The St. Louis Blues have acquired defenseman Justin Faulk from the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for rearguard Joel Edmundson, forward prospect Dominik Bokk, and a seventh-round pick at the 2021 NHL Draft, the Blues announced Tuesday.

St. Louis also acquired a fifth-round pick in 2020 in the deal.

The Blues signed Faulk, who was set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer, to a seven-year, $45.5-million extension after the trade.

Faulk was reportedly involved in a potential trade with the Anaheim Ducks earlier in September, but the sides couldn't come to an agreement on a contract extension.

The 27-year-old is a valuable right-shot defenseman with plenty of offensive upside. He's hit the 30-point mark in six straight seasons and ranks seventh among all blue-liners with 67 goals since the start of 2014-15.

Faulk recorded 11 goals and 35 points in 82 games for the Hurricanes in 2018-19 and added one goal and eight points in 15 playoff contests.

The 26-year-old Edmundson played an important role in helping the Blues capture their first-ever Stanley Cup in June. The 6-foot-4 rearguard contributed 11 points in 64 regular-season contests and recorded one goal and seven points through 22 postseason games.

Edmundson was awarded a one-year, $3.1-million contract with the Blues by an independent arbitrator Aug. 6. He's set to become an unrestricted free agent next summer.

Bokk was selected by the Blues with the No. 25 pick in the 2018 NHL Draft. The 19-year-old has played the past two seasons in the Swedish Hockey League.

Both the Blues and Hurricanes are currently above the cap and will need to shuffle some roster pieces to become compliant by the start of the regular season, according to CapFriendly.

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The Montreal Canadiens are interested in shopping a forward, Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reports in his latest edition of 31 Thoughts.

The Canadiens training camp has been very competitive, with offensive prospects Nick Suzuki and Ryan Poehling showing serious NHL potential.

Six Montreal forwards are playing on an expiring contract this season. Max Domi, Nick Cousins, and Charles Hudon are set to become restricted free agents next summer, and Dale Weise, Matthew Peca, and Nate Thompson will be unrestricted free agents.

General manager Marc Bergevin said he made an offer to Jake Gardiner before the defenseman signed with the Carolina Hurricanes. The club has also reportedly been linked to Dallas Stars blue-liner Julius Honka in trade talks.

The Canadiens hold $4.04 million in projected cap space, but they're two players over the 23-man active roster limit and need to make a pair of transactions before the regular season begins to become compliant, according to CapFriendly.

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Connor McDavid is ready for game action.

Unless there's a late-day change, the Edmonton Oilers superstar will play in Tuesday night's exhibition contest against the Arizona Coyotes, according to TSN's Darren Dreger.

McDavid has skated throughout the preseason but had not yet appeared in a game. He tore his PCL in the Oilers' 2018-19 season finale, avoided surgery, and was given a six-month recovery timetable.

The 2017 Hart Trophy winner's status for the 2019-20 season opener was originally in doubt, but his progress throughout training camp led Edmonton general manager Ken Holland to say he was "optimistic" about the team's captain being ready for opening night.

Including Tuesday's clash with the Coyotes, the Oilers have three preseason games remaining. Edmonton will then open its regular season against the Vancouver Canucks on Oct. 2.

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TORONTO - Midway through the second period of an elite women's hockey game last Saturday, two defensemen converged at their blue line to haul Natalie Spooner to the ice, earning a tripping penalty. When Spooner was deployed on the ensuing power play, she snuck into a vacant gap in the slot, took a pass, and wired a one-timer off the goaltender's arm.

The rebound fell to the side of the crease, where Spooner's teammate Carolyne Prevost poked the puck into the net.

The sequence and its end result were happily familiar to Spooner, an influential power forward on Canadian teams that medaled at the past seven world championships and at the 2014 and 2018 Olympics. More familiar, certainly, than the position in which she'd found herself at another rink a couple of nights earlier: backflipping onto the shoulder of a champion ice dancer, where she stretched her arms aloft as the two of them glided to the chorus of a country song.

Such is life this autumn for a 28-year-old star with a resume to envy and time to fill. As the 2019-20 professional hockey season gets set to begin, many of the women's game's brightest talents are embarking instead on their own barnstorming tour, staging a series of showcase events across the U.S. and Canada to amplify their call for the creation of a league that can pay all of them a living wage.

Separately and simultaneously, two of those women - Spooner and American forward Amanda Kessel - signed up for a crash course in figure skating that plays out live on Thursday nights on Canadian national TV. They are among the protagonists of this season's "Battle of the Blades," the CBC show that pits seven pairs of prominent hockey players and figure skaters against one another in competition.

"When you play hockey, it doesn't really matter what you look like if you get the job done - you get from point A to B and score," Spooner said in an interview Saturday, two days after her first performance with veteran Canadian Olympic ice dancer Andrew Poje.

"In 'Battle of the Blades,' it's keeping your shoulders down, and smiling, and looking pretty," she said. "It's definitely way different. But I'm having a blast with it, and just trying to take it all in and learn lots."

Poje was one of thousands of fans who passed through the stands of a suburban Toronto arena over the weekend to watch the first slate of games of the Dream Gap Tour. The nascent Professional Women's Hockey Players Association so named the series of events to highlight the chasm between what boys and girls who play hockey can aspire to accomplish in the game - mainly, getting paid enough money in a pro league to make hockey their full-time job.

The National Women's Hockey League, whose five teams will operate with a salary cap of $150,000 this season, begins play Oct. 5 as the only remaining women's pro league. The Canadian Women's Hockey League ceased operations last spring and more than 150 players who compose the PWHPA have chosen to band together in search of a permanent, sustainable solution. The magnitude of the moment is unmistakable. No one is certain what the future holds.

In the meantime, as the Dream Gap Tour prepares to visit two American cities - Hudson, New Hampshire, an hour north of Boston, on Oct. 5-6, and Chicago on Oct. 19-20 - several of the movement's most recognizable names have stocked their calendars with other interesting commitments.

Kendall Coyne Schofield, the American winger whose showing in the fastest skater event commanded the spotlight at last season's NHL All-Star weekend, joined the San Jose Sharks' TV broadcast as a part-time color analyst. Her teammate Brianna Decker is an assistant coach with the U.S. women's under-18 team. U.S. defenseman Kacey Bellamy is taking a business class in which she's researching the leadership legacy of tennis icon and women's equality advocate Billie Jean King. U.S. forward Hilary Knight recently walked the runway at a New York Fashion Week gala whose proceeds went toward a children's sport nonprofit. The PWHPA has organized regional training hubs so that its players can practice regularly throughout the season.

Through weeks of training with their "Battle of the Blades" partners, Spooner and Kessel - who is paired with 2018 Olympic pairs bronze medalist Eric Radford - are coming to understand the divergence between what is required to excel at hockey and at figure skating. Newcomers to the latter sport have to learn to stay upright on a toe pick; they feel the edges of their blades more acutely than do hockey players. At the Dream Gap Tour's Toronto stop, Canadian center Marie-Philip Poulin explained why it wasn't too hard for her to keep pace in her first competitive game in months: she didn't have to rapidly transition back from "white skates."

"It's picking up a brand new sport and doing it at the highest level," said Tessa Bonhomme, the retired Canadian defenseman who won "Battle of the Blades" eight years ago with 2002 Olympic pairs gold medalist David Pelletier.

"You come into this sport where you think already know how to skate - and quite frankly, I usually got pretty good reviews on my skating reports. You get out on these figure skates and you're watching Dave or any of the other competitors go through their warmup, and meanwhile you're dripping sweat, just trying to figure out, 'Left goes first or right goes first?'"

For Bonhomme, the key to victory involved refusing to shy away from tricks that might reasonably induce fear, such as the handstand that segued into a face-first swing in which her head came within inches of the ice. She thinks Spooner - her former teammate on the Canadian national team and the CWHL's Toronto Furies - possesses that kind of nerve and drive, as well as a personality that will endear her to the audience.

"I think what's going to work in her favor is that she is fearless, and she isn't embarrassed to laugh at herself," Bonhomme said in an interview the week before Spooner's "Battle of the Blades" debut. "I've seen her dance moves in the locker room and off the ice. It'll be interesting to see if that can translate with skates up."

The early returns suggest that Spooner should be just fine. As she and Poje skated to Dean Brody's "Canadian Girls" in Hamilton, Ontario, last Thursday, she pointed and grinned at host Ron MacLean when one lyric mentioned the renowned sportscaster's name. Later, she dropped to a knee and spun 360 degrees before Poje flipped her backward in the routine's conclusive flourish. The show's judges awarded them three scores of 9.3.

Spooner said she hopes her "Battle of the Blades" experience will make her a stronger hockey skater, perhaps by elongating her stride. She's also competing to drum up awareness and funds for Fast and Female, a small charity that works with athlete role models to encourage girls to play sports.

"A lot of girls drop out of sports when they're around 13, 14, hitting puberty, and a lot of it has to do with body image," Spooner said. She notes that at 5-foot-10, she's much bigger than the typical female figure skater.

It's easy to discern how Fast and Female's animating purpose mirrors that of the PWHPA. Even if Spooner and Kessel's cohort of stars never gets the chance to play in the sustainable league that it envisions, the generation that succeeds that cohort might.

That possibility was front of mind all weekend in Toronto, where Spooner built on her power-play assist from Saturday by scoring on a nifty backhand move the following morning. At the end of that game, a Dream Gap Tour official handed her a Budweiser-sponsored goal light, which flashed red as she circled center ice and the crowd cheered.

"The biggest thing is for little girls to still watch women play hockey (this season)," Spooner said. "There is a future for women's hockey that we're fighting for - for them."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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Teams around the NHL have checked in with agent Mike Liut amid Winnipeg Jets winger Patrik Laine's contract stalemate, TSN's Pierre LeBrun reported on Monday's edition of "Insider Trading."

"And now, are they checking in because of a potential offer sheet? Or are they checking in because maybe they want to call Winnipeg and try and trade for Patrik Laine? I’m not saying either one is happening. I’m just saying teams are getting curious about that situation," LeBrun said.

In addition to Laine, teammate Kyle Connor also remains unsigned. Moreover, the Jets are also awaiting a decision on Dustin Byfuglien's future. It's been a hectic time for general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff, but it hasn't stopped him from trying to improve his team.

"The Jets are talking to teams about potential trades," TSN's Darren Dreger said on "Insider Trading" without naming specific players. "But with the Byfuglien situation still out there, it’s hard to do anything."

Liut said last week that Laine and the Jets were not close to an agreement. However, these negotiations can always change with a single phone call. Laine's situation appears to be more contentious than the other remaining RFAs, though, as he ruffled some feathers last week when he complained about his usage and took a jab at his linemates.

Laine is one of the NHL's most prolific goal-scorers, but he's also rather inconsistent. Last season he scored 30 goals, but 18 of them came in November. One of the league's most polarizing players, Laine has also drawn criticism for his defensive play and lack of effort in the past.

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Although the Tampa Bay Lightning signed Brayden Point to a three-year, $20.25-million bridge deal Monday, the club could be without the center for the first month of the season.

Point underwent hip surgery in the spring and isn't expected to be cleared to play until late October, general manager Julien BriseBois said on a conference call Monday, according to Bryan Burns of the team's website. The GM added there's no long-term concern with the injury and he's been skating for a number of weeks.

Point set career highs last season with 41 goals, 51 assists, and 92 points. The Lightning's depth will have to step up during his absence.

The versatile Tyler Johnson could shift back to center after playing primarily on the wing for the last couple of years. Though he doesn't have as much experience down the middle as Johnson, Yanni Gourde is also capable of playing center.

If head coach Jon Cooper wants to keep Johnson and Gourde on the wing, he could bump 22-year-old speedster Anthony Cirelli into a top-six role until Point returns. This could result in an increased role for Cedric Paquette or perhaps an NHL audition to begin the year for prospect Mitchell Stephens.

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