On Tuesday, Team Canada announced that Julien BriseBois was added to the management team for the 4 Nations Face-off that is taking place next February. He’ll be serving in the capacity of assistant general manager, helping general manager Don Sweeny and associate general manager Jim Nill make the final decisions on which players will represent their country.
Pittsburgh GM Kyle Dubas was also added as the director of player personnel. Mr. BriseBois and Dubas will also be serving in the same capacities for the 2026 Olympic team. For the Lightning GM this represents his first foray into the international game as an executive.
No word yet on if he’s convinced Sweeny to trade Canada’s strategic maple syrup reserves to the U.S. for the international rights to Nick Perbix and Isaac Howard.
Other Hockey News
The Hockey Guy took a swing at the Bolts Top 6 and Top 4 in one of his videos.
TSN chitchatted (video) with Anthony Cirelli about the Steven Stamkos saga and Tony Two Goals gave some advice on how to stop Stammer (get in the lanes on the power play).
Stamkos makes into The Athletic’s list of active players that are on pace to make it into the hall of Fame. Stammer is a tier one player (doesn’t have to do anything else to make it) along with Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy and Victor Hedman. Brayden Point clocks in as a tier five player, which the writers define as “check back in a couple of years”. A former Bolt, Corey Perry, makes the “outside chance” tier.
Isaac Howard was at the team’s developmental camp earlier this month and the Michigan State forward is eager to join the “winning culture” in Tampa. Speaking with Corey Long, the Bolts former first-round draft pick will return to defend the team’s Big 10 title, but there is the possibility that he turns pro following the season.
There really isn’t much going on in the hockey world these days. Yes, there are some restricted free agents out there that still need contracts, but with the league and NHLPA agreeing not release arbitration dates it’s kind of hard to know exactly what is going on in the negotiations. We are only hearing about the deals after they are signed (congrats, Beck Malenstyn!)
Believe it or not, there are still some unrestricted free agents left without a team as the calendar steams toward August. The folks over at Daily Faceoff put together a list of the best remaining free agents on the board. There are a few interesting names on there, especially for a team that still might be looking for some help on say, maybe the second line? The longer these players go without signing a deal, the better the chances a GM might be able to sign one of them to a short-term deal.
Columbus did finally get around to hiring a head coach as they hired Dean Evason to stand behind the bench and hopefully lead the Blue Jackets to something other than a top-three draft pick. [Jackets Cannon] You may remember Evason as the head coach of the Minnesota Wild, a position he held for parts of five seasons. He put together a rather respectable regular season record of 147-77-27 from 2020-2023. That success didn’t translate to postseason success as the Wild never made it out of the first round in any of the four seasons he led them to the playoffs.
Is Axel F a great movie? No. Is it a good movie? Well, it’s better than Beverly Hills Cop III, so they have that going for them. It also has a hockey scene in it and William Douglas talks to one of the writers about it for NHL.com.
