NHL Rumors: Ottawa Senators, Seattle Kraken and the Chicago Blackhawks

Who will the Senators protect in net?

Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun: The Ottawa Senators have five goaltenders under contract for next season: Anton Forsberg, Matt Murray, Joey Daccord, Mads Sogaard and Kevin Mandolese. Filip Gustavsson and Marcus Hogberg are pending RFAs.

Hogberg is likely heading back to Sweden.

Murray has three years left at $6.25 million per and likely wouldn’t be selected by the Seattle Kraken in the expansion draft.

Who will the Senators protect for the draft? It would likely be either Daccord or Gustavsson.

Notes on some Blackhawks pending free agents

Scott Powers of The Athletic: Max Shalunov on if he’d be interested in coming to North America next season and signing with the Chicago Blackhawks (vid text): “About Blackhawks, if we can agree on a contract, it will be cool.”

He’s 28-years old so it would be a stardard contract and would guess it would take something between $1.5 and $2.5 million per season.

The Blackhawks acquired Henrik Borgstrom at the trade deadline from the Florida Panthers. The Panthers and Borgstrom couldn’t come to terms after last season and he just finished his season in Finland. It might take $1.25 million on a short-term deal.

Will the Blackhawks want to re-sign defenseman Nikita Zadorov? It may depend on price. He’s owed a $3.2 million qualifying off and if they could get something around that they may be okay it. If he signed before the expansion draft, they would need to protect him. They could trade his rights before the expansion draft but teams may be interested after the draft.

Zadorov on if he wants to re-sign with the Blackhawks.

“Do you want me to say, ‘No I don’t like here, I want to leave?’” Zadorov said. “For sure, I would like to re-sign. I like the organization, I like the team. We’re moving in the right direction with these guys up here. Bunch of young guys on the team. We’re going to have a really good team in a couple years. It’s really big for me to re-sign here and be part of it.”

Forard Pius Suter on if he hopes to re-sign with the Blackhawks.

“I want to be back, for sure,” Suter said. “I’m confident they’ll figure something out. It’s going to be in the summer, so we’ll see how it plays out. Definitely would love to be back.”