The Bruins are still in the hunt for Dylan Larkin, but the Red Wings center isn’t budging from his 10-team list, and Boston isn’t on it.
That hasn’t stopped the Bruins from pushing. They’re sitting atop the Atlantic and looking for another boost, with Friedman and Dreger saying they’d love to land Larkin.
Detroit is still shopping him, but any move needs Larkin’s approval, which leaves this one in a holding pattern for now. The situation is simple enough: Boston wants him, he doesn’t want Boston, and the longer this drags on, the more that could change.
In Tampa, Andrei Vasilevskiy’s camp is making it clear that the goalie is happy where he is. His agent says Vasilevskiy is “extremely happy” with the Lightning and wants to play 1,000 games for the club. Milstein said he keeps each client’s situation separate, even though Vasilevskiy and Nikita Kucherov share an agent.
Still, the backdrop in Tampa is impossible to ignore. The Lightning let Stamkos walk, and now Kucherov is headed for free agency. That kind of negotiation can shift the mood fast, and if it ever spilled over onto Vasilevskiy, he’d be the top goalie on the market and wouldn’t have any shortage of suitors.
In Edmonton, Mike Babcock is looking past Connor McDavid’s point totals and zeroing in on the details. He says he’s more impressed by McDavid’s backchecking, his timing on the forecheck and his defensive play than by the numbers on the scoresheet.
That doesn’t mean McDavid’s offense has taken a back seat. He’s still on pace for his best offensive year ever, and Babcock says he doesn’t want to handcuff him. The goal is to make him a more complete player, and Babcock believes that process is already showing results just a few weeks in.
In Other News...
McDavid Took A Heavy Hit And Oilers Tempers Boiled Over
Connor McDavid took a heavy hit at Rogers Place and, as often happens when the Oilers captain gets roughed up, the temperature in the building rose fast. Edmonton was already in a chippy game against Anaheim, with penalties piling up and bodies finishing every play, and Evan Bouchards power-play goal late in the first period had already helped steady things on the scoreboard.
The hit on McDavid set off the kind of reaction the Oilers have been trying to channel all season, with Vasily Podkolzin jumping into the scrum and the officials sorting through the aftermath. Edmontons frustration was obvious as the physical play kept building, and the sequence left the Oilers facing the kind of discipline questions and emotional fallout that can linger well beyond one shift. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers Debut New Look With One Awkward Trend Hanging Over It
The NHLs new Hometown Remix jerseys have already started making the rounds, giving all 32 teams a fresh look built around pieces of their own cities. Around the league, clubs such as Florida, Chicago, San Jose, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Columbus have already worn the design in recent games, and the early results have been rough enough to turn the rollout into a minor curiosity.
Edmonton is next up, set to unveil its version in an upcoming home game, and the timing comes with a little extra baggage attached. The first wave of Hometown Remix appearances has produced more frustration than fanfare, so the Oilers will be hoping the new threads land better in the building than they have for several of their peers. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers Fans Have Every Reason To Be Furious Over This Call
A strange sequence during the Oilers-Ducks game left plenty of people in Edmonton shaking their heads, and not just because of the fight itself. Vasily Podkolzin and Drew Helleson got tangled up in an altercation that quickly turned into one of those moments where the NHLs rulebook seems to matter less than the interpretation on the ice, especially when the explanation coming back from the officials was anything but clear.
For Oilers fans, the frustration goes beyond a single whistle. The league has long wrestled with inconsistent standards on fighting and supplemental discipline, and this was another example of how murky those calls can feel in real time. The Aggressor Rule has been floated as a cleaner way to handle situations like this, but for now Edmonton is left with the same old complaint: too often, nobody seems to know exactly what the punishment should be until after the damage is done. [Read more 🡒]