Nikita Nesterov has signed a new contract with the Calgary Flames.

Congratulations calgary you got the 2nd best defenseman in the KHL for only 700k

Glad he's getting another chance. I was one of the few who liked him as a Hab

I remember Dubas had a talk with him and Marchenko back in january kind of glad it didnt work out as Barbanov and Lehtonen are good enough. Plus where would we put them lul

Nice one.

Calgary loves D depth. Maybe now that we have Petrovic/Nesterov to complement Mackey/Yelesin outside the top 6 we won't have to trade picks at the deadline for depth D like Fantenberg (actually didn't mind the Gustafsson acquisition this year, but the Forbort acquisition was only salvaged by Hamonic sitting out of the bubble, otherwise it woulda been unnecessary, but my point stands and maybe we'll make an actual splash next deadline).

Good depth signing.

Let's not forget Poolman and Lerby, I think they are closer than they get credit for as well.
However to make a plash at the deadline, you need cap space, which we lack; and any contract we have we could dump at the deadline (basically just Ryan) belongs to a valuable member of our team.

Habs legend

I think we’ll run a 20-man roster for most of the year to make room tbh. Should be able to afford a 4mil cap hit by the deadline at least, might be able to pick up a Palmieri or something

In a condensed schedule a 20 man roster would be absolutely stupid. Maybe 21 without the extra forward, but you never go without an extra defenseman, never.

Apparently the AHL teams might travel with their NHL team everywhere next year and play “double headers” to help with COVID and make the AHL have a season. If that’s the case we should honestly never have more than a 20-man roster. One way or another I think there will be a lot of paper transactions and rarely will we have a full 23-man roster.

You would still need at least an extra defenseman. Here is why.

AHL games would be morning/afternoon games and the time to recall a player for that day I believe is 5pm ET. So you need a body ready to play in case something happens in your pre-game skate because it will be too late to not only recall someone but you would have had your potential recalls play already that day. That extra body needs to be a defenseman because 7D-11F even for a handful of games is not really a problem, but 5D-13F is.

Also, there is no way we put Kylington on waivers even if he is the 7D, which I project him to be.

Yeah that’s fair, I guess we can’t exactly give Kyl a 2-way deal anymore. I could see a 21-man roster then but I still don’t think it’ll be a full 23-man squad until late in the year. Our window is now and cap flexibility at the deadline will be very important.

2-way deals have nothing to do with waivers, all a two-way deal does is pay a player a different rate of pay in the AHL. Waivers is completely determined by years since signing an NHL deal/games played. Here is an explanation or easier yet, just go to our team page and look for the green arrow, those players are waiver exempt.

@Alfie11 do you have a source on the possibility of AHL teams traveling with big clubs? I'd love to read it

Mb, don't really get into all that, but yeah Kyl isn't a guy likely to get sent down anyway, he's too good to clear waivers. I guess that would kinda force us to run a 21-man roster so we carry him and Nesterov all year but I still think we can build up some cap maneuverability that way (I believe we have room for 2 spares and a bit, but not a 3rd spare? Something like that, so running 1 spare gives us like 1mil cap room for however long we run it). I'm not getting paid to figure all this out lmao (if they're hiring though I'm sure I could give it a go 👀) but from a fan's perspective I feel like some numbers whiz in the organization can figure out a way to gain us some room and let us add at the deadline (assuming no LTIR-level injuries make the cap easier). At least I hope so, because I think this team needs an i pact right-shot top 6 goal scorer to really make a deep run.

As for the AHL teams travelling with the club, I heard it mentioned in passing on a podcast, but I'm not sure which one (probably one of 31 thoughts, steve dangle podcast, or puck soup, I've been catching up on those the last couple of days). I don't think it's being strongly considered right now but it's just out there as a possibility that might help mitigate travel/border issues to some degree (I think it mighta been Chris Johnston on the SDP who mentioned that it was discussed briefly? Not sure sorry)

Far less lucrative than the 2 year $6M contract that LA offered him 7 months ago.

The #gokingsgo offered Nikita Nesterov a 2-year deal worth 6 mln. 26 years old D has a mutual agreement with CSKA on a 5-year extension

— Igor Eronko (@IgorEronko) March 13, 2020

Didnt expect that. I dont know if he is gonna play in the NHL regularly but its still 700k, so no there is no risk.

the best Nikita -erov in the NHL

Now there’s a blast from the past.