Hockey Trade Rumors

The New York Rangers are showing big signs that the team does have chemistry. Richter is on fire, Fleury, Lindros, York are becoming a threat every night, Leetch is playing with comfort from Malakhov, Berard is starting to skate well, and just about every player is showing what they got. The best player on the Rangers, who is still not recognized by the league, is Mike York.

Team Payroll lists we’re released this past week and some staggering numbers can be seen on it.  After a look at some notable stories from several teams around the NHL, I want to pass on a nice Gretzky story that I just read.

After watching tonights FlyersHawks game, and I know this has been said a few times before, but the officials this year are brutal. They might as well have the coaches call the penalties from the bench. I’m not going to blame the whole game on officiating, but it was awful tonight. Apparently it is ok for Primeau to have to take on two guys at the same time. Maybe these guys didn’t see a third man in, but they were obviously both going after Primeau. And after this the Hawks still managed to come away with a powerplay. Only 6 minutes of penalties were handed out when at least 4 pairs of gloves were on the ice. After the Flyers killed the powerplay, the refs must have been threatened by Coach Barber, and called a weak make-up call against the Hawks’ Spacek, for a great hit on Williams, I believe. I was just wondering if the officiating is this terrible all the way around the league. It’s kinda tough to watch them all. I think that the NHL needs to take another close look at the current 4 man system.

The New Jersey Devils might soon reach an agreement with 37 year old defenseman, Scott Stevens. Stevens is currently under a contract, and is receiving 4.2$ million dollars. The new contract should largely increase his salary almost double, 7$ million dollars a year. Stevens states that he feels “optomistic” about the contract.

Is GM Lou Lamoriello spending too much for a 37 year old veteran? Not only that, he is just a stay at home defenseman as well. Will the Devils become a high salary team?

A Three way trade will be accomplished before November 13th, 2001. The involving teams are Ottawa, San Jose and Toronto….

This season, after most of the teams played 10 games, there will be 8 reviews on every team in the NHL, and how each one is performing. This is the first review out of 8 in total, every ten games.

There’s trouble and discention in the ranks of the Dallas Stars… Team USA has some new candidates to consider… Some rookies have impressed this season… and more diving into the stats stories of the week.

I recently wrote an article intitled ”Look for changes if the Habs don’t win” in which I mentionned that the administration will not tolerate another season without making it in the playoffs.

There was a report last week in a Canadian paper that suggested Mike Keenan and Glen Sather had introductory discussions about “Iron Mike” returning to coach the team he abondoned after the 1994 Stanley Cup Championship season.

There is a rumor that the San Jose Sharks are looking at dealing left winger ALEX KOROLYUK to the Ottawa senators in exchange for defenceman CHRIS PHILLIPS. This was according to a report out of an Otawa Daily News paper………….

Back at the summer mini-camp, Gretzky confessed that there were plenty of absent players who would still be in the running for the Olympic squad. A month into the season, the picture isn’t any clearer, in fact, choices may be even tougher now.

Edmonton could tie a team record on Tuesday with a win over the visiting Montreal Canadiens. Only two times before has an Oiler team had 9 wins in October, in ’81 and ’83. This year’s team could do the same by beating the Habs tomorrow night and it would cap off a pretty decent month for the Oil.