Signings / Trades / Rumors For Wednesday

4:43 PM

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The Lightning have acquired some size and hopefully scoring today. They traded a 2nd or 3rd round pick in the 2007 or 2008 Entry Draft to the Panthers for Chris Gratton. I think the time for Gratton to ever blossom into a consistent scoring threat ended a long time ago. He isn't much more than a 15 goal scorer on a 3rd line.

3:36 PM

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From TSN:

The Globe is reporting that Balsillie and the city (Hamilton) could announce the deal (to relocate the Predators to Hamilton) after a meeting on Wednesday. This agreement would mean that the area of Kitchener-Waterloo would be out of the running for the franchise as had earlier been speculated.

1:40 PM

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The Ducks have signed coach Randy Carlyle to a 1-year contract extension.

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The Canucks are in the middle of negotiations with Jeff Cowan. Steve Tambellini thought these negotiations would have been over by now, but there are some sticky points with dollars and length of terms. Cowan does deserve a raise from his $532,000, but I'm curious how much more he is expecting.

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Alexei Yashin's agent first said that Yashin would be a great fit in Ottawa again. Now there are murmers of him wanting to play in Montreal, or that he even could end up playing in Europe. Hey! Why is anyone really giving so much of a f**k where he ends up???


11:00 AM

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Florida has signed rugged and reliable defenceman Bryan Allen to a 5-year $14.5 million deal today. Allen had 4 goals and 21 assists in his first season with the Panthers.
Well at least they held on to one pice of the puzzle in the lop-sided Luongo/Krajicek deal!!!

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Roberto luongo ignored the remainder of the playoffs after the Canucks were ousted by the Ducks in Round 2. Instead he went to Hawaii.

"I didn't watch any of the third round, basically," Luongo said Tuesday from his parents' home in the Montreal suburb of St. Leonard. "I couldn't relax until the last game of the playoffs was over. Every time a game was on I was thinking, you know, that could have been us."

Luongo took Niedermayer's OT winning goal that eliminated the Nucks pretty hard, as he is one competitive individual.
Head over to the Vancouver Sun for the rest of the story.