Unrestricted free-agent and former Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Brian Campbell announced his retirement after 17 seasons in the NHL, the Blackhawks announced on Monday.

Campbell played out his final NHL season last year with the Blackhawks after rejoining the club after a stint with the Blackhawks between 2008 and 2011. He tallied five goals and 17 points in 80 games.

While Campbell's playing career comes to an end, the 38-year-old will remain with the Blackhawks organization. Campbell will join the team's business operations department, where he will work with the team in marketing, community relations, and youth hockey initiatives.

"I'm excited to transition into the next step in both my professional career and life," Campbell said in a release. "I'm grateful to the countless number of teammates, coaches, team staff and fans that I have crossed paths with throughout my playing career in Chicago, Buffalo, Florida and San Jose. The Blackhawks organization has allowed me to take on this challenge and I’m thankful for this new opportunity."

Campbell concludes his playing career with 87 goals and 504 points in 1,082 career games spent between the Buffalo Sabres, San Jose Sharks, Florida Panthers, and Blackhawks.

He was part of the 2010 Blackhawks team that captured the Stanley Cup and in 2012 he was awarded the Lady Byng Trophy as the league's most gentlemanly player.

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Watching the Arizona Coyotes has been the world's leading cure for insomnia over the past few years. However, those who relied on the team's dull style of play to fall asleep may need to start looking for new mechanisms, because the Coyotes project to be a more exciting and offensive team than they've ever been before in 2017-18.

And it all starts with the coaching change.

Out is Dave Tippett, a tactical, defensive-minded coach. He never had a whole lot to work with, but didn't exactly push the envelope when it came to generating offense. Here is how they ranked offensively the past three seasons:

(Scoring chances courtesy: naturalstattrick.com)

In fact, during Tippett's eight-year tenure behind the Coyotes' bench, only once did they rank in the top half of the league in goals for.

In comes Rick Tocchet, who is fresh off being the assistant coach of the NHL's most dynamic offense over the past two seasons in Pittsburgh. He's hoping to bring the Penguins' creative style of play with him to the desert.

"I don't want to take the stick out of guys' hands," Tocchet told Sarah McLellan of AZ Central Sports. "We have some creative, young players here. So I want them to be creative. I don't want them to think too much. I want them to play a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure on the opponent."

(Photo courtesy: Action Images)

The young players Tocchet is likely referring to - Dylan Strome, Max Domi, Christian Dvorak, and Clayton Keller, among others - have plenty of skill and should fit in much better with the new regime.

Tocchet reiterated that generating offense won't come at the expense of playing defense.

"I'm not going to sell the farm," he said. "It's not going to be 3-on-1s all night. That's not going to happen. But I think you have to be calculated, and the one thing with these young guys, they're sponges. They want to learn. They want to learn how to practice. They want to learn how to play."

Aside from the coaching change, two offseason acquisitions in particular could jump-start the offense.

Veteran Derek Stepan will make players around him better and allow the younger centers on the team to slot down into more fitting roles. Bringing in Niklas Hjalmarsson should stabilize the back end, and theoretically allow his projected defense partner Oliver Ekman-Larsson to join the rush more frequently.

While grabbing a playoff spot in the Western Conference will be a challenge, the new-look Coyotes aren't a team fans should sleep on this season.

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Thank you, Patrick.

The San Jose Sharks paid tribute to the former face of their franchise on Sunday, thanking Patrick Marleau with a full-page ad in The Mercury News.

A longtime member of the Sharks, Marleau had been a part of the club for 19 seasons prior to his joining the Toronto Maple Leafs as a free agent.

Marleau was originally drafted by the Sharks second overall in 1997. He appeared in nearly 1,500 games with San Jose, netting 508 goals and 574 assists to become the franchise leader in games, goals, and points.

Marleau, 37, landed a three-year deal with the Maple Leafs that will see him take home nearly $19 million.

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John Tortorella is due for a raise in pay.

The Columbus Blue Jackets bench boss - who could enter next season on the final year of his contract - should be paid like the league's top coaches.

"Who just won coach of the year?" Neil Glasberg, who represents Tortorella, told Aaron Portzline of The Columbus Dispatch. "It's not the first time he's won the Jack Adams Trophy, either. He's won a Stanley Cup. The Blue Jackets just had the best season in franchise history, and it's not even close. Yeah, he should be among the top-paid coaches in the league."

Glasberg's firm, PBI Sports and Entertainment, which represents several NHL coaches, including Mike Sullivan of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Gerard Gallant of the Vegas Golden Knights, began talks on an extension for Tortorella last month.

Portzline speculates that a new deal could see Tortorella earn as much as $3.5 million a season. According to CapFriendly, Toronto's Mike Babcock ($6.25 million), Chicago's Joel Quenneville ($6 million), and Montreal's Claude Julien ($5 million) are among the league's highest-paid coaches. The three combine for five Stanley Cup championships.

As Tortorella's agent states, he brings similar accolades to the table, most recently as this season's coach of the year. It was the second time Tortorella laid claim to the trophy, after doing so in 2003-04 with the Tampa Bay Lightning, a season in which he led the Lightning to the Stanley Cup.

Tortorella joined the Blue Jackets in 2015, two years after he signed a five-year deal to coach the Vancouver Canucks, who fired him in 2014. The Blue Jackets picked up part of that contract, with the Canucks responsible for making whole the remainder.

This season, the Boston native became the first American-born coach to reach 500 wins. Tortorella, 59, now ranks 22nd all time with 530 career NHL victories.

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Jonathan Drouin went incognito.

The big-ticket addition to the Montreal Canadiens took to his new surroundings over the weekend, doing so undercover as he quizzed Habs' supporters on how the new face would perform this season.

But much to Drouin's chagrin, he wasn't totally unrecognizable in the hockey hotbed, with many Canadiens fans picking out their new star.

Montreal acquired the Quebec-born Drouin from the Lightning in a June trade that sent up-and-coming defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to Tampa Bay.

A former QMJHL star, Drouin spent parts of the last three seasons with the Lightning after a three-year run with the Halifax Mooseheads. He scored 105 points in 49 games with the Mooseheads in 2012-13, en route to being selected third overall in that year's draft.

Drouin tallied a career-high 53 points in 73 games with the Lightning last season, and if he can meet some of the lofty projections set out by the locals he met, Drouin will be off to a great start in Montreal.

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Jonathan Drouin went incognito.

The big-ticket addition to the Montreal Canadiens took to his new surroundings over the weekend, doing so undercover as he quizzed Habs' supporters on how the new face would perform this season.

But much to Drouin's chagrin, he wasn't totally unrecognizable in the hockey hotbed, with many Canadiens fans picking out their new star.

Montreal acquired the Quebec-born Drouin from the Lightning in a June trade that sent up-and-coming defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to Tampa Bay.

A former QMJHL star, Drouin spent parts of the last three seasons with the Lightning after a three-year run with the Halifax Mooseheads. He scored 105 points in 49 games with the Mooseheads in 2012-13, en route to being selected third overall in that year's draft.

Drouin tallied a career-high 53 points in 73 games with the Lightning last season, and if he can meet some of the lofty projections set out by the locals he met, Drouin will be off to a great start in Montreal.

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Georges Laraque knows a thing or two about dropping the gloves.

The former NHL enforcer, who suited up for 695 career games, including an eight-year run with the Edmonton Oilers, still sees value in pugilists, despite resistance from the analytics crowd.

While the hockey fighter is a dying breed, the current Oilers squad, including right-winger Zack Kassian and power forward Milan Lucic, doesn't lack toughness. As Laraque sees it, it's these types of skaters whose aggression and intimidating nature allow skilled players to be at their best.

"Why do you think (Connor) McDavid got 100 points this year? Do you see how much room he's getting?" Laraque told Bob Stauffer of 630 CHED, according to David Staples of the Edmonton Journal. "Yes, there's a little bit of stuff there and there sometimes, but most of the time he was healthy because of that presence."

That wasn't the case during McDavid's rookie season, when he was limited to 45 games following a hit by Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Brandon Manning. McDavid suffered a broken clavicle on the play and missed the next 37 games.

But it's not just about the fisticuffs, Laraque continued.

"(The Oilers) had enough toughness that prevent guys to take liberties with those guys," Laraque said. "When (teams) go to Edmonton, with Darnell Nurse, Lucic, (Patrick) Maroon, all those guys there, people don't want to take liberties with those kids because there's a lot of guys can answer the bell.

"And we're not even talking about fighting here. We're talking about a presence that prevents guys from taking cheap shots because they know there would be retribution if they did so."

There's no denying McDavid made the most of his space this season, as he wrapped his sophomore campaign with 30 goals and 70 assists to take home the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP and the Art Ross Trophy as top scorer.

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