It appears as though future Hall of Fame netminder Henrik Lundqvist is hungry to return for another season.

The pending unrestricted free agent took to Twitter on Sunday to express his desire to continue playing.

Lundqvist's future became unclear when he was bought out by the New York Rangers earlier this week with one year remaining on his deal. He's spent all 15 seasons of his career with the club, helping it reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2014.

The 38-year-old owns a .910 save percentage and 3.05 goals-against average in 145 appearances over his last three campaigns.

Though his best days are behind him, the veteran puck-stopper could make an impact in a backup role, while his leadership and experience could prove invaluable to a team in the hunt for a Stanley Cup.

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The Dallas Stars have re-signed Andrej Sekera to a two-year deal carrying an average annual value of $1.5 million, the team announced Sunday.

The 34-year-old was a reliable third-pairing option for the Stars during their run to the 2020 Stanley Cup Final. The veteran only tallied one assist in 24 playoff games, but his 2.04 expected goals against per 60 minutes at five-on-five ranked third among Stars defensemen, according to Natural Stat Trick.

"Andrej did an outstanding job coming in and immediately making a difference on our back end last season," Dallas general manager Jim Nill said. "With his intelligence and experience, we look forward to Andrej continuing to play an impactful role in our defense corps."

Sekera was Dallas' only impending free agent on the blue line.

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The Chicago Blackhawks have traded defenseman Olli Maatta to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for forward Brad Morrison, the Kings announced Sunday.

"Olli is a well-rounded player who will fit well with our group of defensemen," Kings general manager Rob Blake said. "He is a young player that already has a lot of valuable NHL experience, including a pair of Stanley Cups, and we look forward to having him join our organization."

Chicago is retaining roughly $750,000 of Maatta's $4.08-million salary for each of the next two seasons, according to Sportsnet's Chris Johnston.

The move appears to be a salary dump for the Blackhawks, as Morrison spent his 2019-20 season with the ECHL's Fort Wayne Comets, registering 19 points in 17 games. Selected by the New York Rangers in the fourth round of the 2015 draft, the 23-year-old hasn't played an NHL game to date.

Maatta, 26, joined the Blackhawks in a trade from the Pittsburgh Penguins last summer. The 2012 first-round pick has notched 124 points in 427 career games and won two Stanley Cups with Pittsburgh.

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The offseason has officially begun, and the free-agent frenzy is right around the corner. With the salary cap remaining flat at $81.5 million for next season, general managers will be more desperate than ever to find low-cost impact players on the market while pinching their pennies.

We all saw what talents like Corey Perry and Pat Maroon were able to contribute to their clubs after inking team-friendly deals last offseason. The following players will likely be available at an appealing cost, and they could outplay their contracts in 2020-21.

Jason Spezza - C/RW

Spezza has made it clear he'd love to stay with his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs if he plays in 2020-21, but it's uncertain the cap-strapped team can keep the veteran in its plans going forward. If the Leafs move on, lots of clubs could benefit from using Spezza in a depth role.

The 37-year-old put together a solid 2019-20 campaign while proving he can still contribute in several areas. Spezza produced more points per game last season (0.43) than he did in 2018-19 (0.35) despite logging considerably less ice time. He also showed off his versatility, playing center and wing throughout the season and winning 54.4% of his faceoffs.

Spezza's off-ice value also can't be overlooked. The 17-year pro adds plenty of experience, his teammates love him, and he's on a mission to end his career with a Stanley Cup win.

Mikael Granlund - LW/RW

How quickly things can change. Nashville Predators general manager David Poile appeared to have fleeced the Minnesota Wild when he acquired Granlund for Kevin Fiala just over 18 months ago, but the latter has become the far more productive player ever since.

The aftermath of that trade could impact how much a team is willing to invest in Granlund. We're not suggesting the 28-year-old pivot will end up signing for low-end money, but his recent decline will likely prove costly. However, his offensive potential could lead to Granlund outperforming his next contract, making him a bargain candidate.

The 5-foot-10 Finn has registered a pair of 60-plus point seasons, and he's capable of playing throughout the lineup. Granlund has also been a strong possession player for most of his career, and the Predators boasted an impressive 62.42% of expected goals when he was on the ice at five-on-five in 2019-20.

Henrik Lundqvist - G

Despite Lundqvist's bona fides, it's unlikely a team will overpay for a No. 2 goalie, so he should be available for a reasonable price if the veteran continues his career. It's tough to picture King Henrik in another jersey, but taking a chance on him wouldn't be the worst idea for a contender looking to shore up its crease.

The 2012 Vezina Trophy winner has declined statistically in recent years, but he didn't receive much help from a Rangers team that's been one of the worst defensively over the past several seasons. Fulfilling a lighter role for a stronger club could help give Lundqvist a second wind. At the very least, his presence and experience would be invaluable to a Stanley Cup contender.

Tyler Ennis - LW/RW

Ennis was on our 2019 edition of potential free-agent steals, and for good reason. The veteran winger's production in 2019-20 far outweighed his six-figure contract. Although he's due for a slight raise, Ennis should still be a low-cost option who can provide plenty of value.

The 30-year-old paced all players making under $1 million who were not on entry-level deals last season in both goals and points. He outscored multi-million dollar pending free-agent forwards such as Granlund, Vladislav Namestnikov, and Craig Smith despite logging less ice time per game than the former two.

Ennis also plays a lot larger than his 5-foot-9 frame suggests, as evidenced by his career-high 96 hits last season. His mix of grit and skill makes him a versatile talent who can play up and down a club's lineup.

Wayne Simmonds - RW

Despite his body of work, it became clear that Simmonds' value had dropped after he managed just a one-year contract last offseason. The 6-foot-5 winger failed to meet expectations in 2019-20, so he'll likely be securing a far less lucrative salary now.

However, Simmonds spent 2019-20 playing for a pair of struggling teams in the New Jersey Devils and Buffalo Sabres. His ice time dropped noticeably with Buffalo, and he wasn't able to find his game before the season was cut short in March.

Simmonds' days as a top-six option are clearly behind him, but the 32-year-old power forward can still bolster a club's depth. He recorded 145 hits last season while also showing he can still contribute on the power play, recording five of his eight tallies with the man advantage.

(Analytics source: Natural Stat Trick)

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Nikolai Khabibulin answered the phone in Yekaterinburg, Russia, late on a recent Friday and expressed his pleasure with the trajectory of the NHL postseason. The Lightning, one of the retired goalie's past clubs, had advanced to the Stanley Cup Final the previous day, emerging victorious from an all-Russian netminding matchup - Andrei Vasilevskiy against Semyon Varlamov - to set up another with Anton Khudobin. It was all a bit surprising, Khabibulin said, but nice for his country all the same.

Khabibulin was also keeping an eye on the KHL, including 18-year-old Yaroslav Askarov's first start of the new season for SKA Saint Petersburg. Teen goalies don't typically dominate in the world's second-best league, yet Askarov stopped 33 shots in a 2-0 shutout of HC Spartak Moscow. He challenged shooters assertively. He sprawled to his left to commit theft, then did that twice more in a performance that solidified goalie and rookie of the week honors.

"He read the plays well. He stopped a penalty shot. Some other guy had a breakaway," Khabibulin said. "Everything he did (worked)."

Khabibulin was Russia's goaltending coach at the 2020 world juniors, about the only event at which Askarov has stumbled. His track record is close to immaculate. Last season, he became the second-youngest goalie to start a KHL game, which he won. He shone for SKA's farm team in the second-tier VHL, compiling a .920 save percentage across 18 contests. The number was stellar for a draft-eligible player, a status Askarov will shed soon after the NHL draft begins Tuesday night.

Setting aside the world juniors in the Czech Republic, where he was yanked in Russia's tournament opener and again in the semifinal, Askarov's success versus men and against prospects internationally has ratcheted his draft stock to rare heights. The comparisons to Vasilevskiy, the perennial Vezina Trophy nominee who was selected No. 19 overall in 2012, are inevitable thanks to his passport and promise.

Few goalies get picked that high anymore. To make the case that Askarov is worth it - "I think he can be as good as he wants to be," Khabibulin said - evaluators sometimes invoke a weightier parallel: the guy whom the Canadiens trusted 15 years ago to live up to the No. 5 slot.

"Best goalie I've seen entering the draft since Carey Price," said TSN's chief scout, Craig Button.

"He's a lot of things you look for in a franchise goaltender," said Mark Seidel, director of the independent North American Central Scouting agency. "There's going to be risks with teams taking him, maybe, in the top 10. But I'd rather take a risk and get a franchise goaltender than take a risk and you miss on a second-pairing defenseman."

In interviews, Khabibulin and four prospect analysts characterized the 6-foot-3, right-catching Askarov as a spirited competitor who reads the game well and moves explosively out of the butterfly, which helps him maintain aggressive yet sensible positioning and splay when needed to foil chances at the far post. Askarov's hands are good, as is his rebound management. In his KHL cameos and several pressurized medal games, he's projected the confidence and composure of a goalie entirely in control.

Askarov's netminding profile is devoid of serious flaws, leaving viewers to scrutinize what Button calls his developmental, rather than inherent, weaknesses. To goalie analyst Catherine Silverman, Askarov could probably stand to narrow his stance slightly and move a little less in the net. His hands could and should still get sharper. But even if those elements of his game remain unfinished, she said, his best attributes wouldn't look out of place in the NHL right now.

"Call him precocious; call him advanced - whatever word you want to use to describe him. He's gifted. He's as gifted a goaltender as you might say about the players who get 'exceptional' status (in the Canadian Hockey League)," Button said. "You just don't see that in goaltenders at that age. It's a position that requires refinement of technique."

Well before he debuted at the world juniors at 17, Askarov stymied his peers at numerous marquee events, powering pedestrian Russian lineups, Seidel said, to podium finishes they had no business attaining. Said NHL Central Scouting director Dan Marr, "There's a history of this guy going out there in high-pressure situations as one of the younger players and delivering."

Below are four examples in the span of a year.

• November 2018: Askarov recorded a .948 save percentage across five games as the Russians took gold at the World Under-17 Challenge in New Brunswick.

• December 2018: Askarov upped his percentage to .954 over four games to lead Russia to silver at the Under-20 World Junior A Challenge in Alberta.

• April 2019: Playing a year above his age cohort, Askarov earned top goalie honors at the Under-18 World Championship in Sweden. His 40 saves in the semifinal forced the powerhouse United States to the shootout shown above, during which five of the eventual top 15 picks in the 2019 draft - Jack Hughes, Alex Turcotte, Trevor Zegras, Matthew Boldy, and Cole Caufield - failed to beat him.

• August 2019: Russia won gold at the U-18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup despite being outshot 37-13 in the final by a Canadian squad replete with top 2020 prospects, including Quinton Byfield, Cole Perfetti, and Jamie Drysdale. Askarov made 35 saves in the victory, and his save percentage for the tournament was .960.

"If he's got 21 good viewings and two or three bad games at the world juniors, (scouts) say, OK, we can live with that," Seidel said.

The pandemic scrubbed this year's U-18 worlds and Hlinka Gretzky tournament, but the draft's postponement granted Askarov's NHL suitors a few extra glimpses of him stonewalling pros. Including his shutout against Spartak, he denied 76 of 78 shots (.974) in three KHL appearances last month. One gymnastic stop against Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod on Sept. 20 seemed to pierce the opposing forward's soul.

The list of goalies who've stood tall in the KHL at Askarov's age doesn't extend far beyond Vasilevskiy and acclaimed Islanders prospect Ilya Sorokin. Plenty of teams - Ottawa at No. 5 overall, New Jersey at No. 7, Minnesota at No. 9, Carolina at No. 13, Edmonton at No. 14 - could conceivably buck recent draft history on Tuesday and bring the shot-stopper aboard with a high pick, trusting he won't wind up as a cautionary tale.

It was commonplace a couple of decades ago to see as many as four goalies selected in Round 1, but that investment frequently preceded disaster. 1999 first-rounders Brian Finley, Maxim Ouellet, and Ari Ahonen combined to appear in just 16 NHL games. Their shared shortcoming contrasts with the long, fruitful careers of Craig Anderson and Ryan Miller, third- and fifth-round choices in 1999, respectively, who were the oldest netminders in the league this past season.

Many drafts have since upheld the maxim that teams can find good goaltending at any point in the process. Consider the distribution of the NHL's 2019-20 goals saved above average leaderboard. The top 10 performers include two first-round picks (Tuukka Rask and Vasilevskiy), a second-rounder (Robin Lehner), two third-round selections (Ben Bishop and Elvis Merzlikins), a fifth-rounder (Connor Hellebuyck), a sixth-round pick (Darcy Kuemper), a seventh-rounder (Khudobin), and two undrafted free agents (Pavel Francouz and Antti Raanta).

How does Askarov's high stock fit into this calculus? For all of the first-round flops drafted between 2000 and 2010 - Brent Krahn, Adam Munro, Marek Schwarz, Riku Helenius, Leland Irving, Tom McCollum, Mark Visentin - there remains the odd 18-year-old whose bright future between the pipes looks assured.

Tampa Bay correctly believed Vasilevskiy would reach his ceiling. Florida has bet big that Spencer Knight, last year's No. 13 pick, will pan out as a quality starter. As Montreal executive Trevor Timmins once told Sportsnet about his club's famed gambit, "We just felt, (in 2005), that Price was the one guy who really had the chance to develop into a franchise player, even though he was a goalie."

"If you find that special rare breed who you think can be a starter and a potential star, that's where a team will step up and take him," Seidel said. "That's what I think will happen (with Askarov)."

Irrespective of its Russian headliner, this draft's crop of eligible goaltenders is strong, Silverman said. Canadians Nico Daws and Dylan Garand submitted solid CHL seasons in 2019-20. Joel Blomqvist is one of Finland's finer recent prospects. Calle Clang is no Jesper Wallstedt - the class of 2021's answer to Askarov - but he's fared well to date in the Swedish junior ranks. Wednesday's later rounds may wind up producing several future starters, Silverman said. It's just that Askarov is dusting all of them on the development curve.

Askarov is signed to SKA through 2021-22, The Athletic's Corey Pronman reported in June, and Silverman thinks he could follow an accelerated version of Igor Shesterkin's path. The Rangers backstop and former SKA star moved to the AHL last season at 23, excelled there for a few months, was promoted to New York with Henrik Lundqvist still in the fold, and now looks set to claim the No. 1 role.

"Can (Askarov) make that jump? He's not going to do it overnight. He's going to have to probably play in the (AHL) for a couple of years," Seidel said. "But he's already proven that he can play with men. It checks another box that you don't have to worry about as much."

Khabibulin, for his part, won't sweat Askarov's subpar two weeks at the last world juniors. If he wasn't fully ready for the stage at 17, he impressed behind the scenes by taking responsibility for his play and committing to improve, the goalie coach said. Askarov is coachable and dissatisfied when he falters, Khabibulin added, which so far has been a nonissue in the KHL.

The results support Khabibulin's read from afar. Askarov is handling net-front traffic more capably than in the past. He's robbing Grade-A attempts with his quick footwork and long legs. He's delivering consistently, not unlike the Russian Vezina finalist who just led Tampa to a title.

"If he can do it once, he can do it twice. If he can do it twice, he can do it many times," Khabibulin said. "It seems like he's getting better and better."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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The Arizona Coyotes placed forward Michael Grabner on waivers for the purpose of a buyout Saturday, according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.

Here's how it breaks down:

Grabner's agent, Jerry Buckley, told NHL Network's Craig Morgan that his client intends to continue playing.

The Austrian-born winger was originally signed through 2020-21 at a cap hit of $3.35 million. It was to be the final season of his three-year, $10.05-million contract he inked with the Coyotes in July 2018.

Grabner, who turns 33 on Monday, spent the last two campaigns with Arizona. He collected only eight goals and 11 points over 46 games in 2019-20.

The 11-year veteran has also played for the New Jersey Devils, New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Islanders, and the Vancouver Canucks, the club that drafted him 14th overall in 2006.

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