With the Stanley Cup finally over (congrats Litter Box Cats), news is starting to roll out around the rest of the league. While some other teams had already released their pre-season schedules, the Lightning kindly held off until the 2023-24 season was officially done. On Tuesday, they announced who and when they would be playing prior to the real games kicking off.
It’s the usual cast of characters as the Bolts take on the Nashville Predators, Florida Panthers, and Carolina Hurricanes over their seven games. There are four “home” games with one of the match-ups against the Panthers taking place in Orlando. With the final pre-season game taking place on Friday October 4th, chances are the regular season will start on Tuesday the 8th or Wednesday the 9th.
Coach Cooper will be behind the bench for all of the games, just like he will be for Team Canada in the Four Nations Face-Off and the 2026 Winter Olympics. We had mentioned that it was a likely possibility a few weeks ago, but Team Canada confirmed it on Tuesday [Team Canada].
It’s unlikely that Calvin de Haan will be on either Team Canada’s or the Lightning’s roster in 2025, so last season was the only one where he’ll play for Jon Cooper. Overall, the underlying numbers for the veteran defenseman were better than what happened on the ice as we discussed in yesterday’s player review. [Raw Charge]
Coop and a host of his players will receive a phone call from the Hockey Hall of Fame one day, hopefully long in the future. On Tuesday, several folks got that call of a lifetime as the HHOF announced their 2024 honorees. [HHOF] On Monday, November 11th, Pavel Datsyuk, Shea Weber, Jeremy Roenick, Natalie Darwitz (what a couple of weeks she’s had), Krissy Wendell-Pohl, David Poile, and Colin Campbell were announced as the newest Honoured Members.
The busy news day continued as a couple of trades were announced. The San Jose Sharks continued their roster make-over as they took defenseman Jake Walman and his $3.4 million cap hit off of the hands of the Detroit Red Wings. Detroit sent a second-round pick in 2024 to the Sharks as a sweetener. [Fear the Fin]
It wasn’t the first deal of the day for that second-round pick (53rd overall). Detroit had acquired it from the Nashville Predators along with Jesse Kiiskinen for prospect Andrew Gibson. Do you recognize that second round pick? Well, you should as it originally belonged to the Lightning and was sent to the Preds in the Tanner Jeannot trade. [Winging it in Motown]
Moving out of the trade talk portion and into the failed ownership category, it appears Alex Meruelo is done with the NHL. Well, even more done than he was after he sold the Coyotes. Craig Morgan is reporting that Meruelo is no longer pursuing any type of land acquisition for a future expansion team after the auction for a property in northeast Phoenix was cancelled. I, for one, am shocked that he took the $1.2 billion and ran. (not really). [Go PHNX]
