Toronto Sun: Joe Warmington has an update on Brandon Sudgen with comments from players union spokesman Jonathan Weatherdon and agent Scott Nornton.
Daily Gleaner: Bill Hunt has an interview with Rob Hennigar on how hard he trained this summer for his first NHL camp and what's ahead at prospects camp as he wants to get into an NHL preseason game.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Frans Nielsen has the four year contract but make no mistake this twenty five year old will be one player he has to compete against along with Ben Walter and Jeremy Colliton.
The Star: Cliff Fletcher had some strong statements about how much he thinks his club could struggle this season declaring they do not have one top six forward aside from Nik Antropov but some players were on the fringe of that.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Is that Jason Blake's agent I hear on the telephone for Mr Fletcher? Could be a record for someone hired on an interim basis but I suppose if the expectations are played down there is less long-term blame.
How does a club install an interim gm this long then hire a new coach, what's going to happen when a new gm is finally named and he is stuck with a coach he did not hire?
CamWest News/Several outlets: Has the latest on Alexandre Radlov who now wants to return to play hockey in North America according to NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly but did not elaborate when he would return as he defended the players breach of contract because he did not do it in any kind of dismissive way.
NYI Fan Central Comments:
I did not see read about anything dismissive from Alexei Yashin or Keith Tkaczuk when they held out under contract either but they still breached their contract and the court of public opinion did the rest. A player signs an agreement they have to live up to that or do not sign it in the first place.
This is kind of reading like a Marx brothers comedy between Bill Daly, Alexander Medvedev and Rene Fasel.
I can almost see why Garth Snow and a lot of general managers simply do not want the problems that come with this process. Draft results do not lie with the recent trends in terms of where players are selected.
It's ok Mr Medvedev decided to finally decided to hold the line on his agreement not to sign players with NHL contracts but Radulov is still playing in his league, Rene Fasel has not done anything to prevent it and now it seems his claims of the NHL signing Russian players under contract was a lot of non-sense or he's simply letting it pass which is not the right thing or fair to those Russian clubs.
If Radulov has a valid NHL contract he should play for only Nashville, if those players with Russian contracts are the property of those clubs they should not be playing for NHL clubs or their affiliates and Mr Medvedev should stand by his claims.
It's not that tough but of course this is all about money and making up the rules along the way.
Finally I absolutely should have included Tom Gulitti who covers the Devils for the Record and does an outstanding job with the Devil coverage in his Fire and Ice blog here when I blogged on Atlantic division writers the other day.