Chirps from Center Ice

You can’t win a Stanley Cup or a Calder Cup on July 1 or August 1. But signing the right guys on a day like today, the groundwork is laid for the path to potential championships.

For the Penguins, it was the signing of four new players and the return of another:

–> Goaltender Jeff Zatkoff. An AHL All-Star with the Manchester Monarchs this season who went 21-17-1 with a 0.920 SV% and a 2.49 GAA in 44 games splitting duties in net with Martin Jones. Zatkoff signed a two year contract. Here’s a tweet from The Goalie Guild:

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With the tandem of Thiessen-Zatkoff in net for Wilkes-Barre next season, Wilkes-Barre is looking stout in net.

–> Forward Riley Holzapfel. From Jonathan Bombulie:

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It was pointed out that Holzapfel had a career high in points with a career low in games played. Perhaps a bigger role played, ala Bryan Lerg from Springfield to Wilkes-Barre?

I asked Alex, who runs the Syracuse Crunch fan blog Chairman How’s Glorious Army, about Holzapfel. Here’s what she had to say:

As hard as Holzapfel’s name is to say and spell is exactly how hard he works. He was exciting to watch, helped to pump up listless forwards. He was a pleasure for media guys to talk to, and just seemed to enjoy playing the game. You also got the feeling that his head was in the business–there was no sign of any real allegiance to STJ, even though they were a better team when we got him. He should have been (upset) — went from the top to the bottom, basically — but he never once showed any negativity…I was floored when ANA didn’t qualify him. He should be a quality grab!

–> Defenseman Dylan Reese. Number 59 on Jonathan Bombulie’s big board of AHL Free Agents. Played with the Islanders / Sound Tigers last year. A local Pittsburgh product. Really good defenseman and someone who could be the number one call up on defense next year for the Penguins if need be.

–> Steve MacIntyre returns for another year. Hopefully, Hershey’s Joel Rechlicz and he see the same ice together at some point and trip the light fantastic.

–> Center Warren Peters. More from Jonathan:

Bombulie also had this to say regarding the Peters signing, perhaps reading the tea leaves:

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Whew. What a day.

Analysis: Nice pickups by the Pens today for the AHL farm team. By no means does this guarantee anything Calder Cup-wise, so you won’t see me getting my hopes up like I did two years ago when Pittsburgh brought in Brett Sterling. I am not going to tell you how to be a fan, but planning a Calder Cup route in Wilkes-Barre is just premature thinking.

Elsewhere: Pretty quiet day for the rest of the AHL’s East Division. André Benoit is returning to Ottawa / Binghamton. Hershey is eerily quiet. Norfolk / Syracuse were quiet also.

Alumni watch: Ben Street signs with Calgary. From Paul Thompson’s twitter feed, it looks like Brandon DeFazio is off to the New York Islanders. DeFazio, not to be outdone, tweeted congratulations to Bryan Lerg for signing possibly with the Colorado Avalanche.

Of note, neither DeFazio or Lerg signing were made official as of 9 pm Wilkes-Barre time.

Day Two is always the better day in terms of signings that help AHL clubs. Twitter is where you will find reactions from me on the latest and Facebook on analysis, if there is any to be had, over the 140 character limit on Twitter. Then a blog post right here later in the day recapping the days events.

Updating the blog with the list of Penguins players who received qualifying offers:

Robert Bortuzzo, Alex Grant, Matt Niskanen, Carl Sneep, Brian Strait, Eric Tangradi and Keven Veilleux.

And those who didn’t:

Cal O’Reilly, Mattias Modig, Alexandre Picard, Casey Pierro-Zabotel and Boris Valabik.

Two things: 1) Surprised Pittsburgh qualified Veilleux. He needs to stay healthy this year. 2) Read somewhere (can’t remember where) that Pittsburgh will try to re-sign O’Reilly as a free agent.

For a list of players who did not receive qualifying offers from the other 29 NHL teams and are now unrestricted free agents, check out Bridgeport Sound Tigers beat writer Mike Fornabaio’s list.

Jonathan Bombulie has outdone himself. Here is a list of 450 AHL free agents. 450! I can’t imagine the work put into the digging and researching each player Bombulie put into this. That is why he (and Fornabaio) are the best at what they do. (along with Leone, Eminian, Lindsay, etc…)

Free Agency begins Sunday. Seems weird that it would start Sunday. Will do my best to keep things updated here on the blog. Immediate reactions on Twitter. I’m on Facebook too, still trying to figure out why they call it a “status update”

Stay cool.

I’m in over my head on this one.

The NHL Draft is all about prospects and guys whom, for the casual fan, you never heard of 48 hours ago. Count me as among the casual fan in this category. I could name two prospects in this years draft: Nail Yakupov, who went #1 overall to Edmonton and Malcolm Subban, who is a goalie and PK Subban’s brother. That’s it, that’s the list.

But there was way too  much moving and shaking going on from the Penguins perspective which I felt the need I had to discuss and share with you. It’s better than nothing, I say, so here goes:

–> Pittsburgh traded away Jordan Staal last night to the Carolina Hurricanes for Carolina’s #8 pick in the draft, Brandon Sutter and Brian Domoulin.

–> With the #8 pick, they selected Derrick Pouliot. Here’s a profile of him from Pittsburgh.

–> Then, at pick #22, they selected Olli Maata. Here’s more on the kid from Pittsburgh.

–> Finally, the Penguins traded Zbynek Michalek to Phoenix for Harrison Ruopp, Marc Chevrie and a third round pick.

Of the names above, you will not see Brandon Sutter in Wilkes-Barre. He’s an NHLer. Of the names above, Domoulin and Chevrie are names you will more likely see in WBS this season.

Here’s analysis from people smarter than me that know more about the names above. Domoulin first:

Jesse Marshall runs Faceoff Factor and knows his stuff better than some of the talking heads on TV.

Paul Branecky is the Charlotte Checkers Director of Digital Media.

Maata:

Chevrie (who is a restricted free agent):

Anytime you have a question about a goaltender. Any goaltender, you ask the Goalie Guild. They know it all.

Jonathan Bomblie had nice synopses of all the moves. Ruopp is a year away from turning pro, and has a side of grit to him, which is needed desperately because none of the WBS defensemen really know how to fight.

Here’s Eric P’s takeaway from Day 1.

My takeaway? Looks like Domoulin and Chevrie are going to make the most immediate impact on WBS in the fall. Chevrie’s AHL numbers have been down right pedestrian: In two AHL seasons, he’s played 24 games, 6-10-1 record, 3.68 GAA and a 0.890 SV%. He’s split time in the ECHL and with the Rochester Americans and more recently the Portland Pirates.

I think PIT / WBS goes after another goaltender, and have Chevrie / Killeen battle it out in Wheeling or at backup to either hopefully Scott Munroe, The aforementioned Goalie Guild agrees even says so:

If Day 2 is anything like Day 1, expect another blog post up here Sunday. Make sure you follow all these guys I embedded in this blog post on Twitter along with Mike O’Brien who is on the ground in Pittsburgh.