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Ah, June. The end of the playoffs, the NHL awards, and the draft all abound this month. Of course, the other exciting thing coming up at the end of the month is free agency. On July 1st, all the unrestricted free agents who haven't signed new contracts with their old teams will be allowed to start talking whatever other teams they please. Of course, with all the recent discussion about who to trade Roberto Luongo to, I found myself adventuring through CapGeek, looking at what each team is dealing with this summer. Since there was quite a bit of information in there, I have decided to share the interesting stuff here with you guys.
Division by division, I will be looking at each's teams UFAs and RFA's for this year, FAs for next year, and give a quick summary of their situation. Of course, I will also look at what players we could poach from those teams, whether through UFA negotiations or trades or offer sheets. If you want more info on a team's non-roster players, those are towards the bottom of the CapGeek pages for those teams. Through a randomizing scheme to determine the order in which I would do each division, I ended up doing our own division first, the Northwest.
Capgeek page, 2011-2012 individual stats
2012 RFAs: Blake Comeau, Mikael Backlund, Akim Aliu, Blair Jones
2012 UFAs: Olli Jokinen, Lee Stempniak, David Moss, Tom Kostopoulos, Cory Sarich, Scott Hannan
2013 FAs: Jarome Iginla, Roman Cervenka, Jarome Iginla, Lance Bouma, Jarome Iginla, Anton Babchuk, Chris Butler, TJ Brodie, Henrik Karlsson, Jarome Iginla
What are they up to? No matter how often Jay Feaster says that they probably won’t blow up their team, they really don’t have much of a choice. They will definitely need to figure out their forward depth this season, with a bunch of their "better" forwards becoming UFAs. Basically, however, they need help with everything. Also of note is that Jarome Iginla is eligible to sign an extension starting July 1st, the same day that Miikka Kiprusoff's no-movement clause lifts.
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Capgeek page, 2011-2012 individual stats
2012 RFAs: Matt Duchene, Peter Mueller, Steve Downie, Ryan O`Reilly, Mark Olver, Kevin Porter, Jamie McGinn, Erik Johnson, Ryan Wilson
2012 UFAs: Jay McClement, Shane O`Brien
2013 FAs:
What are they up to? As of when I typed this,
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Capgeek page, 2011-2012 individual stats
2012 RFAs: Sam Gagner, Linus Omark, Chris VandeVelde,
2012 UFAs: Ryan Smyth, Lennart Petrell, Darcy Hordichuk
2013 FAs: Taylor Hall, Ryan Jones, Jordan Eberle, Teemu Hartikainen, Ladislav Smid, Andy Sutton, Colten Teubert, Nikolai Khabibulin
What are they up to? That is a total of 7 RFAs this year on their current roster.
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Capgeek page, 2011-2012 individual stats
2012 RFAs: Guillaume Latendresse, Nick Johnson, Chay Genoway, Justin Falk, Kris Fredheim
2012 UFAs: Erik Christensen, Jed Ortmeyer, Warren Peters, Stephane Veilleux, Matt Kassian, Kurtis Foster, Mike Lundin, Josh Harding
2013 FAs: Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Matt Cullen, Cal Clutterbuck, Steven Kampfer, Marco Scandella, Jared Spurgeon, Niklas Backstrom
What are they up to? Looking at Minnesota's CapGeek page is a bit of a mess, with more than the usual amount of players there. Further investigation showed that only 3 skaters played all 82 games this year, with only 4 more playing at least 70, and another 10 players playing at least 40. On the NHL.com stats page, they have 39 skaters listed as playing at least 1 game in a Wild jersey this year! This obviously points to a very possible cause: injuries. Out of this year's 12 FA skaters, only 5 of them played at least 40 games. Meanwhile, Backstrom has had UFA Harding trying to take the starting job, and rookie Matt Hackett also making a few appearances.
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Capgeek page, 2011-2012 individual stats
2012 RFAs: Mason Raymond, Dale Weise, Marc-Andre Gragnani, Cory Schneider
2012 UFAs: Samuel Pahlsson, Byron Bitz, Aaron Volpatti, Andrew Ebbett, Sami Salo, Aaron Rome
2013 FAs: Manny Malhotra, Alexandre Burrows, Chris Higgins, Maxim Lapierre, Alexander Edler, Andrew Alberts, Chris Tanev
What are they we up to? I decided to include our own team here, so that we can compare our own situation to other teams, and to add perspective on what we need.
Our forward core is pretty good for another year, although we could use from help in both the top and bottom 6's: a really good winger for Ryan Kesler, and some better grit at the bottom. We should also keep in mind that Daniel Sedin and Henrik Sedin both have their contracts expiring in 2014. Our defense is of much concern, since aside from Kevin Bieksa and Dan Hamhuis, there are quite a few of expiring contracts there. I excluded Keith Ballard there, because everyone here has been mentioning him as the most likely trade bait this summer. I bet Gillis is going to work on extensions for a couple of Alex’s as soon as he can.
Obviously, the other big story is goaltending. Roberto Luongo has an albatross of a contract, and Cory Schneider is due for both a raise and a starting position. The majority of us are seeing the odds of keeping both for at least one more year is slim to none.
Come back tomorrow to see what division I look at next.
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