Fifth Avenue Forum

Figure we can kind of focus on July 1 (and beyond?) stuff here...

Milan Lucic at 6 or 7 x $6 or $7M to Edmonton and Frans Nielsen for $4 or $5 mil per to Detroit are looking like early favorites...

Hitting the road around 11, so thanks for starting this thread. Will be fun to catch up later in the afternoon.

EDM is gonna hate that contract on year 3-4.

32 year old Frans Nielsen is a sorry replacement for Detroit's unfulfilled desire for Stamkos. I hope franchise becomes a bottom feeder for an eternity and Hockeytown becomes as vacant and rundown as the rest of that shithole city. Burn in hell Red Wings.

BREAKING: SKA have signed a contract with Sergei Plotnikov.

The rumored "crazy money" from Buffalo for Okposo will be a good one, too.

Strong words early.

JackNicholsonNod.gif

One name on the market that has been suspiciously silent...David Backes. Since Montreal's MO seems to be a bigger, tougher and lower this offseason...I can't help but wonder if the team that uses Tomas Plekanec and David Desharnais down the middle often, might not poke around at the meaty Backes...

Detroit Red Wings and Darren Helm agree to terms on a 5 year/ $3.85M AAV.

One name on the market that has been suspiciously silent...David Backes. Since Montreal's MO seems to be a bigger, tougher and lower this offseason...I can't help but wonder if the team that uses Tomas Plekanec and David Desharnais down the middle often, might not poke around at the meaty Backes...

Am I crazy to prefer Backes over Lucic?

Detroit Red Wings and Darren Helm agree to terms on a 5 year/ $3.85M AAV.

Lol

Career high of 33 points.

I honestly haven't seen a ton of him, so I have no idea if that was a deal or not. McKenzie seems to think he took a hometown discount to remain with Detroit.

I'm surprised at that value for Helm. I like him, he's extremely fast, but he's only a tier better than Bryan Rust really. He doesn't offer a ton of skill really. That's an interesting contract...

Re: Backes and Lucic. Yes, in the market you are. Lucic has a higher scoring pedigree in terms of talent than Backes. Especially to a softer team like Edmonton. Lucic fills a positional need (if only they had a guy like Taylor Hall on the left...oink.) but also when you have a line of McDavid-Eberle or whatever, having Milan Lucic to go in there and be like, "look at my face and humpback, does it look like I care what you can do to me?" that will help those kids out a little bit.

I would never pay that kind of price for either of these players...but if I drafted them, I would have been happy, if that makes sense...but on the market, these guys eat up swoon and output heartache, long term, usually...

That's Dreger who said he took a discount (unless you're watching a stream).

I just think that's a gross overpayment for Darren Helm, who seems to have played his best hockey sometime around 7 years ago.

Pierre LeBrun on Twitter: "Detroit Red Wings showing interest in Alex Radulov."

lol

My bad, yeah, it was Dreger.

Been a while since CuJo news broke on this day...but Curtis Joseph to Carolina...goaltending consultant for Cam Ward and Eddie Lack, who have the fewest combined letters of any goalie tandem in the league...until Nedeljkovic is ready to take over...

Gotcha, @mikey. I can see that point of view on Lucic.

Aaron Ekblad extension is official today (now that it can be) - 8 years, $7.5 mil per. Now, that deal doesn't go into effect until the 2017-18 campaign. Ekblad is a stud, but Florida certainly paid. I could legitimately see this guy being in the Norris conversation for a while. He was more of a man at 16 than I will ever be...I saw him play in juniors, his size and strength vs that level of competition is like if I played beer league against Shea Weber...

The one thing that I'm surprised at is how much his offense picked up in a short time. I wasn't really blown away by the technical skill package he had...I thought it would take a while to come along...nope. He just decided to flip it on when he felt like it. Stud d-man.

"Oilers to offer Lucic 7 years, 42 million"

That's not as bad as the other 400 rumors (7/49).

Well, Detroit - you snooze, you lose: Radulov to Montreal.

Montreal wanted to add character to their team, and then sign Radulov. You can't make this **** up.

The much anticipated Weber/Radulov re-uniting: http://www.cbssports.com/nhl/eye-on-hoc ... istraction

I am so loving this right now.

Weber doesn't say nothin' to nobody...and even if he piped up about how much he didn't like Radulov...

and probably Sergei Kostitsyn...as Weber was on the business end of this...