Category Archives: HTR Feature Article

Top 30 RFA's and UFA's

With just 5 days until Free Agency day I decided to put a list of the top 30 RFA’s AND UFA’s plus which teams are interested in them and their market value.

Penguins Free Agency Dilema

This Coming Free Agency for the Penguins will decide the future of the franchise. Are they going to be a success for a few seasons or are they going to go full steam ahead with becoming a powerhouse in the NHL for the next several years. Here are the top ten prospects that the Penguins need to consider and not allow other teams in the east or west acquire.

Hello hockey fans! An all new season of my articles is up. I have been quite busy the past months with education (MBA), but hockey season is back on for me now. So not a whole lot to talk about other than the draft, but it’s not the draftee that makes the weekend intriguing, but rather the potential headliners. Such as? Find out…

Sens Seek Facelift

After reaching the cup final in 2007, instead of taking the next step forward, the Ottawa Senators have taken several steps back.

Yes the team was crippled with injuries at the absolute wrong time of the year with both Daniel Alfredsson and Mike Fisher falling to injury in the last week of the season. However, the team was in deep trouble well before that and everything blew up in their face in the playoffs getting swept with ease by the Penguins.

Here we are at last. The Stanley Cup Finals. Analysts, fans and experts are going gaga over what they hope will be one of the best Finals ever.

Who will win and what factors will decide the Champion?

Both teams seem to boast enormous offensive talent, a resurgent goaltender, fantastic defensive play by their entire team, and an excellent PP and PK. The question to ask is what differentiates them from each other? A cursory glance concludes that the Penguins have the youth and size, whereas the Wings have the experience and poise. Which will prove to be more valuable?

The last 9 Stanley Cups have been won by the team with home ice, which Detroit holds. The Penguins haven’t lost at home in regulation since February 13th and Marc-Andre Fleury personally hasn’t lost in Pittsburgh since Thanksgiving 2007. The Penguins top the Red Wings on goals scored, goals against, goal differential, PP and are tied with them for PK. The Red Wings have players that have won a combined 23 Cups to the Penguins’ 4.


Philadelphia Flyers: Offseason Plan

Now that the Flyers are officially done for the year, I’d like to give a realistic examination of their potential off-season activities.

Penny Pinching Sabres Need to Save Some Players For A Change

If you are a Buffalo Sabres fan, you should feel happy that the team is not owned by someone who will be going bankrupt any time soon. What you should not be happy about is the way ownership is going about business to ensure no significant losses.

Tom Golisano, the Sabres owner, has certainly done all he needs to do to save a few dollars. In the meantime, his methods have begun to alienate the loyal fanbase of the team.

Leaf rumors: Quenneville, Hartsburg possible coaches; Campbell, Nonis as execs?

Leafs targeting D Jay Bouwmeester? Gretzky another option as GM

Although the Maple Leafs are enjoying their prolonged summer vacation, they are still managing to make headlines around the NHL.

But then again, this stands to reason, given that the buds currently have no General Manager, Coach, or team Captain.

As such, some new rumors have arisen in the aftermath of Paul Maurice being sacked.

Ever have a little computer glitch??? HTR had a database meltdown this morning that was not able to sort of be resolved until just now. What does this mean for HTR … we are now back at April for most of the stories … but now ready to move ahead. All systems are a go and I will talk to my server host to see if we can arrange it so that this problem does not happen again.

Darn this was stressful for me. The entire collection of over 10,000 stories went down. It took a lot of time and a ton of stress to resolve this. Wow … that sucked.

The Comments are still not resolved. Hopefully this will be fixed soon too.

Penguins take a 3-0 stranglehold

The Pittsburgh Penguins are continuing to play amazing hockey following an excellent regular season. In Ottawa, the Pens scored 3 third period goals to take the game 4-1 and increase their lead to 3-0 in the series. They are the only team in this year’s playoffs to win the first 3 games, with the Stars having a chance to match them today. The Penguins are one win away from their first playoff series victory in seven years. The Ottawa Senators will try to duplicate the feats accomplished by the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs and 1975 New York Islanders, who are the only NHL teams to have erased 3-0 series deficits. An interesting note is there was a 33 year gap between those comebacks, and 2008 also marks 33 years since the last one.

Will history repeat itself?

The Restricted Free Agent Market could be hot…

Since Kevin Lowe got the ball rolling last summer with his play on Dustin Penner, it looks like the restricted free agent market this year could be even hotter. There are many teams desperate to grab a superstar, or potential up and coming superstar, and the offer sheet has become a great way to achieve this. This is even more true for teams who have difficulty attracting unrestricted free agents.

With 7 divisional games left in their regular season, with the most wins in the Eastern Conference (43), and with one point behind the Montreal Canadiens, with a vital game-in-hand, the Pittsburgh Penguins have the ability to control their own fate in the Eastern Conference (and Atlantic Division) standings.
By going 6-0-1, the Penguins will guarantee first place, regardless of what Montreal or NJ does. It would also give them 106 points, one more than last year’s amazing season.

With 7 goals scored in 3 of their last 4 home games, including 7 against the Devils (who previously had allowed only 5 in a game this season) with five in the third period, all without Sidney Crosby (who is due to return shortly), the Penguins are now looking like the favorites to win the East and that all-important home-ice throughout the Eastern playoffs.

Let’s break down the games left, and how the team has played of late.
Also, a few comparisons with the Habs to keep Habs fans’ interest.

Here’s a list of Players who are set to become Free Agents on July 1st. I will first showcase the UFA’s to be then the RFA’s to be afterwards. So here are this year’s potential UFA’s(with their current Salary not Cap Hit in brackets and the one’s in bold and italics are the ones I feel will be the most sought-after):

With the addition of Marian Hossa to the Pittsburgh Penguins lineup, there has been well spread talk around the league that Pittsburgh will turn into another Tampa Bay, a team who had to eventually ship Brad Richards out of town, because they could no longer afford three prominent players and their salaries. This has in turn started the talk around the league that Marian Hossa will not sign with the Penguins and will likely seek a different destination after July, with plenty of fans speculating already on Hossa’s future zip code come next season. Although these are certainly worthy concerns, and there is truth among them, the real truth and specifics are hidden in the details of it all.

The Aftermath

Hello hockey fans! Finally the day of intensity is over with and it feels like things are back to normal again. It was a good day for the NHL, I thought. Intriguing trades, and almost tied for number of total trades as well. It was also a good day for HockeyTradeRumors.com. Anyway, the aftermath is here…..analysis on every single trade!

HTR Trade Deadline

Here it is folks. The trade deadline is 14 hours away (has come and gone) . Please read this to see how HTR will handle the trade news throughout today and tomorrow.

*** Update – Wow what a day here at HTR See below to view many of the trades that happened on this deadline day ****

With four seasons of just atrocious hockey, many hockey fans may have forgotten what a powerhouse team the Pittsburgh Penguins were during the ’90s. From 1988-2001, only three players won the Art Ross Trophy. Mario Lemieux 6 times (3 times back-to-back), Jaromir Jagr 5 times (including 4 straight) and Wayne Gretzky 3 times (once back-to-back). With the exceptions of Mario’s first win (’88) and Wayne’s last win (’94), none of those teams ever failed to reach the playoffs when their team sported the NHL’s leading scorer. Iginla broke that trend with Calgary the following year in ’02, but Foppa got back on track with the Aves after, followed by St. Louis and his Cup-winning Lightning, with Joe Thornton and Sidney Crosby having followed suit.
Few sane people would deny that having the League’s top scoring player on your team is a recipe for success.

So where does that leave the Penguins, who, with Malkin, have the potential to have back-to-back different Art Ross Trophy winners, and 13 of the past 19 said Trophies?

Also inside, Sergei Gonchar sets an active record with his eighth consecutive 50+ point season with a goal in last night’s victory over the Habs. [What an exciting game by the way!] And, a Penguins and Art Ross Trophy history lesson.

Rumors from the New York Post

Larry Brooks of the New York Post is reporting that the New York Rangers are in hot pursuit of Tampa Bay Defenseman Dan Boyle.

The Canadian Club Perspective

The Canadian Club Perspective:
Insight to the Trade Deadline

With trade rumors swirling around the media and the deadline less than two weeks away, the six Canadian clubs seem to be right in the middle of all of it once again. With the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadians in a battle for first place in the East, and the Calgary Flames right in the mix to finish at the top of their division, it looks to be a strong contending post-season for the three clubs.

Senators Need to Go Big At the Deadline

Over the last several seasons the Ottawa Senators have been very active at the trade deadline. Over the years, players such as Greg De Vries, Bryan Smolinski, Tyler Arnason, Mike Comrie, Oleg Saprykhin among others were acquired as the team pushed towards a championship.