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Report: Hackett Accepts QO |
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TVA Sports reported Renaud Lavoie tweeted that Sabres goalie of the future candidate Matt Hackett has accepted Buffalo's one year qualifying offer. He will earn $751,000 next season. Its a two-way deal. Hackett and Johan Larsson, and the first rounder that became Nikita Zadorov were traded to Buffalo from Minnesota in exchange for former captain Jason Pominville. Hackett injured his knee on April 12 after making the most of his Buffalo audition after the Ryan Miller trade to St. Louis. Don't let his 1-6-1 record mislead you. Hackett played as well as could be expected for the Sabres in the late stages of the worst season in franchise history. He posted a decent .908 save percentage. Made 217 saves and allowed 22 goals against in 426 minutes TOI.
I like Hackett's aggressive style and I hope that he has made a full recovery from his injury. He has a glorious opportunity to compete in training camp for one of the two bar tending jobs in Buffalo, provided he is healthy. Hackett was supposed to undergo surgery. However, the Sabres haven't commented on whether or not he had a procedure done. Perhaps more will be learned about Hackett's recovery during next week's prospects development camp.
Other than the Hackett report, all else is quite on the Western New York hockey front after an eventful, highly successful past week in Pegulaville that saw Tim Murray draft Samson Reinhart, and Brendan Lemieux, among other useful building blocks. Murray also signed UFAs Brian Gionta, Matt Moulson, and Andrej Meszaros, and Cody McCormick. He also traded for D-man Josh Gorges.
Around the NHL, things are heating up with respect to restricted free agents.
I suspect that Sabres GM Tim Murray has been addressing the next contract of center Tyler Ennis now that the NHL Draft occurred and the unrestricted free agency market has opened. Ennis signed a two-year bridge contract just before the announcement of the NHL lockout in September 2012. Ennis will be a key cog in the buffalo re-tooling and will be looking at a long term contract extension. Earlier this week, Murray inked power forward Marcus Foligno to a nice two-year bridge deal.
There are a galaxy of young, talented, noteworthy NHL star RFAs waiting to learn more about the direction that their clubs intend to take with them. Among them are PK Subban, Tyler Ennis, Lars Eller, Nail Yakupov, Justin Schultz, Ryan Johansen, Jakub Silfverberg, Devante Smith-Pelly, Sami Vatanen, Robin Lehner, Nino Niederreiter, Jason Zucker, Darcy Keumper, Tommy Wingels, Jason Demers, Derrick Brassard, Mats Zuccarelo, Casey Cizikas, Calvin De Hann, Reilly Smith, Torey Krug, Linden Vey, Chris Tanev, Vladimir Sobotka, Jaden Schwartz, Brandon Sutter, Tomas Tatar, Danny Dekeyser, Cody Eakin, Antoine Roussel, Tyson Barrie, and many more.
Today is July 5.
NHL players who are eligible to do so can file for arbitration.
At 5pm today, the deadline for player-elected salary arbitration will commence.
Also today at 5pm EDT is the deadline for RFA offer sheets for first group of club-elected arbitration. See the curious case of Ryan O'Reilly.
On Sunday July 6 at 5 pm EDT will be the second deadline for club-elected salary arbitration
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More to come....
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