With the common season opener only a week, these powerful choices that the Bruins have been speaking about all coaching camp have arrived.
The Bruins positioned 24-year-old Oskar Steen on waivers on Tuesday within the hopes of getting him via to Providence. The B’s had comparatively excessive hopes for Steen, signing him to a two-year, one-way contract with an annual common worth of $800,000 final April. Steen had come up from Providence final yr and confirmed some flashes of being a rugged, nasty proper wing who may get below opponents’ pores and skin. He couldn’t stick on the NHL degree, however there was a sense that there was undoubtedly one thing there.
But Steen didn’t have the best camp. He did rating a shorthanded objective towards the Rangers however he didn’t have the identical bodily presence that he did when he first got here as much as Boston final yr. In Monday’s 1-0 snoozefest of a loss in New Jersey, he had zero hits and 0 pictures in 13:48 of icetime.
Steen’s underwhelming play was contrasted with Marc McLaughlin’s strong camp and, as of proper now, the previous Boston College captain has made an excellent case for himself because the fourth line proper wing. In evaluating the 2 gamers aspect by aspect, the one benefit that Steen had over McLaughlin was the truth that he requires waivers to be despatched to Providence whereas the membership wouldn’t have needed to cope with that ramification in the event that they determined to ship McLaughlin down. But the hole in play between the 2 apparently was too massive ignore.
This doesn’t essentially imply McLaughlin has made the workforce. There continues to be some culling to be performed from the fourth line candidates that embody Jack Studnicka, Nick Foligno, A.J. Greer, Tomas Nosek and Joona Koppanen. Teams must get right down to the 23-man roster restrict by Monday.
Whether Steen will get claimed or not can be attention-grabbing. The second yr of the deal may make groups reticent to say him. Then once more, a workforce like Chicago, which gained’t be competing for a number of years and can have some huge cash to spend subsequent yr, and even Buffalo, with $20 million of cap area, might imagine Steen is price a flyer. Well discover out at 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
The B’s additionally positioned defensemen Connor Carrick and Nick Wolff on waivers.
Source: www.bostonherald.com