What’s New In the NHL?

Well to be frank, a lot of things, so let’s recap the big events of the off season.

So the draft happened after the NHL awards. While this was exciting, we won’t really know what will happen with these new guys until the pre-season starts and they show us what they are made of. So far, nothing too big like last season in terms of trades. Nothing that was too shocking at least.

Sidney Crosby will pretty much be a Penguin until the end of his career, which may not be that much longer if he continues to play fragmented seasons like he did in this past one. Martin Brodeur was looking at other offers, but he obviously went with the Devils. Honestly where else would the guy go? The Schenn brothers will be playing together in Philadelphia now, as the Maple Leafs gave the Philadelphia Flyers Luke Schenn in exchange for JVR. Philadelphia also gave Bobrovsky to the Blue Jackets for some draft picks and are now picking up Michael Leighton as the backup during the free agency period. LA gave Penner a deal and their back up goalie, who is actually a pretty good goaltender wants a trade to get out of Quick’s shadow. Speaking of which, Quick re-signed with the Kings for the next ten years. I may have missed some key points, but you get the general idea.

Right now we are facing the free agency frenzy. Which wasn’t that exciting in the opening day. Jagr left the Flyers to go to the Stars for a $4.55 Million deal for one year. A few other agents signed some one year deals, but the biggest news of all came when the Wild got both Parise and Suter. BOTH OF THEM! Parise and Suter have been hunted by a lot of teams as of late, but they finally made their decision to play for Minnesota. Why is that? Because it’s for 13 years and they will both be getting $98 Million.

There are still a lot of free agents avaliable like Teemu Selanne, Matt Carle, Shane Doan, etc, so we might be getting some more big stories about free agency frenzy.

On a somber note, the Phoenix Coyotes forward Brett MacLean was taken to the hospital for a cardiac emergency Monday night, and is currently in the cardiac icu. MacLean is only 23, but there is no news yet on if he is stable. So we here at Ballhyped wish him a swift recovery.

I am a recent graduate of West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where I hold a BA in English with a minor in creative writing. My career aspirations lie mostly in novel writing, but I also have an interest in sports journalism. I wrote soccer and hockey articles for my University's student newspaper and I currently write for two other sports blogs in addition to Ballhyped. I am the NHL beat writer for Ballhyped, and pretty much live and breathe for the sport of ice hockey.