In today’s NHL rumors rundown, there is more chatter about who the Toronto Maple Leafs might be interested in on the trade market. With news that Morgan Rielly will go on LTIR, the team is extremely shorthanded on their blue line.
The Edmonton Oilers are awaiting news on Jack Campbell after the goaltender took a puck to the face while sitting on the bench during the game with New Jersey and an NHL insider tried to clarify comments he made about a rumored trade between the Vancouver Canucks and Ottawa Senators.
Maple Leafs Eyeing Vatrano, Timmins
The Maple Leafs have placed Morgan Rielly on LTIR with a knee injury. As such the team might have little choice but to trade for a defenseman. Rielly took one shift after his collision with Kyle Palmieri in Monday’s game and then went straight to the Leafs’ dressing room. The team is now down their top three blueliners in Jake Muzzin, TJ Brodie, and Rielly and it’s going to be incredibly hard to maintain momentum if they have a crippled defensive corps. As per reports, Rielly had imaging done Tuesday, which provided more clarity on how bad the injury was.
Elliotte Friedman said on the recent 32 Thoughts podcast, “All I’ve heard from the Ducks is Toronto having some interest in Frank Vatrano, which I think makes a lot of sense, left-hand shot, guy can score, but someone said to me they can’t even do at 50%, it’s 1.8M, it’s not something they think they can fix.”
He also notes that there is interest in the Arizona Coyotes’ Connor Timmins: “I had a couple of people reach out to me and say they think Toronto is one of the teams that is interested.” When asked why he said that his previous history playing with Rasmus Sandin is a big selling feature.
Campbell Hit by Errant Puck
As per Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic, “Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft had no update on goaltender Jack Campbell, who was hit in the face with an errant puck while sitting on the bench.” The good news is that it sounds like he’s OK. Nugent- Bowman adds, “…goalie partner Stuart Skinner said Campbell had a bloody nose but was joking around with him. He said Campbell is OK.”
Campbell has had a rough start to the season and this is like kicking a player when he’s down. It’s never good to see a player hurt, but it would be a terrible reason for Campbell to miss time if he ends up unable to play for a bit because the puck got so close to his eye and his vision is affected.
Unconfirmed That Zaitsev Blocked Trade
Friedman denied suggesting that Nikita Zaitsev is the player who blocked a rumored trade to the Vancouver Canucks. Speculation was that the Canucks and Senators were talking about a swap that would see Tyler Myers go to Ottawa and Zaitsev to Vancouver and there were insiders asking if Friedman was claiming Ziatseve stopped the deal in its tracks.
Friedman tried to clarify and repeated he did not think discussions ever got to the point where either player would have been forced to turn down the trade. In fact, the NHL insider wondered, why Zaitsev would do that if requested. Friedman notes, “He was going to Belleville. So he wasn’t going to say no to anything.” He added, “There’s a lot of differing opinions flying around about what happened and who did what and who didn’t do what.“
Rumblings About Jack Roslovic
As per Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff, while trade talk has surrounded Vladislav Gavrikov out of Columbus, “There have been some rumblings of late that the Blue Jackets are curious about the market for [Jack] Roslovic, who was a big part of the deal for Pierre-Luc Dubois back in 2021.”
Seravalli notes that Roslovic’s point production has been solid but he’s described as inconsistent. Seravalli notes, “The difficult part for Columbus is they’d be trading when his value is low – and he’s a homegrown Columbus kid.”
