Today is a sad day at NHL Hot Stove as we close up shop.

I would like to thank every one who has ever contributed, commented and read our site. It was a fantastic ride which unfortunately we can no longer keep up.

Myself and David Strehle are taking on bigger roles at RLDHockey.net while Dustin Leed and The Hockey Guys has been generous enough to give a home to our other excellent contributors. Please be kind enough to give both sites a read.

By David Strehle
NHL Hot Stove Managing Editor

Amid a huge shake up in team chemistry this summer, some things have remained a constant for the Philadelphia Flyers.  There is a report today from CSNPhilly’s Tim Panaccio via twitter that the club made a move to keep a part of their defensive core intact, signing Braydon Coburn to a four-year, $18 million contract extension.

Photo courtesy of jbehindtheglass.com

Coburn stood to become an unrestricted free agent after the campaign before signing the new deal.

At 6′ 5″ and 220 pounds, the 26-year-old provides the Flyers with a rare blend of size, speed, and toughness on the Philadelphia blue line.  Coburn has the ability to make the quick outlet pass, along with his skating stride and mobility, which enables him to skate the puck out of the zone and on the rare occasion, jump into an offensive foray.

Coburn was the 8th overall selection in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft by the Thrashers, but things never completely panned out for him in Atlanta.  He played just 38 games over two seasons with the Thrashers, picking up five assists and 34 PIMs.

Acquired on February 24th, 2007 in exchange for an aging defender in Alexei Zhitnik, Coburn’s arrival in Philadelphia late in the campaign was one of the  most positive occurrences in the Flyers worst-ever season.

The defensive partner of Kimmo Timonen, Coburn has seen his offensive numbers decrease in each of the past three seasons.  After a nine goal and 36  point first-full year with the Flyers, his numbers have dropped to seven and 28 in 2008-09, and five and 19 in 2009-10.  Last season, the Shaunavon, Saskatchewan-native notched two goals, 16 points, 53 PIMs, but was a +15.  

In 341 contests with the Orange-and-Black, the longest-tenured Flyer has scored 26 goals and recorded 105 points, while racking up 294 PIMs.  In 54 playoff games, Coburn has scored twice, while recording 16 points and 49 PIMs.

Thus far in 14 games this season, Coburn has recorded three assists and 19 PIMs, while posting a +1 rating.

If you have any comments or questions, you can email the author at dstrehle@nhlhotstove.com.  You can also follow him on Twitter – @David_Strehle

By Alexander Monaghan
President

Yesterday, we let you in on our contest to play a ‘One Day FREE Fantasy Contest‘ to win $100 in cash prizes from Draft Steet. Well, I signed up, How about you?

Here’s my lineup, I challenge you to beat this roster:

LW: Zach Parise — $11,018
LW: Daniel Sedin — $14,799

RW: Bryan Little — $5,941
RW: Martin St. Louis — $13,081

C: Mark Letestu — $5,990
C: Valtteri Filppula — $6,118

D: Niklas Kronwall — $6,547
D: P.K. Subban — $7,817

G: Jonathan Quick — $20,665
G: Brian Gionta — $7,976

Do you have what it takes to defeat a fantasy hockey expert? CLICK HERE to sign up for free and register for NHL Hot Stove $100 Freeroll on DraftStreet.com. Entry is free of charge while you get a chance of earning $100. No brainer if you ask me…

If you haven’t heard, there is a new trend in the world of fantasy sports. Fantasy enthusiasts all over the country are now participating in daily fantasy leagues for cash on DraftStreet.com. We’ve partnered up with Draftstreet to do a FREE one-day fantasy league with $100 in prizes exclusively for NHL Hot Stove readers.

This is a salary cap league where everyone tries to assemble the best team out of the available players. You will have a $100,000 budget to build a team of 2 LW’s, 2 RW’s, 2 Center’s, 2 Defensive players, 1 Goalie, and a FLEX. Each NHL player has been allocated a price based on their expected fantasy performance. For example, star LW Alex Ovechkin costs $14,331 where as RW Jarome Iginla costs $12,256.

You can adjust your roster up until the contest start’s on Thursday 10/13 at 7:00pm ET at which time your rosters will lock and the Live Scoreboard will be available.

CLICK HERE to sign up for free and register for NHL Hot Stove $100 Freeroll on DraftStreet.com

By David Strehle
NHL Hot Stove Creative Editor

The Philadelphia Flyers came to terms with restricted free agent forward Wayne Simmonds today on a 2-year contract extension worth $1.75 million per year (per CSNPhilly’s Tim Panaccio on Twitter).

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

The 6′ 2″, 183-pound winger came to the Flyers as part of a package for former-captain Mike Richards in a shocking June 23rd deal with the Los Angeles Kings.

A high-energy player, Simmonds has scored 39 goals, recorded 93 points and 264 PIMs in 240 career NHL games over three seasons, all in Los Angeles.  In 12 postseason contests, the 22-year-old posted three goals and six points, while amassing 29 PIMs.

A native of Scarborough, Ontario, Simmonds is part of Paul Holmgren’s wave of change that has been made to the Philadelphia forward ranks during the offseason.

There had been a bit of a delay in an expected announcement of a deal.  It was rumored that Holmgren and Simmonds’ agent, Eustace King, were discussing Simmonds’ role with the club moving forward.

Apparently the two were able to reach a mutual accord Thursday.

After the signing, CapGeek lists the Flyers with just under $3.328 million left in available cap space – and that is still without Max Talbot’s reworked 5-year, $9 million contract (cap hit of $1.8 million annually) that is supposed to be completed sometime in the near future.

If you have any comments or questions, you can email the author at dstrehle@nhlhotstove.com.  You can also follow him on Twitter – @David_Strehle.

For most hockey fans there are two seasons. The trade deadline and free agency. Both usually have frenzied GMs sitting in their offices making deals that make no sense to the common man. Yet, there has been created a certain lore surrounding the trade deadline. It has come to be THE day by which a teams destiny will be decided, yet in most cases that is far from the truth.

Last season once again saw more deals than any other year at the deadline, but it was the quality that was concerning. Raffi Torres going to Buffalo for Nathan Paetch was the biggest deal of the day, and that tells you about all you need to know about recent trade deadlines.

Oh sure we all love the lead up to it and all the specualtion that surrounds it, but often all ther hype leaves you dissapointed. Consider for a minute the teams which have benefitted in recent times from deals they made at the deadline. Edmonton did well picking up Dwayne Roloson a few years back. Carolina that same year added Doug Weight. Those deals helped each club reach the finals and helped the Hurricanes win their first Stanley Cup, but beyond that who can recall franchiuse altering deals?

Last season the Chicago Blackhawks picked up Kim Johnsson and Nick Boynton, hardly houshold names at the deadline. Their opponents in the Stanley Cup Finals the Philadelphia Flyers? I can recall them doing anything on deadline day. They picked up Ville Leino a few days before, but thats about it and both clubs battled all the way to the finals.

This season we have seen a completely different trend. GMs may have realized that deadline deals dont necessarily make your team any more likely to win the Stanley Cup than winning an Oscar means that Russel Crowe can act. Yet it’s perception.

We have seen a flurry of deals prior to the deadline this year which is not only strange but unheard of. Most years deals are left till the last minute. GMs have become wiser. If you’re gonna make a playoff push you make the deals prior to everyone else making them. As well the quality of deals has improved.

The deal this year between St.Louis and Colorado  and Pittsburgh and Dallas were old time hockey trades. Players for players. Not only that they were young players for young players something very rare in this day and age. Jarko Ruutu for a 6th round pick is far more common of a trade deadline transaction.

The new trend has us all waiting with even more bated breath now as we have come to discover that maybe these GMs are looking to actually shake things up a bit this year. In the end the trade deadline is more a fucntion for fans to enjoy than it really is a medium for building winning hockey team. No other sport has a day quite like it. The NBA comes closest and they usually dont have the amount of deals we see in hockey, which makes it unique for sports fans.

Hopefully we will be discussing some big trades that took place that day, but for now lets take the trade deadline for what it is, another day in which for just one day, the fans have something to enjoy and we all get to play armchair GM for a day.

Kyle Okposo talks to reporters

New York Islander fans had something to smile about today, the Islanders announced that star forward Kyle Okposo would return to the lineup for tomorrow’s game against the Washington Capitals.

Okposo has been sidelined after having shoulder surgery to fix a torn labrum he suffered during a preseason scrimmage held in September.

Okposo was alerted Sunday that he would he be making his season debut Thursday. “I found out on Sunday and I was pretty happy,” Okposo told reporters. “Big smile ear to ear all week and I’m just excited to get going.”

Last week Okposo told Islanders Hockey Blog that he could pretty much do everything, but just needed time for the smaller muscles in his shoulder to become stronger. At that point Okposo still had not had any physical contact, which in his words, was the next step in his road back to playing.

A week later Okposo has tested the shoulder and felt that it was battle ready.  “It’s good, it’s strong and it’s strong as it was in camp,” Okposo said after Wednesday’s practice. “I just have to go out there and play my game.”

Okposo had 19 goals and 33 assists for 52 points last season with the New York Islanders. Okposo had also been an Olympic candidate for team USA , but was passed over in the final round of cuts.

Christian Arnold
NHLHS New York Islanders Correspondent
Twitter: @isleshockeyblog
Email: ChristianArn312@aol.com

Based on Matthew Pouliot’s series on Circling the Bases, I have decided restore the rosters for every NHL team. Like Pouliot, I have established some ground rules for my selections.

1. Each team contains players they originally drafted or signed before any other NHL team. This includes players drafted and not signed, as well as European free agents coming over at an older age.
2. I have chosen to leave retired players off the list, and lean toward players in the AHL rather than those deported (KHL, SEL, DEL, etc.).

Essentially I am choosing the best available players for a team to succeed in the current NHL season. All 30 teams will be covered, with grades assigned to forwards, defense and goaltending. After all 30 articles are written, they will be ranked in order. This series’ intent is to reward or shame NHL scouts.

Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, Kevin Lowe and Grant Fuhr. This group won 4 Stanley Cups together. It’s almost impossible to fill those skates. Check that, it IS impossible to fill those skates. The Oilers have fallen on hard times since the glory days of the 1980’s. Today’s squad can barely fill out an NHL calibre defensive 6. 3 of the D are currently in the minors and 2 of those have never played an NHL game outside of preseason. How the mighty have fallen.

Forwards:
Definitely not the high powered group that struck fear into every goalie they faced during the 80’s. Still, the forwards would have to be the strength of this team. With a formidable checking line sitting on the bench, the Oilers should have little problem putting the puck into the opponents net.

Matthew Lombardi – Sam Gagner – Ales Hemsky
Ryan Smyth – Shawn Horcoff – Jason Arnott
Jason Chimera – Mike Comrie – Miroslav Satan
Andrew Cogliano – Rob Schremp – Jordan Eberle
Bench: Marc-Antoine Pouliot,  Zack Stortini, Fernando Pisani, Georges Laraque, Curtis Glencross

Familiarity is the key. Four of the top 6 are currently line mates on their current NHL rosters, so as the old saying goes “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Smyth can still stand in front of the goalie, take a beating and score like no one else. ‘Captain Canada’ was left of the Canadian National Men’s roster, for what I believe to be the first time in his active career, for the coming Olympics. I believe this was due mainly to an early season injury that caused him to miss 15 games. Satan, after sitting the beginning of the season, has returned to the NHL and while playing on the third line for Boston, is showing that he can still produce and is good for 40-50 points a season. The rest of the line-up is filled with young players that have shown a lot of promise.

Grade: B+

Defence:
From being a “Who’s who” of NHL Defensemen to a “who’s that?” can’t be a good thing. With only 2 defensemen having played more than a season in the NHL and another 2 never seeing a regular season game, the defence is in for a rough time.

Tom Poti – Danny Syvret
Mathieu Roy – Matt Greene
Alex Plante – Jeff Petry
Bench: Theo Peckham, Taylor Chorney

Poti and Syvret have proven themselves to be serviceable defensemen in their careers, but neither is a top pair guy, yet. Roy and Green are better suited for clean-up minutes, but instead are forced into playing 15-20 minutes a night as top 4 D on this weak corps. Plante and Petry are the unknowns in this group. Plante is a solid, stay at home type of defenseman who can skate the puck out of harm’s way, and may one day become a top 4 guy. Petry was named to the CCHA All-Rookie Team in 2008. Hopefully this pair can move up to the top and play off of each other. Only time and steady development will tell for sure.

Grade: C-

Goaltending:
Andy Moog, Grant Fuhr…Deslauriers? Yes sir you read that right, Deslauriers. Well actually it’s Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers, but come on, how would you get that to fit on the back of a jersey. Being forced into the starters role earlier than expected this season due to an injury to Nikolai Khabibulin, Deslauriers is the only goalie in the Edmonton Oilers system with any significant NHL experience. If you can call 36 games significant.  Conklin should backstop this team on a full-time basis, helping this team stay afloat.

Ty Conklin
Jeff Deslauriers
Devan Dubnyk
Olivier Roy

Outside Conklin, this trio of goalies has a grand total of 44 NHL games to their credit. In his 8 games this season Dubnyk has yet to taste victory compiling a 0-5-1 record with a 3.92 GAA and a 0.869 save %. Hardly inspiring numbers for Oiler fans. Roy may be the dark horse in the group. Many, me included, feel that he should have been added to the Canadian Juniors in favour of incumbent starter Jake Allen, who just never got it going in pre-tournament games and that carried over into the tournament where he gave up 10 goals to a strong US team in 2 games. He makes up for his supposed lack of size, an even 6’ while the rest of the league is moving to goalies in the 6’3” range, by being technically sound in his positioning. Again, only time will tell how this young group of goalies develops.

Grade: D+

Based on Matthew Pouliot’s series on Circling the Bases, I have decided restore the rosters for every NHL team. Like Pouliot, I have established some ground rules for my selections.

1. Each team contains players they originally drafted or signed before any other NHL team. This includes players drafted and not signed, as well as European free agents coming over at an older age.
2. I have chosen to leave retired players off the list, and lean toward players in the AHL rather than those deported (KHL, SEL, DEL, etc.).

Essentially I am choosing the best available players for a team to succeed in the current NHL season. All 30 teams will be covered, with grades assigned to forwards, defense and goaltending. After all 30 articles are written, they will be ranked in order. This series’ intent is to reward or shame NHL scouts.

Detroit:  The model every GM tries to emulate.  What’s that saying? “Often imitated, never duplicated” well that could not be truer of the Detroit Red Wings.  Drafting has definitely been a strength for Detroit.  Well it would have to be when you’re constantly finishing in the top five of the league and drafting in the bottom five as a result.

Such stars as Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk and Tomas Holmstrom (their current top line by the way) all drafted after the 6th round, and none higher then 171st overall and as low as 257th, Detroit most definitely made the most of their draft picks.  Sixteen of the 22 players on this list are still in the Red Wings organization.  How many other teams can boast that fact? Not many.

Forwards:

This has been their strength in the draft.  This is hard to say considering you have Nicklas Lidstrom on D.  Their forward group can go head-to-head with any line-up in the NHL, a bonus for Detroit considering eight of their 13 forwards are still in the organization.

Henrik Zetterberg – Pavel Datsyuk – Tomas Holmstrom
Johan Franzen – Valtteri Filppula – Tomas Fleischmann
Slava Kozlov – Darren Helm – Mike Knuble
Sean Avery – Justin Abdelkader – Tomas Kopecky
Bench: Ville Leino

Their top 2 lines are almost identical to what is on the current roster, with the exception of Fleischmann.  Fleischmann’s dual wing eligibility makes him an added threat to opponents and a treasure to his team.   When Knuble, currently the right wing to Alexander Ovechkin plays on the 3rd line, it should tell you something about the strength of this group.

The bottom six consists of all grinders with a bit of a scoring touch, so you can never really rest easy against any group that Detroit decides to put on the ice.  The one concern with this group is the lack of youth ready to take over.  However, Detroit has always been known to bring their prospects along slowly allowing them to develop all aspects of their game, so I wouldn’t be too concerned with that after all.

Grade: A

Defence:

The defensive corps is what they dress on a nightly basis, save for Quincey, who now plays for Colorado.  Lead by two of the best, Lidstrom (considered by many to be the best to ever play D, although personally I think Bobby Orr is the greatest defensemen of ever) and Kronwall, the defence on this team is pretty rock solid.

Nicklas Lidstrom – Niklas Kronwall
Jonathan Ericsson – Kyle Quincey
Derek Meech – Brett Lebda
Bench: Jacub Kindl

What else needs to be said about a defence group that is in essence the same one that wears the Winged Wheel on a nightly basis?  Quincey has put up 20 points so far while still managing to have a +6 rating, pretty good numbers for a 3-4 defenseman.  The rest of the corps is very serviceable 4-6 D men on any team.

Grade: B+

Goaltenders:

The one area of weakness in the scouting for Detroit would have to be Goaltending.  This is funny when you consider Osgood has won three Stanley Cups.  Osgood’s problems have been in regular season consistency.  Shown by the number of goalies Detroit has brought in during his tenure to “replace” him.

Jimmy Howard
Chris Osgood

Howard has been nothing short of spectacular this season piling up an 18-10-4 record with a 2.20 GAA and a .927 SV%  Those numbers have been good enough to take over the starting duties from Osgood, but we’ll see what happens come playoff time.  If Howard can continue this pace moving forward in his career, goaltending may turn into a strength for Detroit’s scouting staff.  Only time will tell for sure.

Grade: C+

Jose Simoes
NHLHS Storyteller
jsimoes@nhlhotstove.com

Based on Matthew Pouliot’s series on Circling the Bases, I have decided restore the rosters for every NHL team. Like Pouliot, I have established some ground rules for my selections.

1. Each team contains players they originally drafted or signed before any other NHL team. This includes players drafted and not signed, as well as European free agents coming over at an older age.
2. I have chosen to leave retired players off the list, and lean toward players in the AHL rather than those deported (KHL, SEL, DEL, etc.).

Essentially I am choosing the best available players for a team to succeed in the current NHL season. All 30 teams will be covered, with grades assigned to forwards, defense and goaltending. After all 30 articles are written, they will be ranked in order. This series’ intent is to reward or shame NHL scouts.

You would expect a more talented roster with nine first round picks and eight of those in the top 10.  Unfortunately, this is a very green team with Rick Nash the most experienced of the Blue Jackets draft picks.  While that fact would not necessarily be a bad thing to have, the next player on the list played almost half the games and already left your organization, definitely a bad thing.

On a team that for the most part is still waiting for their prospects to develop, it’s hard to say exactly what their strength is.

Forwards:

So many players playing out of position and on lines that they should not be on which speaks volumes about the Blue Jackets drafting struggles.  Nash is the only established NHLer playing where he should be.  The forward corps is full of potential, but potential only gets you in the door.  Producing is what keeps you on the roster.

Rick Nash – Gilbert Brule – Jakub Voracek

Nikita Filatov – Derick Brassard – Tim Jackman

Alexandre Picard – Dan Fritsche – Jared Boll

Tom Sestito – Andrew Murray – Derek Dorsett

Bench - Maksim Mayorov

With very little production help for Nash, this team is going to struggle to score goals.  Providing Filatov returns to the Blue Jackets next season, and Ken Hitchcock loosens his reigns, Nash may finally get some scoring help.  Filatov is a naturally gifted scorer and I watched in amazement a few years ago as he dazzled in the World Juniors for Russia, scoring eight goals in 2009.  With six top 10 draft picks, you hope that this squad can fulfill its potential.  Only time will tell.

Grade: C

Defence:

Definitely not the strength of the scouting staff to say the least.  With only 1 bona fide Top four defensemen drafted, this corps is going to give up a lot of shots.  Hopefully they buy the goalies very nice Christmas presents.

Rostislav Klesla – Aaron Johnson

Ole-Kristian Tollefsen – Kris Russell

Marc Methot – John Moore

It was a struggle to find 6 NHL calibre defensemen that the Blue Jackets have drafted and I’m still struggling to find them.  Aside from Klesla, who’s currently on the IR, the defence is filled with 3rd pair defensemen at best.  Top pick John Moore has yet to play an NHL game and is currently playing in the OHL.

Grade: C-

Goaltenders:

If I had to pick an area of drafting strength, I guess I’d have to say it was in between the pipes.  Leclaire and Mason could be a very formidable duo on any roster.  I don’t think I can stress COULD any more then I’m about to.

Pascal Leclaire

Steve Mason

Dan LaCosta

With both goalies having career save percentages hovering around .900 and a very inexperienced defence corps playing in front of them, they will constantly be facing 35-40 shots a night and giving up 3+ goals a game.  Combine that with a forward group that is going to be struggling to score goals and it means both goalies are going to have to improve significantly for Columbus to have any success.  Mason currently is in the middle of what hopefully will just be a sophomore slump.  If he can find the “I don’t know what” that he had in his rookie campaign that produced a 33-20-0-7 record with 2.29 GAA and 10 shutouts, the goaltending situation in Columbus greatly improves.  If Leclaire can remember that stopping a puck with your face hurts when you’re not wearing a mask and can get into more than a handful of games, the situation almost takes care of itself.

Here’s hoping 2010-2011 is better for Blue Jackets goalies then 2009-2010 was.

Grade: B-

Jose Simoes
NHLHS Storyteller
jsimoes@nhlhotstove.com