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FlightZone: Sami Salo Bids Farewell

Longtime NHL defenceman and "Balls of Steel" inspiration Sami Salo has announced his retirement. After a playing career spanning 878 games, 339 points and three NHL teams (the Ottawa Senators, Vancouver Canucks and Tampa Bay Lightning), Salo was felled by the same wrist injury which caused him to lose the entire 2014-15 season. Happy trails, Sami.

And now the news.

Central Division

Our Texan friends seem a bit miffed at being #24 on Corey Pronman's prospect rankings, and without doing any in-depth analysis of systems across the NHL, I'm inclined to agree with them. But take solace, Dallas, for things could be worse. You could be the Pittsburgh Penguins. (Defending Big D)

Yesterday, you got to learn more than you ever wanted to about Tyler Seguin, and today it's Kari Lehtonen's turn. It turns out Lehtonen and Antti Niemi are old teammates, by which I mean they "played together for a single game when they were 10 years old". Lehtonen also has the most wins of any goaltender drafted in 2002, with 248; Cam Ward, his only real competition, has 246. My bet's on Kari to win that particular competition. (Dallas Morning News)

Former St. Louis Blues forward David Perron showed off some stickhandling in his basement. That trade with Edmonton still doesn't look too bad: this might be the year Magnus Pääjärvi finally sticks with the big club, and lest we forget they also drafted Ivan "The Barber" Barbashev thanks to the deal. (NESN)

This pretty well sums up the St. Louis Blues: "Are they as good as Anaheim and Nashville? They should be, but you can excuse me for not thinking that will happen." (CSN Washington)

Travis Yost takes a mild advanced stats look at some of the top tier defensive talent in the league. They mostly look where I might expect them to be, with one exception: Alex Pietrangelo's numbers all stand out, and not in a good way. (TSN)

And All The Rest

It's a hard road being an elite level athlete with diabetes, but Max Domi hasn't let the latter stop him from achieving the former. "He has to test his blood 12 times a day, including before, after and in between periods during games", which I think is just incredible. (TSN)

Mike Smith had a .934 save percentage in March, which is proof that anything is possible (when you look at a small enough sample size). Also, as Pronman points out, with Max Domi, Anthony Duclair, Christian Dvorak, Nick Merkley, Brendan Perlini and Dylan Strome all in the system, the (Downtown Phoenix?) Coyotes could be a very dynamic team in the not-too-distant future. Probably not next season, though. (ProHockeyTalk)

In 1997, Andrew Ference did what he had to in order to get his foot in the door, including faxing General Managers his separately conducted physical testing results after not being invited by Central Scouting. He was drafted 208th overall. (NESN)

Alain Poupart says that for Jaromir Jagr, there will come a time "when he simply can't make an impact anymore", whereas I'm pretty well convinced by this point that Jagr will decide when it's time for Jagr to stop being awesome. (NHL)

Poupart also gave us a mildly suspect Panthers' prospect list, where Jonathan Racine beat out Kyle Rau, Connor Brickley and our former sort-of prospect, Chase Balisy. A downside to having all those kids developing with the big club is that the prospect pipeline seems somewhat depleted, but let's see who can take advantage of the void and make a name for themselves. (NHL)

The future home of the Las Vegas Aces/Black Knights/My Little Ponies seems to be shaping up quite nicely. Does anybody else find it weird when a major construction is actually ahead of schedule? (ProHockeyTalk)

It turns out that the NHL/NHLPA Substance Abuse And Behavioral Program Policy has very specific protections and policies which will make it hard to uphold Mike Richards’ contract termination. “The Drug Policy does not call for the termination of a player contract in the event of an arrest or conviction related to drugs. It calls for a lot less.” (Forbes)

All things considered, it's been a pretty solid summer for Montreal GM Marc Bergevin. The one mental caveat I have is the Jeff Petry contract, when you consider the penny-pinching, underwhelming market unrestricted free agents ended up facing (see: Franson, Cody). Obviously that's 20/20 hindsight, and it's perfectly understandable that Montreal might not have wanted to take the chance. (Eyes On The Prize)

Max Pacioretty's injury recovery seems to be on track and aligned with an early October return. Without him, I'd imagine the good vibrations surrounding Montreal evaporate rather quickly. (Bleacher Report)

And now, introducing 5v5 adjGSAA/60. Presently available goalie information more advanced than even strength save percentage tends to scare the bejesus out of me, so I’m all for an increased prevalence of modern, meaningful and accessible options. There once was a time “5v5 Close CF%” seemed obnoxiously long and indecipherable to me. Anywho, the takeaway for us is how exceptional last year was for Ondrej Pavelec, as is shown by contrasting the 1200 min TOI sample size to those lasting 3000 min TOI and 15,000 min TOI. (Blueshirt Banter)

With Bryce Salvador out of the picture, Rich Chere pegs Andy Greene, Travis Zajac, Adam Henrique and Mike Cammalleri as frontrunners for the New Jersey captaincy. Which one's got the strongest Pittsburgh credentials? Whoever it is, I bet on that one. (NJ.com)

And finally, here’s an absolutely fascinating article by In Lou We Trust contributor Ryan Stimson on passing metrics, Brooks Orpik not being very good and why Nate Schmidt will help soften the loss of Mike Green. (Japers’ Rink)

Thanks for reading!

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