A Wind Farm in Coal Country

(upbeat music) - Let's get David Bord, Dave Panio, the DFO insider from the fourth period. And he has been everywhere and busy and is having no sleep, but I cannot believe. I don't think it's 301, but maybe later on Friday evening, like are you already starting to have immigrant fantasies about what sleep is gonna be like on Friday night, Dave? Like, oh, this is gonna be so nice. The street is paved with gold and sleepy land on Friday. It's, I'm getting extra pillows. I'm doing mega comfortors. The heated blanket, if I need it, just to be prepped for it, just everything. And then I don't wanna look at my coffee machine, my espresso machine for like a week. - Yeah, I get it. The phone and the coffee machine gets to work out. Well, so I'm gonna sort of jump all over the place here. Well, just focus on the latest. So Tyler Meyers goes from a Vancouver connects to the Dallas Arts. First of all, as an aside, anybody who understands the acrimony between the two families, Vancouver and Dallas probably raises at eyebrow and says, okay, well, we have seen some minor deals between the two before, but put it this way. These two teams are not going either way to help one another, but here it is. - No, right. - Tyler Meyers had trade protection. He was willing to lift. And so we end up here. Does Dallas surprise you at all for this one? - No, they were kind of in it from the start. And the start being when these talks reemerged about 10 days ago. I think it was last, not this past weekend, the weekend before, where Detroit entered the mix with their second round pick. And then, you know, Dallas was kind of poking around. There were a few other teams that I think were kind of poking on that front as well. But his preference was always to be at West. He wants to be as close to Vancouver as he can with where his family is. His son has certain requirements, health wise that are being addressed in Vancouver. So he wanted to make sure that he was close to that and be that wherever he ended up, there was the possibility of helping out in that regard. So in this case, the Detroit started to look around yesterday or Monday evening, because they were hoping to get an answer by the end of the weekend. That didn't happen. So they started to fish for additional options. Dallas was doing the same. Dallas, I was told, keep an eye on Rasmus, Ristalainen. He was definitely a target for the Dallas stars. I'm not sure where that's at officially. I assume now that they got Myers that that's no longer going to be the case. But I don't know that definitively just yet, but they were very much in that. And now to bring in Myers at 1.5 million with the conucks eating half, they've used up their second retention slot. They're saving the third one for a Vander Cain by all accounts. And then Cain and Mikaev, who they are paying right now, those come off the books in July. So they'll have two full slots available with Myers next season. But they did them a solid, and they got a pretty solid return out of it as well. Even though they're eating half of that deal, 1.5 million, they still get their second round pick next season and they get a fourth round pick in a few years after that. So decent amount of business there and it allows them to focus on others like Cain and Garland and so on in Vancouver. - You know, Vancouver's interesting too, because I've been under the impression. Like when Brother Fredalvine sent a note out saying, "Listing on our players," and then a couple of weeks later, you know, Queen Hughes goes to the Minnesota wild and the season proceeds as it has and they find themselves last in the NHL and lottery pick, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I still believe that they didn't think that they were going to take a massive step backwards and maybe use the lowercase R with rebuild. Now do you think that Vancouver, 'cause it's starting to feel this way, they're using capital R rebuild. Not lowercase R, capital R. The whole words and caps. They're going full for it. Yeah, they're going full steam ahead with the rebuild. Now, because of the return they got for Quinn, it may be a little bit of an escalated rebuild because those pieces are gonna be, you know, ready to go in terms of hitting their peak well in advance of, you know, whatever draft picks and pure prospects they land. But it's full across the board. Like if they can make additional moves that Connor Garland is very much available, that mindset has shifted in the last bit. This week the Islanders in Boston were two teams that were trying to get into that mix. I don't think it's gonna end up in that direction, but those are two teams that were poking around and had serious conversations with Vancouver about it. But there are others that are in the mix and it seems like Vancouver might be swaying in a different direction there versus Boston and the Islanders, but, you know, still two days to go. We'll see if anybody circles back. But he's very much there. Drill Connor is getting a ton of interest. Lugers available, I mentioned Kane as well. The brusque also where he officially, or unofficially mentioned that he wants out to the media on Monday. So there are a lot of moving parts there, but they are willing to do whatever it takes and move as many guys as it takes to follow in this trend. And if there are more deals that come their way, they're gonna seriously look at it and if it makes sense to pull the trigger, I think they're gonna be still pretty active. And like I said, those guys, they're fully engaged in those conversations with other teams about them. - So this is a text that I got this morning from someone who works for an NHL team. Not a manager. Okay, not a manager. Just putting that out there. 'Cause it's kind of, it's a joke text and I kind of laughed this morning when I got it when I woke up, but I'll throw it to you and see if I can see what reaction you have. If you could trade Darnell Nurse for Gustav Forzling and Jack Roslivic for Robert Thomas, could you still win with the Oilers and that minding, I say. - No. - That was the text that I got this morning from someone from an NHL team. Not from any of the teams with those players name. But what's Edminton doing here? It seems as if every night they got a score and Nicol the Winni Game. Last night, again, the same thing. What happens here? Like do they just let Samanski run with the third line and then look at the goal team again or like I've been up the mind and they've made their goalie move and it's right or die. But as we keep seeing the goals against pile up, I wonder about that. You ever thought underneath that? - Yeah, I mean, I was of the same belief as you that they got Jari and that's who they're gonna roll with for at least the rest of this season. Unless something completely falls into their lap with St. Louis and Bennington, I think that's a bit of a stretch 'cause they'll have to effectively move Jari out in order to make money work and then there's gonna be other pieces involved 'cause that won't make the whole cap hit work. I guess you can convince St. Louis to retain on that contract but what are you compensating them for in order to do it? And there are too many pieces involved. So they add Murphy on the back end, which I liked. And they're looking for another forward. Now it seemed like it was only gonna be a 3C. If they were gonna go after a Nikwav or Scott Lodn at a Toronto or somebody like that, I'm sure up to bottom six and keep new on the left. But it wouldn't surprise me if they also bring in an affordable guy to play the wing. And that circle's back to Toronto with Bobby McMahon at 1.35 million, was it 3 million, Lodn's at one and a half, they have two retention slots left. In Toronto, actually they may have all three. Needless to say, if they wanna get creative and financially creative, there might be a couple of moves, or a couple of players they can make in one move with Toronto in order to pull that off. But again, what's the opportunity cost there? And are they willing to pay it? I think they're focused on that now. I think they're focused on bringing in at least a forward. They're still actively trying to trade Andrew Mangia Pony. They wanna free up an additional 1.5 million at least by moving him out. And they're engaged in that. So still a lot of balls up in the air for the Edmonton owners and Stan Bowman, but they're trying. They're trying to address that position right now. And again, barring something just completely falling into their lap that's probably the direction they go in between now and Friday's deadline. (upbeat music) - Let me throw a name out at you. And this is with the Florida Panthers. Really the Panthers have been out of it for a while here. But like the Panthers aren't making the playoffs. Okay, it's gonna be a small little step back and then we're gonna reload and come right back at it. I don't think anyone thinks for one second that the Panthers not making the playoffs means like, well, that's it for the franchise. No one would be surprised they'd come back when the whole thing next year, when they get healthy and change their lineup a little bit. So we wonder about AJ Greer. We wonder about Sergei Burbrowski. And with Edmonton specifically, when whenever you talk about the oilers, they need like this piece and that piece and someone at this spot and all that. And I wonder, can you solve all of your issues up front to some extent if you go to Florida about Evan Rodriguez? - Underguised, yeah. - One more year. - $3 million cap it. Yeah. Good piece. - You're a tile. - Really versatile player. - Not as, well, I put this, not as disliked as AJ Greer might be, with that organization. - What are you talking about? - So might be a better fit, more welcomed type of addition, but at 3 million and where they're at, again, they'll have to finagle the cap. Anything basically over one and a half million, they're gonna have to find a home for Munchepani. And again, that's a priority for them. And still checking on it this morning, there's still an expectation that's going to happen between now and the deadline. I think the waivers thing might confuse a few people. Those primarily because they had the Murphy deal, they knew Yan Mark was going on LTIR, they needed to make the money work at the time. So that's why that happened. But they still are aiming to trade him. And that's the goal and that's the expectation that it's gonna happen. That would allow them a lot more flexibility to potentially do an Evan Rodriguez type of thing. But they were also really like him in Florida, Jeff. Like they talked about this at the start of the season before they had additional injuries when camp got underway that debating what was happening with Kachak in terms of timeline. There were teams that were curious about Rodriguez and he was out there, at least from other teams spoken around and Bill Zito kind of helped firm on it. So it might take convincing, but in terms of type of player, I think without a doubt that'd be the type of player they'd love to add to the roster in Edmonton. I just don't know, it might be a little tricky, A, financially, but B also, you know, the cats still like the guy. - What did you make of all the Robert Thomas situation from yesterday? Now the Robert Thomas situation continues. I don't think that the issue has gone anywhere, but at least perhaps on pause right now is the Buffalo Sabers end of all of it. We can look at Utah, we can look at Seattle, we can look at perhaps Montreal as well. You could make the argument for Boston, although I don't think they'll have the same type of package that they'd be willing to part with to bring in Robert Thomas, but we'll see. What did you make of Robert Thomas day yesterday? And what do you make of the rest of Robert Thomas week here? - Yeah, I think it'll still keep going. Little pause in discussions, negotiation tactic, see who comes crawling back kind of thing. And look, it's a steep price and I get it. And I believe the player from Utah that St. Louis is looking at is DINYA, who was fourth overall last year in the draft. And I think there's a willingness to explore that, but I don't know how much more Utah would be willing to add to that mix, 'cause I've heard there's interest in Aguinla, I heard there was some interest in Simmashov. And I don't expect either of those two guys to be going anywhere quite frankly. But yeah, it sounds like there's at least a willingness to consider DINYA as part of a package, but what else needs to be added to the mix? And that's what Utah has kind of been going back and forth on with the blues. And then of course, yeah, all the buffalo stuff going on there, there was chatter of Owen Power, there was talk as some of their Helanius and a couple other, their top kids. I think there's a pathway to reconvene, but I don't know this definitively, but I'm curious if things got a little too big, and that's why things temporarily have been put on pause or temporarily derailed, because they're also looking at Peraco and/or Falk. There's interest in both of those guys from Buffalo's side. And maybe things got a little bit too big, and you gotta just, hey, hit pause, let's hit a reset here and let's try to get back to the basics. Maybe they focus on D, as opposed to Thomas, or as opposed to a combo. But Buffalo's got a lot of irons in the fire right now. It doesn't look like they're signing Alex Tuck. It doesn't seem like that's going to happen between now the dead, barring a huge change from their side, the Saber side. It looks like he's gonna go past the deadline without an extension, but they have no intention of trading him either. Again, anything as possible, somebody comes and blows their socks off, different ballgame. But the intent right now is to hold on to Tuck, even without an extension in place beyond the deadline, they'll worry about that in the summer. So he effectively comes off the board, and they focus on other areas. There was some talk of looking at depth. I mentioned Lawton and Waw. I think Buffalo's looking at that caliber player for their bottom six, but obviously when you get an opportunity to bring in a guy like Thomas, or even somebody on the back end, to improve things that might take priority. But I think they'll circle back on that if they haven't already. But also take into account the discussions around D and what they'd like to do on that back end to try to improve it. Yarmos not mess it around. - You know, one of the, oh really quick, 'cause you were all over this to the beginning of the season, Keith or Sherwood and the contract extension with the San Jose Sharks 575 times five, according to C.J. Have you thought on that one? You've been all over Sherwood all year. - Yeah, I mentioned on at least morning take with our boy, Alberga this morning that it, yeah, they were finalizing a five year deal. It was getting down to that. And you know, it looked like it, there was, I think when they first had those discussions after the trade from Vancouver, 'cause they weren't allowed to talk prior, that everyone was going, "Oh, I didn't think you wanted that much." And his side went, "I don't think you were willing to go that low." But then obviously you find the gap and you find that he's meshed well on and off the ice so far with this grip, little bit of on ice, but Alfight's he's meshed well with that group. - Yeah, I mean, he was great last night. - He was really good. - Great last night with the Canadian, excuse me against the Canadians. - Yeah. - And that kind of, it seems that maybe that put the stamp of approval on things, but they really liked him. There's a reason why they went after him. They locked it in here on that five year deal and everybody's kind of happy and sound as they can focus on other areas 'cause they're looking at, this is another team looking at defense and they're looking at short, excuse me, younger guys and veterans, but controllable. Either under contract or RFA status on the young guys or guys with extended term from a veteran presence to add to that blue line. And if they can't get it now, they'll do it in the summer, but that's a priority for Mike Rear and the Sharks. - The Fred Redwings, as I mentioned in the Berkey before he came on, no go on Quinn, Razz Anderson, Tyler Myers, we know they're looking for a defenseman. Like that's not exactly a, they'd probably like a top six forward two. - Right shot. - But yeah, right, like, but like, 0 for three. Like it happens. Like on the one hand, you can just see like, Steve Iseman has his prices and listen to price for going to use was astronomical and Bill Guerrero is willing to pay it where Steve Iseman wasn't so Guerrero gets the player. But you know that the Fred Redwings, and we all remember what happened last year with Dylan Larkin and Steve Iseman. Larkin essentially saying, "Where were the reserves?" Like, you know, how come he didn't send the posse? And I've been saying, "Well, essentially, you didn't deserve it." And that's why I didn't do it. But this year, like the Redwings deserve it. Like we expect to try to do something based on what they've done this year to put themselves in a position to finally get some playoff games in the, I don't wanna call it new rank, little Caesar's arena. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, look, first of all, you know, these teams try and try and try and they strike out, you know, three, four, five, six, ten times before they get their guy, just seem to be a little more publicized with Detroit, which I'm sure Steve is thrilled about. But you know, another guy, if they're gonna pivot, they've expressed interest in Rasmus, Ristalainen. And with one year left on his contract, 5.1 million, maybe that's the approach they go, maybe they circle in that direction. I think him more so than a guy like Volk, presumably, but I know for sure that they've checked in on Ristalainen a few times and it wouldn't shock me if they go back in this direction. It was like I mentioned earlier, it was about Monday when they didn't have an answer about Tyler Meyers that they said, all right, we, this has gone on for quite a bit. We're still in this, but if we find another option, we're going in that direction and Meyers actually beat them. So they've been compiling additional options, they're engaged in those right now, but it's not only the D-Core, you know, Jeff, I think it's up front too. Like they're looking up front. They're depending who you talk to, they're real about Thomas, they're sort of, they're kind of in it, again, depending who you talk to. I don't know if they go hunting in that big of a pond, but they are looking at other guys to bring in and it sounds like Santa is a priority, but I don't think it's the B-all-end all. If they bring in a winger that fits the top six, they can do that, especially on that right side. I think they can do that, but it sounds like Santa might be a priority, but again, we'll see what they end up doing. I think they're going to do something. I think they're going to do probably address both areas to what degree of player it's hard to gauge. - Okay, quickly, a couple of names I'll throw out at you. Seamon Nemech, like if Queen Hughes was going to the New Jersey Devils, Seamon Nemech would have been part of the package we would assume that would be going back instead of with Zee Boyen with the Minnesota well. Seamon Nemech's availability here, Dave. - Yeah, that picked up over the last few weeks after Olympics and for decent reason, you know, hell of a player, but I mean, his stock overall has dropped, dripped, dropped, a little bit over the last season or two, but still valued as a very high asset. And New Jersey's priority is finding somebody to put the puck in the net. They've got guys on paper that seem to be able to do it. They just, it hasn't translated in real life and on the ice. So, priority for them is to bring in an offensive weapon for this club, but somebody controllable with term, especially if you're dealing with a guy like Nemech, Dawson Mercer's name is kind of popped in and out of discussions this season. I'm not sure where that stands right now, but I'm sure they're going to listen because they want to address, again, they want to bring in somebody to play with Jack, they can put the puck in the net, presumably on that right side, you got Brat him and someone, that's that someone is what they're trying to fill ideally and and Nemitch is a player that they're listing on. I don't know how far along those conversations have gotten to this point. I'm curious about Jordan Cairo in St. Louis because there are teams that are still poking on him and he would fit the bill for the caliber of player that the devils want. Can they put something together that makes sense? I guess we got to wait. Okay, last team here and this is that perhaps is a tough decision for Don with Dell, but his team has put together two wins in a row here. One against the Rangers where they went up for a cob and then they'd hang on and win it in overtime and then last night they beat the national predators and that is the Columbus Blue Jackets who are sort of you know picking at the edges of a playoff spot here. The out of town scoreboard didn't help them. The Bruins beat the penguins yesterday to well I mean Columbus kept pace but I mean that's still like Columbus has 22 games left and 13 of them are against playoff teams and they have decisions to make whether it's Mason, Marshman, Boone, Jenner, Charlie Coil, Eric, Good Branson. Like we're used to the Blue Jackets being out of it by now and wondering where all these players are going to end up but this year is tighter and they've made the coach move with Rick bonus and the seven game win streak before the Olympic break and now they've strung two back-to-back together. They got one more game before the deadline on Friday which is against the Florida Panthers. Do you have an idea of which way the Blue Jackets are leaning here? I think the playoff percentage is like is it around like 40 between like 48 to 52 percent? It's not horrible. It's not horrible but not ideal. Yeah. I mean you know they feel they like their team they feel they're a playoff team and especially after bringing bones in and making the change you know behind the bench and getting everybody to click they feel that there's enough there to be a playoff team whether there's enough runway I don't know. They did tell their guys after you know having conversations back and forth that let's table these discussions, these extension discussions until after the season. Presumably you're still going to stick around so we'll have those talks afterwards so let's focus on on making the playoffs and and I get that that makes sense very similar to what's happened in Seattle where although they're in a playoff spot they told their free agents unless we're blown away you're staying we have no intention of actually moving you. Yeah. Same it sounds like it's a similar situation in in Columbus unless there's an offer that they just comes out of left field and they didn't expect and they have to consider I think they want to roll with this group and try to push for that push for that playoff spot because they feel they can maintain this level of play maybe not you know 800 hockey but at least maintain a very sound efficient level of performance that is worthy of you know being a playoff team so I think that's where they're kind of sitting you know the market would love to get back in the postseason certainly that fan base it's fun let that can and go nuts come playoff time but I think they they they feel that they have enough horses there to make it happen I don't know if they're gonna add anything in that regard unless it's a hockey type acquisition that makes sense in terms of controllability in term yeah but in terms of their pending UFA is unless they're blown away I think they want to hold on to them because they really like their chances should point out to those back-to-back wins for Columbus this week both done without Zacharynski who was sick for both of those so maybe they just stick with it and they say you know what we'll try to sign what we can and I will add just just quickly as well because they did scratch Kent Johnson yeah couple games they made it clear I reached out about they made it clear they they have no intention to trade them think who for what they just want to what think what yeah maybe they're saying they have no attention to trading them we'll see but this is more message sending trying to get him on track again somebody blows him out of the water that is that is that was the message being brought that one's still baffles he is so skilled that guy is so talented that one is the one that really is that that really baffles me but nonetheless hope that he can turn things around all right great stuff as always appreciate the contributions and early this week as well we've got trade deadline on our Friday where you will be front-end center on our trade deadline coverage thanks as always they'll be good rest out see you in a couple days because you can call it right I went to the dark man you don't give me little mess in I'm like nothing that's fine I'm not against those methods but you kiss me myself and I'll just go be fixing my mind You want to break it? I turned off the music, you didn't break it, you didn't break it. I turned off the music, you didn't break it. They sing up and up and up and up and up and up. Just one time, I turned off the music and up.