After what seemed like a very long wait for everyone in town, well, in both towns, the Montreal Canadiens and Buffalo Sabres finally kicked off in the state of New York on Wednesday night. As expected, there was plenty of speed, plenty of skills, and plenty of attacking play.

Martin St-Louis wasted no time in showing that he wanted to get his top line back together, having Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki, and Juraj Slafkovsky take the series’ opening faceoff. It didn’t exactly start the way the coach would have hoped, but throughout the first period, it was easy to see that the line felt more at ease than it did against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Canadiens Prospect Named WHL Player Of The Year
Canadiens Likely Making Lineup Changes For Game 1 vs. Sabres
Canadiens’ Suzuki Finalist For Major Award

A Tough Start For Lane Hutson

Canadiens’ sophomore defenseman Lane Hutson didn’t have the kind of start he would have liked to this series. After just 30 seconds of play, he found himself heading to the penalty box after he was unable to spot a puck that had taken a weird bounce and ended up having to trip Zach Benson.

Four minutes later, he lost his footing at the red line, allowing the same Benson to take off with the puck and create a three-on-one, which led to the first goal of the series. The winger fed Josh Doan on the doorstep of Jakub Dobes’ net, and it was an easy tap-in.

A little over nine minutes later, Hutson had a front row view of the Sabres’ second goal scored on the power play as he was part of the penalty killing unit that was beaten.

In the second period, as the Canadiens were trapped in their own zone, Hutson was caught on the ice for two consecutive shifts of over two minutes. As energetic as he is, even he has his limits, and he was lucky not to be called for holding at the end of his second long shift, as he was holding on to his man for dear life.

Still, Hutson finished the game with five shots on goal, more than anyone else on the team, and three blocked shots.

Can’t Forget About The Backcheck

St-Louis likes his team to play hard on the forecheck, but with an opponent as speedy as the Sabres are, you have to be careful. Get caught with too many players too deep, and they will make you pay. Pinch at the wrong time? They will make you pay as well.

Buffalo goes from defence to attack in a matter of seconds, and they won’t wait for you. St-Louis has often spoken about the need to play the game that’s in front of you, and that’s going to be even more important in this series. Unnecessary risks should be avoided when playing against a side that feeds on odd-man rush opportunities.

Dach Attack

With the Canadiens down 4-1 late in the second frame, Kirby Down came up clutch to give the Canadiens a bit of hope after Zach Bolduc put him through on a Tage Thompson turnover. He took the first shot, which Alex Lyon stopped, but, as he fell on the ice, Dach took his own rebound and backhanded it past the Sabres' goalie.

At a time when the Canadiens were struggling to create much of anything, the big forward really came through to allow the Habs to go back to the dressing room with a bit of optimism.

It set up Montreal for a good third period, which they dominated in shots 11-1, but they were unable to solve Lyon. The Sabres took a 2-1 series lead despite being outshot 28-16. After their Game 7 win over Tampa, though, the Canadiens can hardly complain about that. The two teams will be back at it on Friday at 7:00 PM for Game 2. 

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Yeah, the Philadelphia Flyers may still be alive and well in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but the NHL draft is still important for them taking a rebuilder and making it a well-oiled machine in the long run.

When we talk about the Flyers, the center position is the one that comes up most often, due to the team's lack of overall talent at the position.

With Jett Luchanko, Jack Berglund, Heikki Ruohonen, Jack Nesbitt, and Cole Knuble in the fold, depth isn't an issue. But it's unclear if any of those names will develop into a top-six pivot that can match or exceed the impact and offensive production of Trevor Zegras.

One position in the Flyers organization that lacks both depth and talent, though, is left defense.

The Flyers do currently boast a capable NHL top-four with Travis Sanheim and Cam York leading the way, but they don't have a premium offensive defenseman like many of the Stanley Cup contenders do.

York, Jamie Drysdale, and Emil Andrae were all drafted to be those types of players, but have settled in at the NHL level as analytics darlings who are positives in transition.

Flyers Set to Benefit from Maple Leafs NHL Draft Lottery WinAll signs point to the Philadelphia Flyers receiving a massive draft pick from the Toronto Maple Leafs next offseason.

And behind York and Andrae on the left, the Flyers don't have much youth coming their way.

Hunter McDonald is a pending restricted free agent, and Ty Murchison may be capable of becoming a bottom-pair guy to replace the aging Nick Seeler. These prospects are solid for their playstyles, but not inspiring or exciting.

Fortunately, we are here to solve that with our first Flyers mock draft, getting ahead of the offseason early, as we are used to this time of year.

At the time of this writing, Tankathon has the Flyers drafting defenseman Xavier Villeneuve with the 21st overall pick; I concur with this selection.

With the 21st overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, the Philadelphia Flyers select...

Xavier Villeneuve, left-shot defenseman, 5-foot-11, 157 pounds, Blainville-Boisbriand Armada (QMJHL)

The Flyers have missed out on undersized dynamo defenders before. Everyone passed on Lane Hutson in 2022, and the Flyers went with Luchanko ahead of Zeev Buium in 2024.

Now that they won't be in a position to select any of the top centers (or forwards in general), they should feel comfortable again going with the best talent available.

Flyers Will Get Good Look at Top NHL Draft Prospect in OlympicsThe Flyers should be paying close attention to the only NHL draft prospect featuring in the Winter Olympics this year.

Villeneuve, 18, has been regarded as a top-10 talent, but his size, of course, is a major detractor. It also doesn't help that the Canadian blueliner was limited to just 37 QMJHL games this season, missing nearly three months due to injury.

At the end of the day, though, Villeneuve has 18 goals and 100 points in his last 98 regular season games, and he added 14 points in 17 playoff games for the Armada upon his return.

The Flyers should already be familiar with this player, given that 2024 second-round pick Spencer Gill played with Villeneuve this season, although he dealt with a significant injury of his own.

Gill, 19, is a 6-foot-4 right-shot who added 10 points in 17 playoff contests, and I think these two could be an interesting pairing down the road.

Villeneuve is a bit on the older side for this class, too, as he turns 19 in September, so it won't be long before he's in the pro ranks with Gill.

And if the Flyers can land him in the 20s this summer? They are going to be a scary team to play against in the coming years in many different ways.

Welcome to Thursday/Friday, folks!

As we move into the offseason, we’ll try to cover any relevant news and put up new threads every couple of days for open discussion, then eventually start with the player reviews, recaps, and all that fun stuff.

For now, we’re still in the immediate aftermath of the Bruins’ playoff elimination, but there’s plenty going on around the team.

The mysterious Toronto draft pick

The most intriguing point of conversation right now is the fate of the first-round pick the Bruins received from Toronto in the Brandon Carlo trade, which was thrown into chaos when Toronto won the draft lottery on Tuesday.

PuckPedia says this:

Top 5 protected, slides to 2027. The 2027 pick goes to Philadelphia (as part of Laughton trade) if it is outside the top 10, which converts this pick to Boston to a 2028 unprotected 1st Round Pick. If this Pick slides to 2027 and is in the top 10, TOR can either transfer it to BOS to satisfy this trade and then give PHI the 2028 unprotected, or transfer it to PHI and give BOS the 2028 unprotected 1st Round Pick.

However, Chris Johnston had an article in The Athletic on Wednesday that made things appear considerably more murky, saying that the league still hasn’t settled on a formal interpretation of the trade.

He suggests that the league may allow next season to play out before determining the fate of the pick, which seems pretty unfair to both the Bruins and the Flyers — if you’re considering moving that asset this summer for more immediate help, you’re not going to get top dollar if the year of the pick is just listed as “TBD.”

Johnston eventually settles on there being thought around the league that the Flyers will get the 2027 pick, even if it falls in the top ten, with the Bruins getting an unprotected 2028 pick.

Then there’s this caveat around the “Toronto picks who gets the 2027 pick,” which seems completely ridiculous:

That would create a potentially fascinating dynamic next offseason, if Toronto was left with the choice of determining whether Boston or Philadelphia ended up with a prized pick. In theory, the Leafs might be able to use that power as a way to coax a favorable return in a subsequent trade from one of those teams.

I have no idea how the league would allow Toronto to extract capital from a team with whom they’ve already completed a trade just to get them a more favorable outcome, but nothing with the NHL shocks me at this point.

Anyways, it’s best for all of our sanity if the league issues some kind of edict on this soon, as it will end the speculation and let each team know what kind of asset they have on their hands.

Providence is on the brink

After a historic regular season the AHL Bruins are on the verge of crashing out of the playoffs in the first round.

The P-Bruins trail their best-of-five series with Springfield two games to one, with Game 4 in Springfield on Thursday night.

Providence lost Game 3 in OT on Tuesday night on a Springfield goal that was clearly offside.

The AHL said it was “taking responsibility” for that gaffe after the game, which…does absolutely nothing for Providence, so here we are.

It reminds me of the Billy Madison scene with “well sorry doesn’t put the delicious Triscuit crackers in my stomach, now does it, Carl?”

If the P-Bruins win Thursday night and extend the series to a deciding Game 5, that will be in Providence on Saturday night.

Money talks

The NHL confirmed the salary cap for the 2026-2027 season on Wednesday, with an upper limit set at $104 million.

Per BruinsCapSpace, the B’s will head into the offseason with a little more than $16 million in space, which isn’t a bad spot to be in when you consider there are no glaringly obvious “re-sign him right now” UFAs to deal with.

(They have decisions to make on guys like Viktor Arvidsson and Andrew Peeke, but I guess my point is it’s not like they have a million empty roster spots to fill with that space.)

We heard about the desire to add talent and speed at yesterday’s leadership press conference, so we’ll see how that goes.

Among the teams still playing, Buffalo won its series-opener against Montreal on Wednesday night, while the Ducks evened their series against the Golden Knights.

Thursday night will feature Game 3 of Hurricanes-Flyers, followed by Games 2 and 3 of Buffalo-Montreal and Anaheim-Vegas, respectively, on Friday night.

What else is on tap for today?

Before the season started, I wrote about five players I was most curious to see. Now that the dust has settled, let’s check in on how that all went.

Owen Pickering

It was nice to see Pickering earn some NHL time (to the tune of 25 games) in his rookie season, but his NHL stint ended in January getting some tough love in a hard practice from Sidney Crosby working him over and then struggling in his last handful of games. That was in January, now nine months and ago Pickering hasn’t been seen since on this level. How much has the 21-year old used that to grow and improve? The vaunted leap from Year 1 to Year 2 is a big deal and it will be critical for Pickering to show some development based off of where he was previously. And, besides, the Penguins need someone to play on the left side of their defense. It would be a great development if Pickering can raise his level.

Pickering only played four NHL games early in the season from October 28th through November 3rd. It didn’t go well, especially towards the end and he’s been back in Wilkes-Barre for the rest of the season with the team choosing to use other options to fill out their defense, most notably picking up Ilya Solovyov in a trade with Colorado for depth.

By all accounts, Pickering has settled into being a quality AHL player. He scored a key power play goal in Game 1 of the playoffs against Hershey and set AHL-highs in goals, assists and points. While only being 22-years old, Pickering has completed four seasons since his draft and is far from established in the NHL. The list of mid-round first round picks to not have made an NHL impact by draft+4 is not a good indicator for the future. By this point, you know if you have a K’Andre Miller/Jakub Chychrun/Travis Sanheim or a prospect trending towards P.O. Joseph/Tobias Bjornfot/Jacob Bernard-Docker, Who knows what that might hold, but at this point it’s getting late in the development curve for a first round pick. Pickering is under contract for 2026-27, but at this point there won’t be too much curiosity around him unless he takes a big step forward.

Arturs Silovs

Silovs’ last work was being great in the AHL playoffs, helping Abbotsford win the Calder Cup and being named the AHL’s playoff MVP. The AHL isn’t the NHL, but that’s a pretty good launching point for the future. Silovs needs waivers to be sent to the AHL, the whole reason Vancouver went in the direction to trade him for a draft pick to get something out of him, therefore we can probably expect him to make Pittsburgh’s NHL team out of camp as the backup goalie. It hasn’t been smooth sailing in the NHL level for Silovs, so we might not really want to see him for that long if it doesn’t go well, but right off the bat he will be a very interesting character to track.

It was an up and down season for Silovs, who played well at times and struggled for other stretches. One such tough stretch in March may have had something to do with a knee injury suffered at that point and revealed during breakdown day. Silovs led the Penguins in starts (40) this season and was excellent in the playoffs. His personal stats aren’t a lot to write home about (19-12-8 record, 3.02 GAA, .888 save%) but he weathered the storm and gained a lot of experience to put together his first full season as an NHL netminder.

Not sure I’d say the future is extremely bright, but there is some sort of future there. It says something that Silovs has been at his best in the most important moments (playing for Team Latvia, the AHL playoffs last year, the NHL playoffs this year), he has that admirable quality to perform when it matters.

Tommy Novak

Many have mostly forgotten about Novak, and there’s not much fault in that considering he only played two games with the Penguins last season before getting injured. Novak will draw attention once he gets back out there, though. He can do things like this:

And he’s also a very busy player with a great analytical profile. Novak sets up teammates for chances with frequency, he is great at forechecking.

Yet, Novak’s former GM had a less than glowing review about Novak’s recent play:

“When (Novak) was a fourth-line, league-minimum guy and scoring while getting some sheltered minutes, that fit him just fine. When you move up the lineup, it’s harder to find your space and be productive. If you want to move up the lineup, and get paid more, there’s more responsibility.”

“There’s a reason that guys get the higher salaries, because most nights, they’re getting the harder matchups and they’re expected to produce,” Trotz explained.

Trotz, of course, hasn’t been the most savvy manager but his words can’t be totally dismissed. Novak still has to prove himself and bring an added level of consistency. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes in Pittsburgh, is he playing on the second line with Evgeni Malkin? Centering a third line of his own, perhaps with good friend and longtime teammate Phil Tomasino?

Novak was indeed a curious case. There were times where he was invisible, starting the season with no goals and one assist in six games then going through a zero goal, two assists stretch over the last 13 games of March. There were teams when he turned hot, like an 11 point in 14 game effort in December. He found a niche with Malkin and Egor Chinakhov in a high-flying line that was generating rush chances like no other in the second half of the season.

Below the point line, Novak was one of the team’s best players in terms of zone entries, puck carries and neutral zone efficiency. He has enough skill to be a perfect player in a complimentary role to support skilled linemates. Useful player and a nice season.

Ville Koivunen

Koivunen was great in Finland in 2023-24, scoring 56 points in 59 games. He followed that up with his first full season in North America by putting up 56 points in 63 games in the AHL and then getting a little taste of the NHL at the end of the season, which also went well with seven points in eight games.

It’s one thing to play out the string at the end of a season, it’s another thing to go through the full grind. By this time about six months from now, we’ll know a lot more about Koivunen and how big a piece of the puzzle he could be moving forward. His vision and passing ability are legit, it’s already apparent this is a special player in terms of how he sees the game and thinks the game. The curiosity will come in how he handles long stretches of play, can he get to the net? Can he keep up with his feet? Will he be effective and fit in longterm? So far there’s a lot to feel confident about and be impressed with, but Koivunen might not be a top-6 player for the next 5-10 years for the Penguins, there’s still a lot to prove and see out of him.

Koivunen’s seven points in the last eight games of the season looks now to be the product of teams not playing extremely hard against a non-playoff Penguin team and Koivunen getting an 18 minute per night role to put up points down the stretch. As mentioned in the writeup, the grind of the full season proved to be deeper water than the young player could swim, only generating 0.40 points per 60 minute – a figure that ranked just 464th out of 468 forwards across the league that played 200+ minutes this season.

Optimism for Koivunen has turned for concern, his skating stats and speed bursts are among the lowest in the league. Though listed at 184 pounds, he was easily knocked off pucks constantly in battles. Koivunen has mastered the AHL level (41 points in 34 games this season in Wilkes) but was rendered completely ineffective in the show. It’ll be interesting to see if he’s able to add any tangible gains to his skating and strength this summer, the clock is going to start ticking loudly on his future for anything beyond AHL/Europe quality player.

Avery Hayes / Tristan Broz

I’m going to stick these two together, because very strangely enough both of these players were born on the exact same day — October 10, 2002. What are the odds of that? (Also in states that border each other, though their listed hometowns of Westland, MI [Hayes] and River Falls, WI [Broz]) are about 650 miles away via automobile). Despite that common bday, they’ve taken very different paths to get here: Broz was heralded as a top player in his age range and made a second round pick in 2021, Hayes went undrafted and had to earn an NHL contract the hard way. They have some similarities too, Hayes won two OHL championships (in 2022 with Hamilton, in 2023 with Peterborough), Broz was a national champion at the University of Denver. Both are on the upswing and have a sort of knack for coming through and winning observers over.

So it’s only fitting to combine them as they look to make their NHL debuts in the same season. This might be better subtitled “players I’m curious to see in training camp” because that is more applicable or accurate for the time being. Still, it will be interesting to see what kind of opportunities players like Broz and Hayes get this season. Do the Pens continue to call-up players from Wilkes that are only warm body space fillers (Boko Imama, Joona Koppanen, Valtteri Puustinen, Emil Bemstrom, etc). Bemstrom is out of the organization now, but it would be nice to see players in the Broz/Hayes mold push up the organizational rankings beyond the type of vanilla and exceedingly limited type of forwards that tend to get recalled that aren’t going to provide a lot of contribution to the NHL on their best day. Of course, the Broz/Hayes level guys have to hold up their end of the bargain by impressing and performing well themselves, which will be another area to watch.

Both players had excellent camps and made run at NHL roster spots, only to have the suddenly flush forward depth chart bump them back to the AHL. Broz continued to have some rotten injury luck, being unavailable at points where he would have gotten called up. Hayes made the most of his NHL debut by scoring two goals in the first period of his first game against Buffalo on February 5th. He played a total of 16 NHL games and scored five goals, setting himself up nicely for what could be a full-time graduation to the NHL as soon as next training camp.

Broz’s path forward appears much less certain. He is under contract next season but the Pens signed Blake Lizotte to a contract extension. Broz has been working mostly as a center, the number of center spots that Pittsburgh will have available for an AHL player look extremely limited.

—

In the end, the Penguins had no shortage of players to be curious about this year. Midseason pickups that we didn’t even know about at the time like Chinakhov, Elmer Soderblom, Brett Kulak, Sam Girard and Stuart Skinner provided no shortage of intriguing players to watch over the course of the year as they came (and sometimes went almost as quickly). You always have to stay on your toes when it comes to this team.