The Florida Panthers can't stop making deals.
The same day they officially locked down forward Vincent Trocheck to a six-year extension, the Panthers finalized a five-year extension for Reilly Smith on Sunday, the team announced.
The team didn't disclose terms, but TSN's Gary Lawless reports the deal is worth $25 million.
Related: Panthers riding impressive offseason after front-office shake-up
Along with Trocheck and now Smith, the Panthers signed defensemen Jason Demers and Keith Yandle, as well as inking Aaron Ekblad to an eight-year extension in what's been a busy offseason for newly appointed general manager Tom Rowe.
"Reilly was a key player for our team last season," Rowe said. "He is a valuable contributor to our offense and special teams and is an important part of our talented group of forwards."
Smith, a 25-year-old winger, scored a career-high 25 goals last season, adding 25 assists and suiting up in all 82 games for Florida. He also notched eight points in six playoff contests.
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Dallas Stars fans would like the club to acquire Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Ben Bishop.
The Stars announced the one-year signing of forward Adam Cracknell on Sunday, but rather than welcoming the news with open arms, the team's faithful wondered why Cracknell wasn't Bishop instead.
It's ruff being the Stars twitter person. pic.twitter.com/T0gzVanvwY
— m g (@kikkerlaika) July 3, 2016
While Bishop has one year remaining on his deal with the Lightning, his name has come up in trade talks. During the draft weekend it was reported that the Lightning had given the Calgary Flames permission to talk the Vezina Trophy nominee.
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Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen isn't concerned with his team's depth down the middle.
Kekalainen dealt 23-year-old pivot Ryan Johansen last season to the Nashville Predators for Seth Jones, and disputes the notion the team still lacks a No. 1 center.
"People might say that we don't have a first-line center," Kekalainen said, according to Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch. "But I think we have real solid, 200-foot centers."
Columbus is likely to roll out Boone Jenner, Brandon Dubinsky, and Alexander Wennberg down the middle, with Gregory Campbell and William Karlsson also available.
Kekalainen went so far as to challenge Karlsson's game to motivate him.
"I think William Karlsson is going to get a lot better," Kekalainen said. "I challenged him at the year-end meeting, just asked him: 'Do you want to be a fourth-line center for the rest of your life?'"
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What was once old is new again in the NHL.
After the first two days of free agency, there appears to be a growing trend of teams becoming more willing to bring back players who once donned their jersey in years past.
The St. Louis Blues have brought back David Perron, the New York Islanders are giving P.A. Parenteau a second chance, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are welcoming back Roman Polak.
The phenomenon is certainly nothing new, but is nevertheless intriguing. That being said, similar moves have also included some of the game's greats.
Here are five former stars who also made returns to former teams:
After enjoying his first 12 - and arguably his most prolific - years of his NHL career with the Edmonton Oilers, Messier was traded to the New York Rangers ahead of the 1991-92 season.
In his first season with the Rangers, he captured the Hart and Lester B. Pearson trophies. Two years later, he would make Rangers history by capturing the Stanley Cup on a run that included his famous guarantee to win Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final.
Messier would eventually leave for the Vancouver Canucks via free agency, spending three seasons there before returning to the Rangers for the 2000-01 season.
Messier was reintroduced as captain, and would play four more seasons for the Rangers before calling it a career.
After a blazing start to his career with the Winnipeg Jets that saw himset an NHL record with 76 goals and 132 points as a rookie - Teemu Selanne was abruptly dealt to the Anaheim Mighty Ducks during the 1995-96 campaign.
However, all worked out well. Selanne would go on to form an instant chemistry with Paul Kariya and enjoyed great production for five years. But as fate would have it, Selanne was dealt once again, this time to the San Jose Sharks.
Two years in San Jose and a failed Stanley Cup quest with the Colorado Avalanche later, and Selanne rejoined the Ducks; where the rest (506 more points) is history.
Luc Robitaille not only rejoined the Los Angeles Kings once, he did so on two separate occasions.
Robitaille played the first eight seasons of his Hall of Fame career with the Kings before being traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1994. He would spend one season with the Penguins and two with the Rangers before landing back in Los Angeles.
He would put up three 35-plus goal seasons in four years with the Kings, before joining the Detroit Red Wings in pursuit of a Stanley Cup. Robitaille succeeded in his quest, capturing the Cup with the Red Wings in 2002 with a team boasting the likes of Brendan Shanahan, Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Brett Hull, Nicklas Lidstrom, and Dominik Hasek.
After a down second year where he amassed just 31 points, Robitaille would return to the Kings, where he would play out the final two years of his career.
Denis Savard burst on to the scene with the Chicago Blackhawks after being drafted third overall in 1980.
By his eighth year in the league, he had already amassed five 100-point seasons. However, following the 1989-90 season, he was famously traded to the Montreal Canadiens in a deal for defenseman Chris Chelios.
While Savard's numbers started to decline, he still managed to capture the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens during the 1992-93 season. That offseason, he was sent to the Tampa Bay Lightning where he would play just over a season before being sent back to Chicago for a sixth-round pick.
Savard played two more seasons following the trade before retiring at the end of the 1996-97 season. He still sits as the Blackhawks leader in points per game, and third on the franchise's all-time points list with 1,096 to his name.
While Ron Francis didn't officially rejoin the same team, he did rejoin the same franchise.
After being drafted fourth overall in 1981 by the Hartford Whalers, Francis enjoyed a long tenure with the club, finally being traded 67 games into his 10th season with the team.
He was traded to the Penguins as part of a six-player deal that worked out incredibly well, as Francis would capture back-to-back Stanley Cups in his first two seasons with the Penguins. He would spend eight seasons in total with the Penguins - the most productive campaigns of his career.
Following the 1997-98 season, Francis would sign with the Carolina Hurricanes - formerly the Whalers - as a free agent. He would spend the next six seasons in Carolina before being dealt to the Maple Leafs at the trade deadline in 2004, which was his final season in the league.
Brendan Shanahan
Brendan Shanahan was drafted second overall in the 1987 Draft and spent his first four years with the New Jersey Devils.
After a polished career spent with the Blues, Whalers, Red Wings, and Rangers over 17 years, Shanahan agreed to rejoin the Devils midway through the 2008-09 season. There he would contribute six goals and eight assists in 34 games and another three points in seven playoff games.
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Nothing can stop P.K. Subban from having fun.
Days after the trade that shook the hockey world, Subban gave a shout out - literally - to his new club, the Nashville Predators while on vacation in Europe.
Tough life, P.K.
- With h/t to BarDown
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It appears the Toronto Maple Leafs' philosophy has slightly shifted in a year's time.
Last offseason, in the first year under its new regime led by Brendan Shanahan, Lou Lamoriello, Kyle Dubas, and Mike Babcock, the Leafs' promised pain - which definitely occurred over the course of 82 games - but their re-furbished approach at chasing skilled players and acquiring draft picks was promising.
This offseason, Toronto was handed a golden ticket by winning the right to draft Auston Matthews first overall, but a series of curious draft picks following the 18-year-old wunderkind set the bar for what has been a strange sequence of acquisitions during the free-agency period.
Toronto's first free-agent signing was Matt Martin, the NHL's trailblazer in hits. He was brought in to protect the kids, but ultimately the Leafs added another body to a crowded forward group, and gave a four-year contract to a player whose career high in points is 19.
As much as Leafs fans want to see a lineup full of youngsters, it just isn't possible. Matthews will be there, William Nylander will be there, but Toronto's prospects will have to do battle to crack the roster with limited spots available.
| Player | Age | Position | GP last season |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joffrey Lupul | 32 | LW | 46 |
| Nazem Kadri | 25 | C | 76 |
| Brooks Laich | 33 | C | 21 |
| James van Riemsdyk | 27 | LW | 40 |
| Tyler Bozak | 30 | C | 57 |
| Milan Michalek | 31 | LW | 13 |
| Leo Komarov | 29 | C | 67 |
| Colin Greening | 30 | LW | 30 |
| William Nylander | 20 | C | 22 |
Martin being added to the players listen above leaves two forward spots available. Nikita Soshnikov, Connor Brown, Brendan Leipsic, Kasperi Kapanen, and Zach Hyman all showed promise with the big club last season, not to mention the newly acquired Kerby Rychel or 2015 No. 4 overall pick Mitch Marner who can only play for the Leafs or in the OHL next season.
Sure, injuries occur and trades can happen. But as advanced as the rebuild seems to be, the Leafs don't have the space for a complete youth movement this upcoming season.
On the defensive side, the Leafs brought back Roman Polak on a one-year deal, creating an unnecessary log jam on the blue line as well.
Jake Gardiner, Morgan Rielly, Frank Corrado, Martin Marincin, Connor Carrick and new addition Nikita Zaitsev fit the mold of a swift, possession-positive D-corps, and bringing in Polak - a brute force rather than an analytics darling - likely puts the younger Corrado out of a job.
No matter what stage of the "Shanny-Plan" Toronto is at, the Leafs appear to have contradicted what they've created. At this point, it's difficult to gauge what year two of the Leafs' most recent rebuild will yield, but it's easy to label their offseason work as unexpected.
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The Florida Panthers are winning the summer after many wondered what they were doing in the spring.
Owner Vincent Viola raised eyebrows when he overhauled the front office after a historically successful campaign, but the restructured staff is putting its stamp on the offseason.
Florida made two significant moves Saturday, signing free-agent defenseman Jason Demers to a five-year contract and reportedly locking up promising 22-year-old forward Vincent Trocheck on a six-year extension.
On Friday, the Panthers put the finishing touches on an eight-year extension for 20-year-old franchise defenseman Aaron Ekblad. The club has now solidified most of its young core, which also includes forwards Aleksander Barkov and Nick Bjugstad.
Jonathan Hubderdeau is now the lone member of the core group without a long-term deal, but he has one year remaining before potentially entering restricted free agency.
After clinching the Atlantic Division title in April for the first time in franchise history, Florida was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the New York Islanders, and Viola didn't wait long to make changes.
The Panthers promoted general manager Dale Tallon to president of hockey operations, named Tom Rowe the new GM, and appointed analytically inclined executives Eric Joyce and Steve Werier assistant GMs. Two more analytics experts, Richard Pollock and Josh Weissbock, were brought on in June.
It wasn't all hiring and promoting, though. Hockey operations director Mike Dixon was fired in May along with assistant coach John Madden, and Rowe reportedly dismissed the team's equipment managers.
Amid all the upheaval and a clear shift in philosophy, the Panthers had a critical summer ahead, and given the circumstances, it's gone remarkably well for them so far. In addition to the Ekblad and Trocheck extensions, the Demers signing was the latest move designed to retool the blue line.
The Panthers traded defenseman Erik Gudbranson and a fifth-round pick to the Vancouver Canucks for forward Jared McCann, a second-rounder, and a fourth-round selection, then dealt Dmitry Kulikov and a second-round pick to the Buffalo Sabres for Mark Pysyk and two second-rounders.
Then came Keith Yandle, whose rights were acquired by the Panthers before they signed him to a seven-year deal reportedly worth about $44 million.
As if that wasn't enough, the new braintrust signed free-agent goaltender James Reimer to a five-year, $17-million contract Friday, providing a brilliant insurance policy for 37-year-old netminder Roberto Luongo, both now and in the future.
There are still question marks. The revamped defense will generate plenty of scoring chances, but can it hold up in its own end? How much does Jaromir Jagr have left? Who takes over the captaincy now that Willie Mitchell is likely retiring? Can they risk waiting until next season - or worse, next summer - to figure out a way to keep Huberdeau?
Despite these concerns, the Panthers' new-look management team has already checked off all the major items on its summer to-do list, and the club appears primed to contend for the Stanley Cup in the years to come.
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