Sabres fans can cross Corey Perry off their wish list.
Perry has signed an 8 year, $69 million contract extension to stay in Anaheim. Perry was due to become UFA in July 2013.
Thanks, Ducks TV
Here's the official statement from the Ducks:
“
We are excited that Corey has committed to us for the next eight years,” said Ducks Executive Vice President/General Manager Bob Murray. “Similar to the case with Ryan Getzlaf, Corey wanted to stay in Anaheim and be part of our organization long term. He is an exceptional player who competes with heart and soul and has won at every level.”
Perry, 27 (5/16/85), has appeared in 25 games for the Ducks this season, collecting 9-15=24 points with a +14 rating and 41 penalty minutes (PIM). Perry ranks second among team leaders in scoring and assists, third in goals and tied for fourth in plus/minus. Among NHL leaders, Perry is tied for second in game-winning goals (5) and tied for 12th in power-play goals (5). The three-time NHL All-Star (2008, 2011 & 2012) has scored 96 goals since the start of the 2010-11 season, second only to Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos (126).
“Staying in Anaheim has always been my first choice,” said Perry. “This is a great place to play, and I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to remain here. I want to thank to the Samuelis and the entire Ducks organization for their belief in me. I’m pleased to have this done so our focus can remain on our ultimate goal – bringing another Stanley Cup to Orange County.”
With the NHL salary cap shrinking by $6 million next season, how will the Ducks be able to afford their big three of Getlaf, Perry, and Ryan?
Perhaps Bobby Ryan will be the odd man out of Anaheim?
Ryan to Buffalo rumors were hot an heavy last Summer. Buffalo chatter will rekindle in the days to come.
If so, the Sabres should swoop in a do whatever is takes to and the sniper at the NHL trade deadline.
Ryan has two years remaining on his current contract that will pay him $5.1 million for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons.
Ryan, a four time NHL 30 goal scoring left winger, has 21 points in 24 games this season (8 goals and 13 assists)
According to capgeek.com, the Ducks have 16 players signed to contracts that total $53,484,167 for 2013-14. Their pending UFAs are Selanne, Koovu, Lydman, and Lovejoy. Their pending RFAs are Palmieri, Belesky, Etem,and McMillan.
The NHL salary cap will be decreasing to $64.300,000 in 2013-14.
How will the Ducks be able to afford Getzlaf, Perry, and Ryan?
Another day, and yet another headline news story in Pegulaville.
The Sabres were off on Monday, and they spend the day away from the rink in Montreal.
Ryan Miller offered a mea culpa to his teammate Pat Kaleta for the postgame comments that Miller made about Kaleta directly following the galling loss in Washington on Sunday night.
Miller was asked to comment about the Kaleta benching in Washington, following PK36s NHL-imposed five game suspension for his dirty hit on NYR centre Brad Richards.
For context, here's what Miller said in the heat of the moment in Washington:
“ He’s dramatic. No, we are not into discussing what Patty said, because that’s drama and he needs to just grow up of he‘s going to say that to you guys (the media). Ya know what? He has a stupid play in a game He sat, he was punished, just get over it and move on. We handled it. He doesn’t have to go to you guys and say that stuff. There. I’m addressing it and now I’ll go talk to him about it. Its not need to just say that”.
Miller was also asked if the Sabres leadership group approached Ron Rolston about giving Kaleta more time of:
“We don’t make lineup decisions. We’re plugged in. You guys think we have more power than we’ve got, man. We talk about this every year around trade deadline… when something comes up. We’re plugged in, we play. Sorry it’s a bad tone, but you caught me in a crappy night. He (Kaleta) doesn’t have to handle it like that., so we’ll deal with it internally”.
Beg your pardon, Ryan.
You called out your teammate, in the media. Yet, you want the team to handle the matter internally. You can't have it both ways.
Needless to say, Miller had some explaining to do once the team touched down in Montreal.
Kaleta's is a prideful guy, who's not a star in the league. PK36 is a mucker and a pest. He goes to the places on the ice where angels fear to tread so that his teammates can feel "comfortable" on the ice. He's also a member of Buffalo's veteran core. Hasn't Kaleta earned the right to be upset at his being benched?
Brian Duff from Sabres TV caught up with Ryan Miller for this exclusive interview at the team hotel in Montreal. Bottomline: Miller admitted that he was wrong to call out Kaleta. Miller alleges that he was reacting to the Kaleta quotes from earlier in the day in Sunday without heaving heard them in their proper context.
Thanks, sabres.com
Here's Kaleta from Sunday afternoon:
Thanks, sabres.com
This situation is beginning to unravel like a cheap sweater.
Nerves are frayed. Tempers are flaring. pressure is mounting on a daily basis.
Losing sucks.
Miller called out a teammate, then apologized for it.
How does this play out in the Sabres locker room?
Is Miller indirectly asking for a trade by speaking out about his teammates and the referees?
****
I went back and listened again to Miller's postgame presser from Sunday night, courtesy, WGR.
Miller was asked about the kaleta scratch, and then was asked to comment in Kaleta's comment that the winger hd to talk to the players to see if they still want him on the ice and on the team. In the interest of fairness to Miller, I didn't mention this quote in my original post.
Sabres captain, Jason Pominiville, said in his post game autopsy that he didn’t have time to react to the lost draw that eventually led to the Ovechkin goal at the 19 second mark of the first period of Sunday loss in Washington. Hodgson lost the draw cleanly, however, the wingers were charged with the task of getting their feet moving to get their sticks on the loose puck. Pommer couldn’t get coverage on the puck, nor Ovechkin because of the bang-bang nature of the play.
After the game, exasperated Sabres interim coach , Ron Rolston, disagreed with the captain.
“There’s a design for it… thats what I’m saying, we just didn’t execute on the play. First of all, you can’t lose the draw that clean, and secondly, we didn’t have the execution that we needed to on the play”.
Sounds like the coach is calling shenanigans on the captain.
Good on the coach. Its about time for Pominville to be held accountable. Afterall, this is his team, right? He's the leader, on and off the ice. He's the guy who the media grills when things are looking bleak like they are right now.
Pominville should be held accountable for his laissez-faire mentality on that, and many other lost draws. Its getting to be rather irksome watching Pominville trying to play pucks with his stick, while not moving his feet. He’s been looking a lot like “Zorro” the swashbuckler lately. He’s sword fighting for lose pucks rather than using his 6‘1 200 lb. frame to leverage guys off the puck. By no means am I criticizing Pommer for not hammering guys with thunderous body checks, because that is not his game at all. Pommer is a swift, heavy skater, when he’s engaged in the process and when he is moving his feet. Operative word: “when”.
Take a look at this mess. How can Pominville say that he had no time to react to Hodgson’s lost face off? He was within a stick length of the puck and Ovechkin, yet he blew the coverage and the red light cause a sunburn on the back of Ryan Miller’s neck.
There’s no excuse for Pominville’s passive play on that draw. That’s Ovechkin with the puck, nit some beer leaguer playing shinny at the Northtown Center. Its inexcusable to roll over and play dead on a face off at the 19 second mark of the first period of a must-win game. Its all the more galling when the error was committed by the team’s captain, the supposed leader of the group. We’ll never know it now because its retrospective analysis, however, what if Pommer makes the effort to tie up Ovechkin or he had won the puck and cleared the zone? Perhaps there’s no Ovechkin goal. Perhaps there’s no chance at all. Perhaps the Caps don’t earn the momentum. Perhaps the Sabres go the other way and score. Perhaps the Sabres win the game as a result of playing to NHL standards in Ryan Miller’s end of the rink. The Sabres are so vulnerable in their own end. Its maddening. Something has to give. This team will not compete for a playoff spot until it cleans up the offensive graffiti that is plastered all over its face off coverage.
Don’t even get me started on Jochen Hecht’s clean face off loss against Ottawa that resulted in the Chris Philipps goal.
The Sabres enter tonight's action ranked 29th in the NHL with a 45.9% face off win percentage. They lose 54% of their draws. They are not good in the dot. We know this. Their opponents know this. Seemingly, the Sabres players on the ice in those crucial face off situations also know this. What is being done to prevent the same litany of mistakes from happening again and again and again?
Its like the movie 'Groundhog Day".
Same crap, different day.
This face off loss crisis has been occurring on a regular basis since the first game of the season, yet the same offenders keep making the same lazy mistakes every game. Ruff tried to fix it before he was made the scapegoat for the continues mistakes on the ice.
Did you know that Steve Ott, a winger, is ranked 7th in the NHL with a 58.6% win rate? He trails Jonathon Toews, Joe Thornton, and Boyd Gordon by an eyelash. Otter is a sliver better than Pavel Datsyuk, Brian Boyle, Matt Cullen, David Krejci, Michal Handzus, and Travis Zajac-- who are all centres.
If Ott can win draws, why can't Hodgson (69th with 46.1%)? Ennis (81st with 41.2%)? Hecht ( not in the top 82 faceoff men)?
Who gets the blame now? Coach or players?
If I’m Rolston, I call my captain into the coach’s office in Montreal and I tell him that he has earned a front row seat in Suite 150. Healthy scratch in his home province of Quebec on Tuesday night. The reason? The vets and the kids follow the example set forth by the captain,and if he’s taking shortcuts and doing fly-bys on killers like Ovechkin, then it sends a message that its acceptable for all players to make the same lazy, passionless mistakes too.
Other players, namely Leopold, Myers, Kaleta, and Stafford have had to sit for their sins. Why not the captain? Is he immune from the wrath of Rolston?
Pat Kaleta is foaming at the mouth to play again. So I say sit Pommer and play Kaleta in his place.
Its a Sabres off-day in Montreal. All is quiet, and rightly so. This past weekend was a red-hot mess. Losses to Ottawa and Washington in back-to-back fashion have really dampened the spirit of the fans in Pegulaville. You better believe that organizational changes are on the way. I would not be surprised if Darcy Regier were on the phone to another NHL GM, or two, at this moment. The NHL GMs will be meeting in Toronto on Wednesday for their quarterly meetings. Trade seeds that were sewn weeks ago are now staring to come to fruition. The winds of change will be blowing through under achieving NHL towns like Buffalo in the days and weeks to come.
I'll update you later on news that I'm hearing from around the NHL.
In true denial fashion, I'm shifting my focus off the Sabres for now.
The best of seven QMJHL Playoffs begin Friday night at Le Colisee in Quebec City.
Fifth place Quebec will host the 12th place Chicoutimi.
The King Of The Red Devils, Patrick Roy, was a proud head coach immediately following Quebec’s blowout of Rimouski on Sunday. Roy was beaming about the play of his squad, and notably the excellence put forth by his Russian Rifle, Mikhail Grigorenko. Roy admitted that he’s happy to have his secret weapon back in Quebec:
"For a first game, it was solid. He (Grigo) moved the puck well on the power play. After a time, he had already played more than in most of his games [in Buffalo]. A guy like him should raise points, his confidence returned. And he took the shot [for his goal] shows that he is an exceptional player. You could see he was happy to play. I do not want to draw a parallel with me, but I was not disappointed by his return to junior at the time”.
Roy set forth his agenda for the upcoming playoffs:
"I do not see why a change [role] is not accepted, the guys are on a mission. Anyway, it would not fall into nothingness, we play four lines here, there are no passengers. Top 10 forwards will play at least 15 minutes per game in the playoffs. All this is fine, but this is going to bring to the table that will determine the impact of Grigo. If we lower our game a notch, it will not work. If we maintain the same attitude, it could get interesting. My feeling is good, the club is strong since late January. "
Thanks, Google Translator
Roy wasn’t shy about loading up Grigorenko’s ice time in his first game. The kid dominated the game and ate up nearly 20 minutes in his impressive Remparts return. The extra ice time didn’t faze Grigo one bit. He has been training hard in Buffalo for this type of physical exertion. Grigo talked about it after his one goal, three assist performance:
"I did a lot of stationary bike, recently I had a good heart rate and not be afraid to use that much. At first I was a little nervous because I wanted to play a good game. I think I've done offensively, but I may have made some mistakes defensively for my first game with the Remparts. More importantly, we won”.
Keep an eye on this kid and his uber-talented Remparts squad in the first round of The Q Playoffs.
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