t need me to rehash for you the games missed by both superstars. Reaves was brought in as a protector and an enforcer, and with the emergence of Carter Rowney at center, made a player like Sundqvist expendable.

I did see some rejoicing from other teams in the AHL Atlantic Division, but as pointed out by Jason Chaimovitch, the Blues don’t have a full time AHL affiliate with Vegas coming into the NHL and scooping up the Chicago Wolves as their primary, so Sundqvist could, hypothetically, land on any AHL team if that is indeed the direction that the Blues take.

That was the big, immediate, news. There were players drafted by the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday…

–

Lauzon played for Rouyn-Noranda last season and was named QMJHL’s best defensive defenseman. The same accolade that Kris Letang won while playing for the QMJHL during his time there.

–

Phillips is an offensive defenseman who can skate and will head to the University of Minnesota this fall.

Pittsburgh went bang bang at 152 and 155 and selected Jan Drozg and Linus Ölund respectively. Of the two, Ölund is closer to NHL work at age 20. He played in the Swedish leage last year and had a decent season offensively.

–

And finally, with the last overall pick, Pittsburgh went with….

–

Another defender who put up 15 points in 35 games during his freshman season at RPI. Reilly was the OJHL’s top prospect in 2015 with the Nanaimo Clippers.

–

–

I preferred the recap / live blog that Penguins color man Nick Hart put together during the two day draft which you can check out here.

I will be back this week with the AHL Big Board.

First off, congratulations to the Grand Rapids Griffins for winning the Calder Cup for the second time in five years against the Syracuse Crunch who, for the second time in five years, have been runner up to Griffins. Both teams, when you think about it, have flown under the radar for the past five seasons and really can be considered powerhouse AHL franchises.

Speaking of a powerhouse franchise, the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup for the second time in as many seasons, first team to go back to back since most of you were in diapers or had more hair. A large group of names who were molded on Coal Street helped Pittsburgh to its second Stanley Cup and fifth as a franchise. It’s easy to get caught up at the fact Wilkes-Barre doesn’t have a Calder Cup yet but the main purpose of an AHL franchise is to develop for the next level. Pittsburgh is good at it. Wilkes-Barre benefits from it in most ways and its day will come.

Maybe that day will come in the Bill Guerin Era. Guerin was announced as the new General Manager of the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins and will be joined by Jason Karmanos as Assistant GM. Mark Recchi will serve as the Player Development director. So all names that are already familiar with the way things are run on Coal Street.

Tom had some quotes from the new AHL Penguins GM today…

–

Marc-Andre Fleury waived his no-trade clause and is penciled in as the new Las Vegas Golden Knights starting goaltender. That obviously will have a trickle down effect to Wilkes-Barre. Here’s what I think, Matt Murray is the #1 goaltender for Pittsburgh, who signs a veteran backup while Tristan Jarry gets the lion share of starts on Coal Street with a veteran AHL goaltender backing him up. Sean Maguire gets another year in the ECHL getting all the starts down there with a capable ECHL backup there. That’s the perfect scenario, in my opinion. Does it happen? Anyone’s guess. If not, there is a backup plan in place….

–

If you would like more information on how Vegas affects all of this, Derrick Graffius put this well thought out piece together which you should read.

I am going to start cobbling together the AHL Free Agent Big Board likely this weekend. I am crowdsourcing it again and have contributions from Hershey and San Antonio done already. If you would like a team, just let me know via some form of social media and we will work out the logistics. That is probably going to the be the next blog piece to come, provided there isn’t some form of big news worthy of a blog post. Look for it the last week of June.

Stay cool.

I really haven’t had much of anything to blog about since the last time I blogged in mid-May. To catch you up, here are eight things that have happened and below my takes on each….

1) Syracuse beat Providence in five games to advance to the Calder Cup Finals to face Grand Rapids, who did the same to San Jose in five games.

2) Grand Rapids leads Syracuse 2-0 in their best of seven as the series shifts to Syracuse for Game 3 Wednesday night.

3) You can stream the Calder Cup Finals for free on AHL Live by selecting the finals package and using the promo code “FINALS17”

4) Pittsburgh is tied 2-2 with Nashville in the Stanley Cup Finals with the series shifting back to Pittsburgh for a pivotal Game 5 on Thursday.

5) Doug Davidson and Kyle Moore are headed to Las Vegas. Moore served as a trainer and Davidson as strength and conditioning coach here in Wilkes-Barre.

6) Jason Botterhill is the new General Manager of the Buffalo Sabres. He had previously worked for Pittsburgh as an assistant general manager and had a hand in building the roster here in Wilkes-Barre.

7) Seth Lakso is returning to New England to continue his education. Tyler Picotti is the new Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins beat writer for the The Citizens’ Voice.

8) Finally, Patrick McGrath is back, having re-signed with the Penguins in June 7.

Analysis

1) Providence went through the meat grinder known as the Atlantic Division to get to the conference finals and didn’t have an answer to what Syracuse, who was tops in their division all season, brought to the table. The result was not surprising in hindsight. Makes me wonder if Wilkes-Barre, Hershey or Leigh Valley would have suffered the same fate.

2) Grand Rapids has been elite all season and has only lost twice in the postseason. It isn’t surprising to see them leading the Crunch like this. I picked them in six over Syracuse, but it could easily end in a sweep, or five games. Crunch desperately need a win Wednesday night.

3) Second highest hockey league in the world and they are relegated to giving away their games on the internet instead of being able to line up a broadcast partner. With that said, I fully realize that putting games on TV is easier said than done. However, everyone in Springfield and around the league gets upset when their league is passed over by a national audience, but it’s kind of hard to be taken seriously as a league when viewing said league is next to impossible for the casual fan.

4) The home team has won every game so far, with Pittsburgh and Nashville defending home ice. It isn’t a series until the home team loses.

5) The AHL develops much more than just players and coaches.

6) If you are thinking that losing Botterhill is going to be a big problem, don’t. I am not insinuating guys like him are a dime a dozen, but whoever Pittsburgh names as a replacement will be highly qualified to carry on the mission Botterhill created. Also, expect the list of candidates to be long as Wilkes-Barre is seen as a premier destination in the hockey world.

7) Seth admirably filled Jonathan Bombulie’s shoes and from what I have seen so far from Tyler, I am confident he will do the same.

8) No brainer for both involved. McGrath wasn’t going to sign any place else and get buried and forgotten about and Wilkes-Barre gets to boast home grown talent for another season.

—

I am going to wait until the end of the Stanley Cup Finals to put out the Offseason Moves Chart. I am also going to get an early jump on the Offseason AHL Big Board. If you want to volunteer to help, please contact me.

Now, back to summer.