Posts tagged EvgeniMalkin at FanHouse

The NHL Free Agent signing period kicked off a little more than an hour ago, and for the most part, what we've seen so far is teams making deals in order to clear some cap room. Here's a quick rundown of what's been confirmed so far:

The Edmonton Oilers dealt Raffi Torres to Columbus for Gilbert Brule, and also acquired Erik Cole from the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for defenseman Joni Pitkanen. Click here for details. Meanwhile, Carolina also signed ex-RSL defenseman Anton Babchuk.

Tampa Bay snagged winger Radim Vrbata away from Phoeinix.

The Anaheim Ducks signed winger Corey Perry to a contract extension.

The Calgary Flames obtained Rene Bourque from the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Red Wings have re-signed defenseman Brad Stuart.

Pat Lackey already wrote about Evgeni Malkin, but the Penguins also re-signed Pascal Dupuis.

The Devils re-signed Jay Pandolfo and Bryce Salvador, but said goodbye to Sergei Brylin.

First thoughts: The Brule deal with not be welcome in Edmonton, but the Cole deal is solid. I'm guessing with Vrbta signed the Lightning are done dealing with Brian Rolston, but you never know. And Chicago may be clearing the decks for a big signing.

Stick with us throughout the afternoon. I'm sure plenty of agents are pondering some big numbers right about now.

No matter what happens this afternoon, it appears that the Pittsburgh Penguins are going to take care of at least one huge part of their off-season puzzle today. Word has leaked out that Evgeni Malkin is expected to finalize his extension with the team and an announcement should be forthcoming either sometime this afternoon or tomorrow.

According to TSN, the deal is a pretty simple one in that it exactly mirrors Sidney Crosby's deal at 5 years and $8.7 million. Since Malkin's at about the same point in his career that Crosby was last summer (a good rookie year and a breakout second year), it makes a lot of sense. It works out to a discount for the Penguins over market value, since Malkin could probably make in excess of $10 million a year if he were to test free agency.

Malkin's deal takes effect starting with the 2009/2010 season since his rookie contract applies to next year, so Ray Shero should have some idea of what kind of cap space he's got to work with when dealing with guys like Brooks Orpik and Marian Hossa today. As it looks right now, it's going to be about a $17 million yearly hit for Malkin and Crosby, which isn't too bad for two of the best players in the world.

Early this morning, the news broke that the new Russian Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) was poised to offer Evgeni Malkin an obscene amount of cash to play hockey back in his home country. It seemed like a scary rumor for Penguin fans at first, but it doesn't look like it has any legs. First, the IIHF condemned the KHL's move by threatening sanctions (as in "No Olympics or World Championships for Russia) for signing away NHL players under contract, then Malkin's agent said that his client has no intention of leaving Pittsburgh by choice:

"He's not interested in (playing in Russia)," Barry said. " He wants to stay in Pittsburgh. He wants them to keep, hopefully, as many of these players together (as possible) and he wants to try to make a run next year."

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that Malkin just might end up playing in Pittsburgh next year. Despite the KHL's boasting of having more money than the NHL, the level of competition will certainly be higher in the North American League. So long as it's the best league in the world, it's going to be difficult to pry the best players in the world away.

Boy, it must suck to be a Pittsburgh Penguins fan these days.

Consider: Last night you went to bed with the rumor that the team was ready to ship Evgeni Malkin to the LA Kings still dancing in your head. Today, you wake up and get confirmation that it was just a load of hooey.

But once you put that story aside, you see another. Except, unlike the last rumor, this one is based in cold, hard economic facts that could very well result in the team losing Malkin and getting nothing in return.

What's up now? Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star is reporting that several teams in the new Russian-sponsored Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) are ready to make Malkin the highest paid player in the world when his entry level contract with the Penguins expires next year. The figure: $12.5 million per year, roughly the equivalent of $15 million in the North America thanks to the fact that the Russians will let him draw his salary tax free.

What's worse, Westhead is also reporting that any KHL player who is signed away from an NHL club will not count against the team's salary cap. That's the sort of rule you only institute if you're preparing to go to war for players. Combine it all with the fact that there is no player transfer agreement at all in place between the NHL and Europe as a whole, and you have the distinct potential for all sorts of mischief.

The best hockey blog you're probably not reading these days is Inside the Kings, where Rich Hammond, deputy sports editor at the Los Angeles Daily News, is the man in charge. About 30 minutes ago, he got the skinny on the Evgeni Malkin to LA rumor that Bruce Garrioch floated recently. This comes straight from LA GM Dean Lombardi:

``There's absolutely nothing to it,'' Lombardi said of rumors that the Kings might trade for Malkin. ``I talked to (the Penguins) as part of my due diligence to talk to every team. Then I hear all these reports that we're getting him. I had to call Ray (Shero, Penguins GM) this morning and say, `I hear I'm trading for him. What am I giving you?'''

Meanwhile, across town at the LA Times, Lisa Dilman has her own interview with Lombardi where he declares he's keeping the second pick in the draft even though three teams have made him offers. And though it's widely though that Lombardi would select defenseman Drew Doughty of the Guelph Storm, he declined to say anything definite about who he would pick.

Pittsburgh, breathe easy now.

With the Salary Cap hovering over the Pittsburgh Penguins like a dark cloud over a Sunday picnic (cue dark and evil background muzak), many pundits and fans have wondered if the Penguins will be able to keep the dynamic duo of Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby together for the long-term. Given the Penguins are having to spend big bucks to keep the likes of Ryan Whitney and Marc-Andre Fleury in the fold, can and will the Penguins be able to have enough cap room to keep Malkin while icing a successful club?

It has been widely speculated that Malkin would demand "Ovechkin!!" money, and might price himself out of the Penguins ability to keep him. Would the Pens have to trade Malkin rather than risk losing him on the Restricted Free Agent market to some poacher?

Well, it appears that Pens fans need not worry any longer. Reports from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and TSN.ca indicate that the Pens and Malkin are close on a new deal which will see Malkin and Crosby stay together for a very long time.

"I'm thinking maybe five or six years," said Malkin, set to enter the final season of his three-year entry-level deal. "I'm an easy guy to deal with. I'd love to stay in Pittsburgh."

Malkin told the newspaper he does not need to exceed the $8.7 million salary of captain Sidney Crosby but sources tell TSN the likely target for Malkin is a five-year deal worth more than $9 million per season.

Obviously, this bodes well for both the Penguins and the league. Having THE dynamic duo together and maintaining a popular 'dynasty' (for lack of a better term) will provide the fans with a must-see team for many years, and give the league a team that it can promote. As great as the Wings are, their style of play, and their quiet superstars, just aren't as marketable as the Golden Boys.

Part of me worries that the Pens could end up like the Tampa Bay Lightning: Stacked with a few highly-paid superstars and a whole bunch of chaff. On the other hand, the Pens have a much better farm system, plenty more quality depth, and a salary cap that continues to rise. The future is bright.

Just when I thought the season was over, they keep pulling me back in!

Ok, enough of channeling Al Pacino in a movie all serious fans of cinema would like to forget. The NHL is back, if only for a night, with its annual awards presentation. From what we've heard so far, it's looking like a huge night for Alex Ovechkin, who is fully expected to walk away with both the Hart and Pearson Trophies.

Still curious? Well, be sure to tune in to Versus/CBC tonight at 7:00 p.m. U.S. EDT. In the meantime, we convened a short FanHouse roundtable to discuss the big four awards: The Hart, the Norris, the Vezina and the Calder.

Losing is something that I thought I could handle. When I'm not writing here at FanHouse, I spend a lot of time writing a Pittsburgh Pirates blog. When I was a freshman and a junior in college at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, I routinely plunked down my money to watch awful hockey teams lose games. Still, despite absorbing literally thousands of losses as a sports fan, I find myself staring blankly at a computer screen right now trying to describe what happened to my Pittsburgh Penguins tonight and every time I think about what just happened, part of me goes numb.

There's something special that happens when a community attaches itself to a team. Pittsburgh loves its Steelers, but that's exactly what Pittsburgh loves. The Steelers. Football players and their personalities blend into faceless robots on the field. The Steelers have a mystique and an aura that Pittsburgh will always love, no matter who pulls on black and gold jerseys. Hockey is different. It's a team sport that's defined by individuals and it was the players, not the team, that Pittsburgh attached itself to this year.

This Penguin team was special to watch because we watched them gel and grow before our eyes this year. On October 5th in Raleigh, they were a team that was strongly dependent on Sidney Crosby, waiting for their star to step up and make something happen. They looked like a team that was at least a year away from truly contending. On June 4th in Pittsburgh, they were a complete hockey team that had exceeded expectations, fell just short in crunch-time and watched the Red Wings hoist the Stanley Cup with a million "what-ifs" dancing in their heads.

Full disclosure: I'm a Penguins fan. As if you couldn't tell.

As the clock ticked down on the Penguins' season in the third period tonight, all I could think was, "No, not like this. How can the team I watched all season go down without a fight like this?" The third period of Game 5 was all Red Wings, from the drop of the puck to Pavel Datsyuk's tying goal, to Brian Ralfaski's go-ahead goal, all the way into the waning moments of what seemed to be the Penguins' season. As time ticked off, the Pens showed some life, but when does Stanley get put back into his case with an empty net? Apparently, the answer to that question is, "When Max Talbot says so."

Somehow, some way, the Penguins found a way to get things into overtime, at which point Marc-Andre Fleury took out his pen and rewrote the definition of "stealing a game for his team." 55 saves on 58 shots? Are you kidding me? He somehow kept the Penguins in things time and time again until Petr Sykora took a pass right on the tape from Evgeni Malkin and snapped home the game winner on the power play at the halfway point of the third overtime.

Are the Penguins going to win this series? I don't know. Honestly, it's still a pretty freaking long shot. What I do know is that no one can say this team didn't leave it all on the ice. After both guys have been excoriated in the press for ten days, Malkin hit Sykora with the pass that set up the winning goal, and they were just two guys out of a whole team that laid it on the line tonight.

In North America, best-of-seven series have been taking place for over 100 years. Between Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NHL, countless best-of-seven final rounds have been played. It goes without saying that in some, probably even more than you think, the less talented team has won the championship. Four wins in seven games is not an impossible task, even when playing a more skilled or talented team. The key factor in the teams that have pulled the upset is that no matter what people have told them, they don't believe their opponent is better than them.

The problem with the Pittsburgh Penguins right now isn't that the Detroit Red Wings are a better hockey team than they are, because I could've told you that before the series started. The problem is that the Penguins know it.

This young Penguin team didn't care that Ottawa crushed them last year. They didn't care that New York's system was supposed to slow them down. They didn't care that Philadelphia had just pantsed the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. For some reason, though, they do care that they're up against the Joe, the octopi, Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Osgood, Lidstrom, and the President's Trophy winners.