Sens Keep A Veteran: While the Senators tried hard to re-sign Claude Giroux<\/a> before free agency opened up, the veteran decided to test the open market.\u00a0 In the end, he decided to stay, signing<\/a> a one-year deal that carries a $2MM base salary but also contains another $3MM in performance bonuses.\u00a0 Half of that will be reached at the 10-game mark with another $500K at Game 40; the other million is dependent on playoff success.\u00a0 Giroux has spent the last four seasons in Ottawa and is coming off a solid showing where he had 49 points in 82 games while winning over 63% of his faceoffs.\u00a0 He turns 39 in January and there has been speculation in recent weeks that this could be his final season.<\/p>\n Bedard Out For Four: The Blackhawks won\u2019t have their top forward available for at least the first month of next season and it has nothing to do with contract talks for the restricted free agent.\u00a0 The shoulder injury center Connor Bedard<\/a> sustained earlier this month required surgery with the team revealing<\/a> that he will miss the next four months as a result.\u00a0 That means he\u2019s likely not available until the early part of November or around five to six weeks into the season.\u00a0 Bedard was Chicago\u2019s top scorer last season with 30 goals and 45 assists in 69 games and the team has won just eight of 27 games that Bedard didn\u2019t play in over his entry-level contract.<\/p>\n Alfredsson To Toronto: A long-time participant in the Battle of Ontario is changing sides.\u00a0 Daniel Alfredsson spent 17 seasons as a player with Ottawa and had two separate off-ice stints with the club, one as an advisor and one as a coach for the last three seasons.\u00a0 However, his contract expired at the end of June and he has moved on to Toronto as the Maple Leafs hired<\/a> him as their associate coach on Jim Hiller\u2019s new staff.\u00a0 It\u2019s a step up for Alfredsson with the associate title effectively being the lead assistant, moving him one step closer to a potential head coaching opportunity down the road.<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of\u00a0 Ed Mulholland-Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The free agent and trade rush is now over and as always, things have started to quiet down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85,26176],"class_list":["post-797235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-week-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/USATSI_28008949-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Five For Nemec: The Flames paid a big price to acquire Simon Nemec<\/a>, sending two first-round picks and more to the Devils to acquire him last month.\u00a0 They\u2019ve now paid a big price to sign him, inking<\/a> him to a five-year, $36.25MM contract.\u00a0 The deal puts him close to ones signed by Pavel Mintyukov<\/a> and Brandt Clarke<\/a> in recent weeks.\u00a0 Nemec was the second overall pick in 2022 and hasn\u2019t quite lived up to that draft billing yet, bouncing up and down over his first couple of years before an improved showing last year that saw him notch 11 goals and 15 assists in 68 games in nearly 20 minutes per night of playing time.\u00a0 On a back end that\u2019s not quite as deep as New Jersey\u2019s, Calgary will be banking on Nemec taking on a more prominent role based on this contract.<\/p>\n