Despite the rumors, trading Evgeni Malkin was never really an option for the Penguins. (Fred Kfoury/Icon SMI)

By Allan Muir

Shortly after the Pittsburgh Penguins announced that they’d signed Evgeni Malkin to an eight-year, $76 million extension this morning, the blog Russian Machine Never Breaks tweeted a pretty tidy perspective on the deal. The numbers illustrate the massive risk that the Pens have exposed themselves to with this contract and the 12-year, $104.4 million deal signed by Sidney Crosby last year. But when you’ve got the chance to lock down the two best players in the world, what else are you gonna do?

The Penguins will spend 28.3% of their salary on two players that have missed 32.7% of the last four seasons.—
RMNB (@russianmachine) June 13, 2013

Risk aside, this agreement is still a big win for GM Ray Shero, who is doing a nice job of getting his house in order ahead of the draft and the start of free agency. Trading a game-breaking talent like former MVP Malkin, or worse, letting him escape for nothing next summer, was never an option. This deal keeps the player happy, and ensures that Pittsburgh employs the best 1-2 center punch in hockey for nearly a decade to come.

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Antoine Laganiere is fresh off helping the Yale Bulldogs to their first NCAA championship. (Jeanine Leech/Icon SMI)

By Allan Muir

At 18, Antoine Laganiere was on no one’s radar. Slow, gawky and plagued by questionable hockey sense, he was completely overlooked in the NHL draft.

Four years later, the late bloomer became an NCAA champion with the Yale Bulldogs and, as of today, the newest member of the Anaheim Ducks. Laganiere signed a two-year deal this afternoon with Anaheim. It’s expected that he’ll spend a week with the team, and then return to Yale to finish his exams.

Laganiere, a 6-foot-4, 215-lb winger from Quebec, had 15 goals and 29 points in 37 games with the Bulldogs in 2012-13. Scouts see him as a power forward, but there are differing opinions on his upside. “He’s big, strong and protects the puck really well,” one scout told SI.com. “He knows how to fish where the fish are.” Another expressed concerns about his skating and hockey sense, but still thinks he can be a piece of the puzzle for Anaheim. “I can see him stepping in right away and playing on their third line,” the scout said. “He’s a big body who will chip in with the occasional goal.”

The Ducks came in as a dark horse to secure his services. The Canucks, Canadiens and Predators were thought to be the front-runners, with Columbus, Pittsburgh, Winnipeg and Edmonton also in the mix.

While Laganiere could suit up for the Ducks immediately, he is ineligible to dress for them in the playoffs.

Blueliner Dan DeKeyser should feel right at home with the Red Wings. (Brace Hemmelgarn/Icon SMI)

By Allan Muir

Danny DeKeyser’s decision today to sign with the Detroit Red Wings was about as surprising as, well, Good Friday falling on a Friday.

After a dog-and-pony show that saw this year’s top NCAA free agent meet with at least eight NHL teams, he did exactly what we all knew he would by agreeing to a two-year entry-level deal with the Wings.

The odds were stacked in their favor along. DeKeyser, who grew up in suburban Detroit, attended a Red Wings’ prospect camp last fall. His former coach at Western Michigan, Jeff Blashill, currently mans the bench for Detroit’s AHL farm club in Grand Rapids. DeKeyser even played youth hockey with the son of Wings’ assistant GM Jim Nill.

Outside of covering his body in Red Wings tattoos, this one was pretty much telegraphed from the start.

Even without the element of surprise, this was a great get for Detroit.

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Corey Perry’s new deal means the Ducks have now wrapped up their two best players in Perry and Ryan Getzlaf. (Rob Grabowski/US Presswire)

By Allan Muir

The story started making the rounds just as I was leaving the Stars-Flames game tonight. Somehow, the Ducks defied the naysayers and signed Corey Perry to a long-term extension.

And here I was thinking the biggest news coming out of SoCal tonight would be Peter Murphy’s DUI arrest.

My first thought? What a coup this is for Anaheim GM Bob Murray. Instead of facing a major rebuild this summer, his franchise cornerstones are locked into place. Who thought that was possible at the beginning of this season?

Just two weeks after signing captain Ryan Getzlaf to an eight-year, $66 million deal, he gets Perry to agree to a very similar eight-year, $69 million pact. Call the extra $3 million the MVP bonus and everybody’s happy.

Happy and probably more than a little surprised. There were many folks around the league who believed that Getzlaf’s massive contract signaled the end of Perry’s tenure in Anaheim, either at the trade deadline or, to preserve the team’s Cup chances, this summer. Signing both would be prohibitively expensive, especially in light of the healthy decrease in next season’s salary cap.

But Murray did the math and determined that losing Perry would be even more costly, in terms of franchise prestige and the ability to compete at a high level moving forward. So he ponied up to the tune of $8.625 million per year for Perry on top of Getzlaf’s $8.25 million.

That’s a serious commitment.

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Don’t be surprised if the Flyers take a flyer on James van Riemsdyk’s kid brother, Trevor. (Fred Kfoury/Icon SMI)

By Allan Muir

Vancouver announced the first notable signing from this year’s pool of NCAA free agent on Saturday: Kellan Lain. A 6′-6”, 220-pound forward, Lain scored 16 points and racked up 111 penalty minutes in 32 games with Lake Superior State this season. The Canucks are hoping they’ve uncovered the next Chris Kunitz. Odds are, they just acquired the next Ray Staszak.

Kunitz, currently enjoying his moment in the sun as the NHL’s second-leading scorer, was unwanted by the league, passed over twice in the draft, until a sensational 79-point season as a 23-year-old senior at Ferris State convinced the Anaheim Ducks that he might have a future after all. He was just a kid who was nowhere near ready at 18, and one who made great use of his extra time in college to develop. And he’s not alone among the late-blooming success stories.

Hall of Famers Adam Oates and Ed Belfour blazed the trail that has been followed by Andy McDonald, Tyler Bozak, Jason Garrison, Matt Read and current Calder Trophy candidate Cory Conacher, among others. But there is a larger number of players whose pro careers only remind everyone of why they went undrafted in the first place. Like Staszak, who was handed the first million dollar deal for a college free agent by the desperate Detroit Red Wings in 1985. His time in the NHL lasted all of four games.

But hope springs eternal, and with talent at a premium, there’ll be plenty of interest despite a relatively shallow crop of college UFAs this year.

Lain has a chance at a pro career, but after compiling 39 points and 210 PiMs over three seasons and 108 games at LSSU, the Canucks are realistic about his upside.

“We see him as a bottom-end center, more like Paul Gaustad or maybe a David Steckel-type player,” Canucks assistant GM Laurence Gilman told the Vancouver Province. “He can be a shutdown center.”

Steckel was a first rounder. Gaustad was taken 220th overall. The quest for talent is always a crapshoot, which makes a signing like this so appealing. Instead of using a pick, the Canucks simply give up an entry-level contract. That’s a very reasonable risk for a team that needs forwards with size, especially up the middle.

And that’s why there will be so many teams hoping to beat the odds and find their own diamond-in-the-rough.

Here are the players likely to draw the most interest as their college seasons end during the next few weeks.

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The Coyotes elected to ink Oliver Ekman-Larsson before he hit free agency this summer. (Norm Hall/Getty)

By Allan Muir

Some teams choose to play hard ball with their own free agents, looking to take advantage of the new CBA to control the costs associated with a player’s second contract.

And some teams can’t be bothered to mess around.

Count the Phoenix Coyotes among the latter group. With franchise defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson headed to restricted free agency this summer, the team made a bold move to lock up his services with a six-year extension Friday night.

The Coyotes didn’t release terms, but
TSN’s Darren Dreger put it at $33 million, for an annual hit of $5.5 million. That’s a pretty nice upgrade over the $900,000 he earned in each of his first three years in the league and puts OEL in line behind Drew Doughty ($7 million) and Erik Karlsson ($6.5 million) as the top earners among young defenders.

It’s also a very different way of doing business than how Montreal handled P.K. Subban and Colorado bungled its dealings with Ryan O’Reilly over the past couple of months. That aggressive approach probably won’t win Phoenix GM Don Maloney many friends, but it is one that makes perfect sense for this franchise. This isn’t a pay-for-potential deal. Ekman-Larsson isn’t just one of the game’s best young defensemen…he’s one of the best, period. This is value for now and moving forward. Wherever this team winds up playing, he’s the core for the next six years.

Could the Coyotes have pushed for a cheaper “bridge” contract? Maybe, but doing it this way allowed Maloney to set up a deal he was willing to live with. Ask Colorado GM Greg Sherman some time about the pros and cons of allowing some other team’s offer sheet to control your payroll. Maloney wasn’t going to let that happen to him.

No fans are more put upon than the Phoenix faithful. Nice to see them get something to cheer about for a change.

Signing Ryan Getzlaf may also be the key to determining Corey Perry’s future in Anaheim. (Gary A. Vasquez / US Presswire)

By Allan Muir

Anaheim Ducks GM Bob Murray crossed one item off his to-do list today by signing team captain Ryan Getzlaf to an eight-year extension worth $66 million.

That’s a significant commitment from the Ducks. The eight-year term is the max allowable under the new CBA and the annual cap of $8.25 million ties him for the fourth highest in the league, trailing just Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby. That’s pretty thin air for a player that put up career-low numbers last season and ranked among the year’s biggest underachievers.

But Getzlaf has been among the most impactful players so far in 2013. His 27 points puts him among the league’s top-10 scorers and he’s been a consistent force for a Ducks team that has to be recognized among the few legitimate contenders for the Cup.

There’ll still be plenty of voices suggesting this is an overpayment, but this feels like a case of a team paying to hold onto one of the best players in franchise history, and fearing the alternatives if they don’t.

Yeah, $8.25 million is a chunky hit, especially with the cap going down next season to $64.3 million, but big, proven No. 1 centers like Getzlaf are hard to come by. If he’d gone to market as a UFA this summer, another team would have put up at least that much…and the Ducks would have had to settle for an inferior replacement. This was a much smarter option.

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Feaster famine: Calgary’s GM has had tough time of late improving his struggling Flames. (Terence Leung/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

For the second time in a day, Calgary Flames GM Jay Feaster baffled everyone with his thinking.

His decision to sign restricted free agent forward Ryan O’Reilly to a two-year, $10 million offer sheet might have seemed like a bold strike to solve his team’s glaring need for a No. 1 center. Instead, it strengthened a divisional foe ahead of the stretch drive. And he should have known that’s exactly what was going to happen.

Not that Colorado wasn’t willing to send the reluctant O’Reilly packing. In fact, after months of failed negotiations, finger-pointing and embarrassing parental interference, it was the preferred ending to this tiresome drama.

But an offer sheet? Nice try, but Do No Harm had a better chance of succeeding.

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Braden Holtby is off to a bit of a rocky start (5-6-0, 3.37 GAA, .896 save pct.), but the Capitals still have faith in him. (Paul Bereswill/Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Early-season struggles aside, the Washington Capitals believe that Braden Holtby can be their goalie of the future. And they’re giving him two years to prove it.

The team announced early Monday afternoon that it had agreed on an extension with last spring’s playoff hero. Holtby, who was scheduled to become a restricted free agent this summer, will make $1.7 million in 2013-14 and $2 million in 2014-15. (Good on the Caps for not playing coy and simply giving the salary figures in their press release.)

This feels like a smart move by Washington GM George McPhee and a reasonable one by the 23-year-old Holtby. McPhee is taking a cautious approach by limiting the term to two years. If Holtby doesn’t progress as the Caps hope, they can cut bait and move on in short order. And if he does develop into the No. 1 stopper they believe he can be, the team will be happy to set up his grandkids with the next deal.

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The Avalanche would like to rebuild around center Ryan O’Reilly, but can afford to wait him out on a new contract. (Michael Martin/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

You have to wonder if today is the day that Ryan O’Reilly can finally read the writing on the wall.

If not, he might want to have someone read it to him.

In the wake of Monday night’s P.K. Subban deal, the 21-year-old restricted free agent and erstwhile KHL star is now the last remaining big-name player without a contract for this season.

O’Reilly led the Avalanche in scoring last season — albeit with just 55 points – -and brings a package of heart and skill that the franchise wants to rebuild around. After making $900,000 on the last year of his entry-level deal, according to capgeek.com, all agree that he is due a hefty raise.

And he’ll get one.

But if he held out any hope of swinging $5 million a year from the Avs, well, that grandiose dream died Monday night under the pitiless boot heel of Montreal Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin.

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