Quick Strikes: Steve Yzerman has been named to NHL’s competition committee

The Bolts

Not much is going on during the offseason in the Tampa Bay Lightning organization. Andrei Vasilevskiy recently signed a deal with Adidas and is now representing his country with Nikita Kucherov who did it before.

Do not forget that our SBNation NHL mock draft recap is being updated daily [Raw Charge]

The Crunch

Geo discusses how the Syracuse Crunch roster will look at the start of the 2019-20 season. [Raw Charge]

So right now with that assumption, the roster would sit at 11 forwards, five defense, and one goaltender. As I stated before, I don’t know what will happen with Ingram, we’ll have to see how that situation plays out. With other decisions the Lightning might make on current players like Cedric Paquette and Adam Erne, as well as Ryan Callahan and potentially J.T. Miller, the number of spots needed could go up, especially at forward. A few of the forwards I’ve listed above could also just as easily end up in the ECHL, necessitating a few more players for the Crunch roster.

The Game

The Washington Capitals released a statement on Evgeny Kuznetsov, who has been involved in a scandal after the video with him sitting in hotel next to a table with some white powder was published on Twitter. [NHL.com]

“In addition to doing our own due diligence, we met with Evgeny to discuss the video circulated on social media. While we are disappointed by his presence in the video, we accept his explanation and apology for putting himself in an unfortunate situation. Evgeny has been a terrific player and an active member of our community, and we expect him to learn from this experience and uphold both the standards the organization has for him as well as his own.”

And a statement from NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly:

There are still some players who must be signed to an Entry Level contract by today at 5:00 pm ET if their teams don’t want to lose their rights. No Lightning players are on that list.

Detroit Red Wings General manager Steve Yzerman and Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold have been added to the NHL’s competition committee. Yzerman is replacing former Edmonton Oilers General manager Peter Chiarelli in this position.

Speaking of the Oilers, some new changes have been made in their coaching staff.

Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas is going to be very busy this offseason. As it was reported, Nikita Zaitsev asked about the possibility of being traded.

Pierre Lebrun also tweeted that the Leafs are trying to trade Patrick Marleau to the Los Angeles Kings [Pension Plan Puppets]

The Kings, who were desperately bad last year, are in a fix. They have a much worse set of old, overpaid players on long-term deals than even Detroit. They don’t have young prospects to speak of, and they don’t have cap room to pay for any if they could get them. So naturally, they want the second oldest man in the NHL who is paid over $6 million.

The Top 2018-19 Freshman Seasons, Pt. 1 [Ice Garden]

Last year, Darryl Watts stole the show by winning the 2018 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award as a freshman. We didn’t see another freshman Patty Kaz winner in 2019, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some outstanding performances from freshmen players.

This is the first part of a two-part series where we will look at some of the top performances from 2018-19 freshmen in NCAA DI hockey.

Colorado Eagles owner Martin Lind released a statement regarding the Kelly Cup

It seems like the NHL doesn’t want to talk about their collaboration with Barstool [Deadspin]

Barstool is a business run by a perpetually keyed-up guy, who said people protesting the state-sanctioned murder of black people should be “publicly executed” for blocking traffic, thinks Harvey Weinstein was onto something by trading work for sex, makes racist jokes about my colleague, sexually harassed me numerous times, ginned up a harassment campaign against ESPN’s Sam Ponder, and told his own employee that she’d be too ugly to be on camera in five years. It’s a company that holds its female employees up as a shield while getting annoyed when they don’t find racism funny, while some old cretin rates how hot child molesters are. It’s a business that’s rotten to the core, staffed by people who are either on board with what the company and its founder say and do, or too cowardly to speak out against it (publicly, at least).

Celia Connaire, a New Jersey hockey fan, creates very interesting things