dlbalr

Not much reason for him to take an AHL ATO and risk injury when he can hit free agency in August and have several teams offer him an entry-level contract. It'll take an NHL deal, perhaps one starting this year, to get him to sign. And I'd give it to him.

They can both come when their seasons end. Reinbacher's fate is tied to whether his team needs to play in a relegation series. If not, I think it could be late this week. If they do, closer to the end of the month. Hutson's will be dependent on when his team finishes in the Frozen Four tournament. It starts March 28th and ends April 13th. Reinbacher can (and almost certainly will) be loaned to Laval. If Hutson signs a contract that begins next season, he can also go to Laval. If he signs and burns the first year now, he won't be able to go to the Rocket, similar to Farrell last season. Two others to watch for prospect-wise to come over somewhat soon are Adam Engstrom and Oliver Kapanen, players who I expect will sign ELC's for next season. Their regular seasons end soon (SHL on Monday, Liiga on Tuesday) so it'll be dependent on their playoffs as well.

He is the fourth NCAA defenceman since 2005-06 to have multiple 40-point seasons. Of the four, he's the only one to do it in his first two seasons.

If it's late in the season and Laval has a few days off or is well out of the playoff mix, they might give him a game or two just to get his feet wet.

I see it the exact opposite way. Technique is one of his problem spots and I find him more of a react type of goalie than one who's always in the right spot position-wise. That's part of the reason that consistency has largely eluded him as he doesn't have the base fundamentals and thus his success is dependent on making more of the scramble type of saves. He's not as aggressive as Dobes, mind you (few are though).

That's putting it lightly. Way too much passing, looking for the can't-miss play. At some point, when you have multiple players in front, shoot for the rebound, getting the defence moving. They played right into Toronto's hands in that final stretch.

St. Louis may need to juggle the defensive rotation to keep Xhekaj/Savard away from that 3rd line and try them against the 2nd line instead. By the way, Toronto has a power play from that late scrum.

They were good in the first half of the period but really started to slow down after that, letting the Leafs find their skating legs a bit.

3-2 Laval after 2. Kaskisuo in net while Farrell, Gignac, and Simoneau have the goals.

Hughes just confirmed he's staying up for the time being. Maybe closer to the end of the season, they'll send him down like they did with Harvey-Pinard last year.

They did but that was before the season. The summary was covering the trade deadline period. An additional condition on the draft pick upgrade - it's 40 regular season games next year and Allen's team at the end of next season (NJ or otherwise) has to make the playoffs.

The problem is if they stay in Laval, the Habs are 12 healthy forwards and 6 healthy D. I can't see them doing that.

Struble and Roy were both papered down to keep them Laval-eligible. Assuming they'll both be recalled swiftly, that's 2 of 4 post-deadline regular recalls gone right there.

Sounds like the Allen deal is it for the Habs for the day.

Hertl is out long-term as well, probably not back until the playoffs. That's probably how they're making it work this year.

Hertl to Vegas. Didn't see that one coming.

Strauss Mann has been sent down. That means either Kaskisuo is back or there's a goalie coming Montreal's way (perhaps as a throw-in in the Allen trade since NJ has a lot of goalies)?

Worth noting, it's 40 games next year, not this season and next. (Prior reporting said otherwise but it was recently revised.)

Our quick write-up on the swap: https://www.habsworld.net/2024/03/habs-trade-jake-allen-to-new-jersey/

Allen to NJ could be happening:

A neat calculator if you're curious of the value of salary retention at this time of year: https://puckpedia.com/CapRelief

I thought the game was quite even for two periods before Carolina woke up in the third and really put the hammer down. Agree on the first line though, they've been out of sorts for a few games now. It was bound to happen after the hot stretch they had.

That's not always the case; not every team goes to the point of scratching players for trade-related reasons. It just means nothing is imminent or done. (That said, I'm not expecting much from Montreal tomorrow.) Also, if anyone is wondering, Allen is the healthy scratch in the goalie rotation tonight. Carolina, meanwhile, is scratching Michael Bunting who appears to be going to Pittsburgh in a Jake Guentzel trade.

They get the guy at the more premium position and might have been looking at his usage in Laval (strict 4C) and figuring that a bigger role could get him going.

Yes, as was noted in the article. Obviously, it would be different now. I was still hoping as of a few weeks ago to get the full write-ups done like normal but realized it wasn't going to happen. So rather than sit on them any longer, I figured I'd get them up before the deadline. I'm going to have to figure out a different way to do these moving forward. I had hopes that Kidney would be able to contribute fairly quickly this season which factored into that rating. I've been higher on Struble than other sites in the past but since he was coming off a tough senior year, I didn't see cause to move him up but didn't want to drop him either which is how he wound up staying where he was.