San Jose Sharks general manager Doug Wilson had a productive Tuesday morning. All before 7:30 a.m. PT, Wilson managed to trade underachieving forward Mikkel Boedker's $4-million cap hit, defense prospect Julius Bergman, and a sixth-round pick in exchange for a second-round pick, a fourth-round pick, and two fifth-round picks.

Of course, Wilson was able to do this by acquiring Mike Hoffman from the Ottawa Senators, then flipping him to the Florida Panthers hours later.

Since the Sharks' return from the Panthers for Hoffman appears to be better than what they gave up to acquire him, one might ask, why didn't Sens GM Pierre Dorion swing a deal with the Panthers?

Dorion was interested in making a deal with Florida, but he wanted players in return, not picks, Panthers GM Dale Tallon told Sportsnet's Chris Johnston. Given Dorion's preferred return, Tallon never offered him the package he sent to San Jose. Dorion even contacted Tallon about Hoffman last week, but Tallon was told the price was too high.

It's clear that the Sens had their eyes on a player on Florida's roster that Tallon was unwilling to part with. Who that player might've been remains to be seen.

Rebuilding teams would usually welcome a load of draft picks in exchange for a player that they needed to trade with open arms, but for Dorion and the Senators, that apparently wasn't the case.

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The Ottawa Senators traded forward Mike Hoffman, prospect Cody Donaghey, and a fifth-round pick in 2020 to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for forward Mikkel Boedker, prospect Julius Bergman, and a sixth-round pick in 2020, the Senators announced.

Tuesday's trade came after the wife of Ottawa's Erik Karlsson applied for a much-publicized peace bond that accused Hoffman's fiancee of a season-long online harassment campaign. Hoffman denied the allegations.

Related: Erik Karlsson's wife accuses Hoffman's girlfriend of harassment campaign

Hoffman, who averaged 26 goals over the last four seasons, has two years remaining on his deal with an annual cap hit of $5,187,500.

Boedker is coming off a 15-goal, 37-point campaign with the Sharks, and will have a cap hit of $4 million for each of the next two seasons.

Though the cap hits are similar, the Senators will actually be saving $5.3 million in total salary based on Tuesday's trade:

As for the smaller pieces of the deal, Bergman, 22, was a second-round pick of the Sharks in 2014. A right-handed shooting defenseman, he spent the 2017-18 campaign with the AHL's San Jose Barracuda, registering 10 goals and 10 assists.

Donaghey, also a 22-year-old right-handed shooting blue-liner, tallied 16 points in 54 games with the Brampton Beast of the ECHL last season.

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The Calgary Flames hired Hakan Loob as the team's head European pro scout, the team announced Monday.

Loob is one of the best players in Flames history, and one of the best Europeans to ever lace 'em up. He recorded 429 points in 450 NHL games - all with Calgary - including a 50-goal, 100-point campaign in 1987-88.

After helping the Flames win the Stanley Cup in 1989, Loob's age-28 season, he returned to his native Sweden to play for Farjestads BK Karlstad for the next seven years before taking over as the club's general manager. He was eventually named team president, and retired in 2017.

"We want to grow our presence in Europe,'' said Flames general manager Brad Treliving. "It's an area we want to expand. Hakan has a great eye for talent, he's familiar with Europe and he's a worker. This isn't just because Hakan was a great Flame. He's so well connected over there. Hakan Loob walks into a room and he's well known and well respected."

Loob is one of 28 players in the Triple Gold Club, which requires an Olympic gold medal, a World Championship gold medal, and a Stanley Cup ring.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs have agreed to a new East Coast Hockey League affiliation with the newly founded Newfoundland Growlers, the team announced Thursday.

The ECHL is two levels below the NHL, and a step below the American Hockey League (AHL).

The Orlando Solar Bears had served as Toronto's ECHL affiliate for the last five years.

"We are excited to begin our relationship with the Newfoundland Growlers as our newest ECHL affiliate," Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas said. "This is an important investment for our hockey club as we remain committed to giving our players the best resources possible to ensure their development and professional success. To now have our ECHL affiliate in St. John's, Newfoundland, a town and province which has historically meant a lot to the Maple Leafs, is a truly special opportunity."

The younger generation of Leafs fans only knows the Toronto Marlies as the club's AHL affiliate, but from 1991-2005, the St. John's Maple Leafs served in that role.

Meanwhile, the Growlers explained the meaning behind their primary logo, a Newfoundland dog, last month:

"A large working dog who is known for their size, strength, intelligence, and loyalty. The dog in the logo is fierce and stoic to represent the pride and resilience of our province, and our reputation of never backing down from a challenge."

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U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to officially invite the 2018 Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals to the White House for a traditional visit, but it appears most players would accept the offer when it comes, according to Samantha Pell of The Washington Post.

This comes roughly a week after Trump said he wouldn't invite the eventual NBA champion Golden State Warriors to the White House, and he canceled the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles' invite after Nick Foles was reportedly the only player confirmed to go.

While some players declined to comment, Alex Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie, Nicklas Backstrom, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Matt Niskanen, Brooks Orpik, Jay Beagle, and Lars Eller all indicated that they would go.

"The time you actually spend with whoever is in office is about two minutes long," said Orpik, who visited the White House after winning the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009. "There's not much interaction with the president, at least from past experience ...

"Whether teams go or they don't go, for me, personally, and again a lot of people might disagree with this, it's not you endorsing whoever is in there or supporting whoever is in there. The White House is a very historical, special place in this country and I think it's an honor to go to the White House. That's my opinion and I'm not the one making that decision, whether or not we're going to. So we'll see."

Capitals head coach Barry Trotz cautioned that nothing has yet been decided on the subject, but said they will discuss the matter as a team.

"I have my opinion on that which is part of the process of being a championship team and other people have different opinions so I respect both," Trotz told The Post. "I haven't talked to the guys one way or the other. We haven't had any official team meetings, but I respect both sides, really I do. Whatever the group decides, we will do it. I don't know if it will be a full group, a half group, or no group, I have no idea. I think most guys have the tradition part down."

One player who surely won't be going is Devante Smith-Pelly, who made it quite clear before the Capitals even won the cup that he wouldn't accept an invitation from a "racist and sexist" President Trump.

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John Carlson, the top pending free-agent defenseman set to hit the open market on July 1, wants to stay in Washington, but admitted it's easier said than done.

"I love it here," he told reporters at the team's locker clean-out Wednesday, according to NBC Sports' Tarik El-Bashir. "I want to stay here, but there's more to it than that."

Related: How the Caps can keep Carlson and go for 2 in a row

Carlson led all NHL blue-liners with 68 points during the 2017-18 season, and added 20 more in 24 postseason games.

As a 28-year-old right-handed shooting defenseman, Carlson is bound for a nice payday. However, Washington would really have to circumvent the salary cap in order to match the offers Carlson would receive on the open market.

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The Detroit Red Wings have offered one- and two-year contracts to pending unrestricted free-agent defenseman Mike Green, according to The Athletic's Craig Custance.

The two sides are close on salary, too, Custance added.

Green will be 33 years old next season and has defensive flaws. But he's still the second-best blue-liner set to the hit open market, behind only Washington Capitals rearguard John Carlson.

Green recorded 33 points in 66 games during the 2017-18 campaign, a season that ended early for the veteran when he needed surgery on his cervical spine. The injury likely won't affect his availability for the start of next season.

“I anticipate whether he signs with us or someone else, he’ll be on the ice for the first day of training camp,” Red Wings general manager Ken Holland told Custance. “Everything, I’m told, he should be green-lighted for the first day.”

The Red Wings are clearly in rebuilding mode, and re-signing Green may not seem to fit that direction. However, Holland said Green was the team's "best defenseman," and some of Detroit's up-and-coming defensive prospects still aren't ready for prominent NHL roles.

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Wade Belak, Rick Rypien, Steve Montador, and Derek Boogaard are four examples of former NHL enforcers who suffered through depression and eventually took their own lives.

Another former NHL enforcer, Nick Boynton, revealed in an article with The Players' Tribune on Wednesday that he's dealt with some of the same issues as the aforementioned players, whom Boynton describes as "brothers."

While he claims he's feeling more hopeful and optimistic now than he has in a long time, he still won't let his 3-year-old son, who loves hockey, play the sport.

"I cannot, in good conscience, let him play the game of ice hockey until something changes and we start looking out for our players by taking the problems of head hits and concussions - and their potential impact on mental health - more seriously," he said.

"I've seen the damage that results from that stuff firsthand. I've lived it. And to say it's been a struggle for me would be putting it way too lightly."

Boynton chronicled one instance while playing for the Philadelphia Flyers, in which his concussion-caused drug addiction nearly led to his own death.

"At the tail end of my career, I really, genuinely thought that I was going to die one night during the season," he said. "It's hard to talk about, for sure, but ... I had stayed up late doing an obscene amount of coke and things just got out of control. After a while my heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I couldn't get it to slow down. Nothing I did worked. It was probably the most scared I've ever been in my life."

Boynton said he needed to be at the rink a few hours later for the Flyers' morning skate and debated what to do: Go to the hospital and check in without anyone noticing or head to the arena and tell the trainer what had happened?

Earlier in Boynton's career, he had been traded less than a month after opening up about a painkiller addition to "some people with the team." He feared this could once again be the case if he opened up yet again.

"But I can tell you that, at the time, it (telling the team about cocaine use) was one of the hardest decisions I'd ever had to make," he said. "I agonized over it. Because I knew if I told the trainer, I was going to get in a ton of trouble."

Boynton, however, worked up the courage to tell the Flyers. Paul Holmgren, the team's general manager at the time, was completely supportive, sending him to rehab.

"And to this day, I honestly believe Paul saved my life back then," he said. "If I had been somewhere else, and they had just traded me away … I'd probably be dead."

Boynton played in 605 NHL games and even won a Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks, but says he would trade it all back in a "heartbeat" so he "wouldn't have had to experience all this pain and sorrow and anger and sadness."

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Former Los Angeles Kings defenseman Slava Voynov has made it clear he'd like to return to the NHL, multiple sources told Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman on Tuesday.

Voynov was arrested for a domestic assault incident in October 2014 and has not played in the NHL since. He pleaded no-contest to a misdemeanor charge of corporal injury to a spouse and served two months in jail. He returned to Russia and has spent the last three years playing in the KHL.

The 28-year-old has an expungement hearing scheduled for July 2 in a California court to remove the no-contest plea from his record. If that request is granted, he will have no criminal record and can then apply for reinstatement into the NHL. It's worth noting that he has had a U.S. Visitors' Visa for at least a year, according to Friedman.

Prior to the domestic assault incident, Voynov was an anchor on the Kings' blue line, helping them win two Stanley Cups. He has continued his strong play overseas, winning a Gagarin Cup with SKA St. Petersburg in 2016-17 and helping the Olympic Athletes from Russia capture gold at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang.

As a right-handed shooting rearguard, Voynov would surely help any team that's willing to overlook his past and deal with the ensuing controversy attached to such an acquisition.

Even though the Kings terminated Voynov's six-year, $25-million contract, they still hold his rights, so any team that wants to acquire him would have to make a deal with Los Angeles.

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Nicklas Backstrom and the Washington Capitals found the secret formula to winning the Stanley Cup, and apparently, it was in their back pockets the entire time.

"Finally, we started playing hockey like we can party," Backstrom said at the Capitals' Stanley Cup parade Tuesday, according to Stephen Whyno of the Associated Press. "So that's a good thing."

If this past week has been any indication, the Capitals' partying ability has reached elite status, much like their play on the ice throughout the postseason. They've been partying like nobody is watching, even though D.C. has had a front-row seat for the glorious show.

Related: Best moments from the Capitals' Stanley Cup parade

The only question is, why didn't the Caps figure out this winning recipe earlier? They could've been a dynasty by now.

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