Category: Sports News

On July 27, the Anaheim Ducks traded AHL forward Sasha Pastujov to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for AHL forward Sean Farrell. The next day, Farrell was signed to a one-year, two-way contract worth an AAV of $850k. 

Farrell (24) was selected by the Habs with the 124th overall in the 2020 NHL Draft out of the Chicago Steel of the USHL. The versatile forward had been highly productive at every level he’d played at prior to professional hockey. 

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He returned to the USHL for the season following his draft and scored 101 points (29-72=101) in 52 games. He played the next two seasons (2021-2023) at Harvard University in the NCAA, where he totaled 81 points (30-51=81) in 58 games. He finished the 2022-23 season in the NHL and scored a goal in six games. 

Farrell spent the next three seasons with the Laval Rocket in the AHL, unable to translate his prior production, and scored 125 points (46-79=125) in 186 games, adding 12 points (3-9=12) in 18 playoff games. 

He has every skill necessary to play a role as at least a middle-six NHL forward except for size (5-foot-10, 174 pounds). He’s shifty and smart with plus puck skills and creativity to find teammates in dangerous locations in any situation. His lack of a “B game” and need for an offensive role have likely been the primary factors in his inability to break into the NHL. 

Farrell has ties within the Ducks organization, dating back to playing alongside forward Sam Colangelo (36th overall in 2020) at the U16 AAA level with the Boston Jr. Bruins in 2015-16. He played alongside Colangelo and defenseman Ian Moore (67th in ’20) with the Steel. He played with forward Judd Caulfield (145th in ’19) and defenseman Drew Helleson (47th in ’19) at the USNTDP U17 division. At Harvard, again, he played two seasons alongside Moore (67th in ’20).

Farrell has represented the United States at the U18 World Championships in 2019 (alongside Helleson), where he notched two assists in seven games, the 2022 Olympic Games (alongside Helleson), where he led the team in scoring with six points (3-3=6) in four games, and at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships (alongside forward Cutter Gauthier), totaling eight points (3-5=8) in 20 games. 

Farrell can play either on the wing or in the middle of the ice, and with the Ducks organizational depth chart projecting somewhat thin at center, it’s possible he could have a role as the San Diego Gulls top-line center in the AHL and have a shot for an early call-up, should the Ducks sustain an injury at the position. 

In the trade, the Ducks parted ways with Pastujov (23), who the Ducks had previously selected in the third round (66th in ’21) of the NHL Draft. He provided two consecutive productive seasons for the Gulls in 2024-25 and 2025-26, leading the team in points per game with 102 (38-64=102) in 114 games, and finishing his Gulls career with 125 points (48-77=125) in 160 games. 

Pastujov, like Farrell, needed an offensive role if he were to be awarded a shot at the NHL level and lacked a refined game away from the puck. His skating was always a significant drawback and the likely reason for a lack of development in terms of a forechecking or two-way game. 

Ultimately, it’s unlikely a prolonged NHL career is in the cards for either Farrell or Pastujov at this point in their careers. For the Ducks, Farrell offers them more of a stylistic fit as well as versatility in the lineup at whatever level he plays at. 

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On Wednesday, The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn published his annual article ranking every NHL team by contract efficiency, and, unsurprisingly, the Montreal Canadiens fared very well. A week ago, he released a ranking of the league’s 10 best contracts, and he had Habs defenseman Lane Hutson’s in the top spot, which no doubt went a long way towards Montreal being second in this latest ranking.

The only team that beats the Habs in contract efficiency, according to Luszczyszyn, is the Caroline Hurricanes, since he gave an A grade to seven of their 20 contracts. As for the Habs, they have six grade-A contracts, but five of them are A-plus. Montreal went from number 14 in those rankings last season to second this season, and chances are, it will keep climbing next offseason when some of its worst contracts, according to the model (Phillip Danault, Josh Anderson), come off the books.

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Unsurprisingly, those two contracts, which both get a C-minus grade, were not signed by GM Kent Hughes. The architect of this iteration of the Canadiens has done wonderful work on the team's financial structure. Getting both Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky to sign for less than captain Nick Suzuki was a stroke of genius, and so were the deals he signed with Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov. The Russian player’s eight-year, $9.2 million cap-hit deal is looking better by the day. Hours after Luszczyszyn released his rankings, it was announced that Macklin Celebrini had signed a five-year contract extension with the San Jose Sharks with a $18.8 M cap hit, which means that Demidov will be earning less than half of what the Sharks’ prodigy will make.

While Hughes’ fingerprints are all over those contracts, it’s important to remember that he wasn’t alone in making them happen. Much has been made of the fact that Anaheim Ducks’ GM Pat Verbeek hadn’t signed his RFAs in advance, leaving himself vulnerable to offer sheets, but no matter how much a GM wants to sign a player to a new deal, if the player doesn’t want to do that, it won’t happen.

In a recent episode of the 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman interviewed Matt and Ryan Keator, who are Leo Carlsson’s agents, and they revealed that Anaheim was very keen on signing a new deal before his ELC ended. Still, the agents convinced the player not to do that. In a nutshell, they didn’t want Carlsson to regret signing a deal before he had all the information about the market and could make an informed decision. For Hughes to be able to sign those deals, the Canadiens players had to be ready to do what Carlsson ultimately didn’t want to do: put pen to paper without knowing what the market would look like a year later down the line. They had to tell their agents they weren’t after the most money possible; they were after an opportunity to win in Montreal, and they were willing to give the Canadiens ample time to do that.

Not only did the Canadiens’ core players sign team-friendly deals, but they signed away years of UFA status. Celebrini, Connor Bedard and Carlsson all only signed five-year deals, meaning that after those five years, they’ll be free as a bird to cash in on the free agency market. If they won’t commit to their team before the expiry of their deal, they may very well be allowed to walk for free. In five years from now, if you are the San Jose Sharks or the Chicago Blackhawks and your team is looking good ahead of the playoffs, you can’t just trade away such important core pieces right before the playoffs. It certainly puts a lot of pressure on their team’s front office to win and win fast.

Meanwhile, in Montreal, most of the core players signed eight-year contracts; it started with Suzuki (under Bergevin), followed by Caufield, Slafkovsky, Noah Dobson, Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov. That wasn’t all Hughes’ doing either. Players talk to each other, and Demidov was very open with the media, telling us that he and Hutson had long discussed the importance of being in Montreal. Those players all left money on the table and very likely did it against their agents’ advice; that was clear when Hutson’s negotiations dragged on, and he stepped in himself to put an end to the deadlock.

Yes, Hughes has done great work putting this team together, but the players also did a great job building a culture in which the team and winning come first; that’s how the Canadiens landed in second place in Luszczyszyn’s rankings.

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It is time for another round of preseason over/under for the 2026-27 Pittsburgh Penguins.

This past week we looked at Ben Kindel and the team’s youngest players (or potential young players). This week we are going to take a look at some of the newest offseason additions and what they might be capable of this season.

Let’s get started.

Nicholas Robertson: Over/under 20.5 goals

Of all the players the Penguins brought in this offseason, I think Robertson is the one that has the best chance to really make a big impact, both now and in the long-term future.

He is still only 24 years old (soon-to-be 25) and has at least shown he has NHL skill, and perhaps still some untapped potential.

He has averaged a 17-goal pace per 82 games so far in his career, with that number inching closer to 19 goals per 82 games over the past three seasons. He has also done that by mostly playing in a depth role and logging only 12 minutes of ice-time per game.

On a per-minute basis, he has been one of the most efficient goal-scorers in the NHL over the past three years. His 1.09 goals per 60 minute of 5-on-5 play since the start of the 2023-24 season places him 29th in the entire league among the 517 forwards that have logged at least 500 minutes of ice-time. It also ties him with Jack Eichel and Jordan Kyrou, and puts him ahead of players like Brandon Hagel, Jake Guentzel and Pavel Dorofeyev.

That does not mean he is as good as those players. It just means that he has produced well in the limited minutes he has received.

He fits the mold of so many players the Penguins have acquired over the past year-plus: Early-to-mid-20s, strong rate stats, played well in softer and lesser roles, and players that might be looking for either a fresh start or an increased role. They have had some success with some of those guys (even if in a small sample size), including Egor Chinakhov, Elmer Soderblom and Parker Wotherspoon (before trading him this offseason).

Maybe Robertson can blossom here the same way. It might not work as well as it did with, say, Chinakhov, but I like the roll of the dice for the price that it cost.

The Penguins are hoping per-minute production can turn into bigger overall production with an increased role. Can it turn into 20-or-more goals?

Andrei Kuzmenko: Over/Under 20.5 goals

If you were looking for a parallel move a year ago, it would be Anthony Mantha.

• Veteran player.
• Some track record of success.
• Some inconsistency.
• Recent injury concerns.
• Short-term, one-year prove-it contract that could make him a potential trade candidate later in the season if things work out individually, but not necessarily on a team level.

I do not expect Kuzmenko to come in here and score 33 goals and lead the team in goal-scoring the way Mantha did a year ago, but I also don’t think he’s going to be a complete zero, either.

There is obviously some offensive talent here, and he has a pretty good shot. He broke into the league with 39 goals in his first season, scoring on more than 27 percent of his shots, but has not really come close to duplicating that total in the years since.

He did score 22 goals in year two, but has scored just 24 goals in 118 games since.

Injuries, and also bouncing around to three different teams in three years, have certainly caused much of his career to get sidetracked, as well as his own shortcomings and inconsistencies. But for whatever flaws he has to his game, he is a high percentage shooter and he can put the puck in the net. He has finished with a shooting percentage of 18 percent or higher in three of his four years in the league, while never having a season below 13.8 percent. He is also especially productive on the power play as a goal-scorer.

Is 20 goals really out of reach here?

He has topped that mark two times in four years, and was scoring at a 20-goal pace in the 52 games he played a year ago on a significantly worse offensive team (Los Angeles Kings) with far less talent around him.

A lot of it will be dependent on his ability to stay on the ice. But based on his career it’s a reasonable goal. A very reasonable goal.

Hendrix Lapierre: Over/under 10.5 points

Lapierre was one of the Penguins first moves of the offseason, but I figure it is probably the one forward move that will make the least impact. At least offensively speaking. The Penguins are so deep at the forward positions, both with established players and potential young players, that I don’t really see him being much more than a fourth-liner or extra forward.

He has 47 points in 158 career games. His rate stats are passable, but not quite on the level of a Robertson or even a Soderblom, and I just don’t know where his minutes or production are going to come from.

He is still somewhat young, but it just seems like organizational depth, with maybe the hope of catching lightning in a bottle and getting a solid depth forward.

Kaedan Korczak: Over/under 15.5 points

Korczak has never been a really big offensive producer, but Vegas consistently produced strong results when he was on the ice in terms of pushing play, out-chancing their opponents and out-scoring their opponents. He played a lot of sheltered minutes in a lower-pairing role, but he played them exceptionally well and probably earned a bigger look. I think in a lot of ways he is the defensive version of their gambles on players like Chinakhov, Soderblom and Robertson.

He averages a 20 point pace per 82 games, and is coming off a 16-point season in 74 games.

Declan Carlile: Over/under 20.5 points

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that not only is Carlile this year’s version of Parker Wotherspoon, but that he is also better than Wotherspoon. It may not result in quite as many points (Wotherspoon had 30 points a year ago), mostly because I’m not sure he is going to get as much ice-time next to Erik Karlsson (though, I suppose he could) but I could see him having a shockingly good year.

He played extremely well in Tampa Bay after being thrown into an NHL role, and his profile is very similar to what Wotherspoon was before arriving in Pittsburgh. This could be a sneaky good signing. Perhaps even a sneaky productive signing.

Trevor van Riemsdyk: Over/under plus-10 rating

Plus-minus has its flaws, but I am really just trying to give something else to guess on beyond goals and points. I am not looking at this as an end-all, be-all evaluation of his overall play. So plus-minus it is.

With Korczak, Carlile and van Riemsdyk all joining the roster, the Penguins turned over half of their defensive lineup this offseason, and that does not include the potential for players like Harrison Brunicke or Owen Pickering to play their way onto the roster and into the lineup. It is certainly a very different group, and it has decent a chance to be better defensively. Will it be good enough to get them closer to the top contenders in the Eastern Conference? That remains to be seen. But I do like the chances to at least be better.

Of all the defensive players they brought in, van Riemsdyk is probably the best pure defender among the group, and has posted plus-minus ratings of plus-10, minus-7, plus-20 and plus-6 over the past four seasons.

There were six Penguins players that were plus-10 or better a year ago. Is it a mark van Riemsdyk can reach this season?

As their rebuild kicks on towards the adding and re-signing players segment, the Philadelphia Flyers still have work to do when it comes to getting value back from the contracts they hand out.

The Flyers have signed a slew of players to contract extensions in recent years and months: Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, Dan Vladar, Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, and Tyson Foerster all stand out.

In addition to their overall lack of star power, the problem with the Flyers is simply that too many contracts are more or less in line with what the player earned based on the market, rather than getting a team-friendly deal more often than once in a while.

Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic just released his annual assessment of every NHL team's contract efficiency, which is based on the on-ice value the team gets back relative to all their players' contracts.

The Flyers, after ranking a paltry 26th in the contract efficiency totem pole last year, placed 20th this year. That's a modest improvement, but still firmly in the bottom half of the NHL.

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Here's what Luszczyszyn had to say about the Orange and Black at this point in time: 

"One year makes a pretty big difference. The Flyers’ roster responded really well to Rick Tocchet hockey, with much of the roster’s value taking a positive step forward. Noah Cates was arguably the biggest beneficiary of that, and the Tyson Foerster extension helped add a fair bit of surplus value.

"Still, the Flyers land a bit below average thanks to a string of deals that are close to fair for both sides from Trevor Zegras, Christian Dvorak, Jamie Drysdale and Dan Vladar. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in a rising cap world in which other teams are getting massive wins, fair deals aren’t quite enough."

Luszczyszyn notes that Noah Cates and Tyson Foerster have two of the better deals on the roster, and the caveat there is that these are two defense-first, middle-six players.

Cates, 27, has three years remaining on his contract at a modest $4 million cap hit per year, which is looking more and more like a steal in today's cap environment, especially compared to teammate Christian Dvorak's less tame five-year deal that comes with a $5.15 AAV.

Luszczyszyn has Cates's contract at an A-, while Dvorak checks in a few pegs below at a B-.

Among the Flyers' biggest detractors for Luszczyszyn's model are free agent signing Noel Acciari (C+, two years, $2.8 million AAV), Travis Konecny (C, seven years, $8.75 million AAV), and Sean Couturier (D, four years, $7.75 million).

The Flyers went out of their way to secure the aging Acciari in free agency, and they gave Konecny a long-term eight-year deal that would still carry a large cap hit well past his prime years, which they aren't really paying for in the deal.

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As for other recent deals, like Luszczyszyn noted, Zegras, Drysdale, and Vladar all got fair value: B-, B-, and B-.

No Flyers players were graded out better than an A, though Cates, Foerster, and Travis Sanheim each got an A-. And this same Flyers front office nearly traded Sanheim before that deal even began.

That all said, it would be nice if the Flyers could do better than to get surplus value on players other than depth pieces; Zegras especially sticks out.

Time will tell what happens with Porter Martone and Matvei Michkov once their entry-level contracts expire.

While the Flyers have improved from last year, they can only go up so far with the raw amount of players they already have signed to long-term deals, and especially the ones who are in or near their 30s.