Rangers add Nalsund and Kalinin

FROM TSN:

Markus Naslund is off the available list for free agents, as the Swedish winger has signed a 2-year contract with the New York Rangers. New York has also inked defencemen Dmitri Kalinin to a one-year deal.

Here is the link to the story.

Naslund will be a nice addition playing alongside Scott Gomez. While he is not the player he once was, he is still capable of scoring 30+ goals while playing on a line with one of the top 5 set-up men in the entire league. This also likely means that Jagr is out of the running, but you never know.

Kalinin is a solid second or third pairing defenceman on the Rangers. He certainly will sufficiently replace Backman. He is a solid puck-mover, not overly physical but has good size.

Flyers will look to mid-level free agent defensemen

From Ed Moran of the Philadelphia Daily News:

There will be some salary adjustments but not enough to go over the top as the Flyers did last summer. So they will look at the list of free agents in the midsalary range, including Colorado's John-Michael Liles, Buffalo's Dmitri Kalinin and Montreal's Mark Streit.

"We'll be right up against the upper limit of the cap," Holmgren said. "But there are ways to be creative and we will look at those ways. We need to concentrate on ways to make our team better for next season.

Read the entire article here.

Liles and Streit may even be out of the Flyers' price range as they will most likely command pretty hefty dollars on the market. I would expect the Flyers to sign a defenseman at around the $3-3.5 million range.

Dmitri Kalinin hitting free agency

From John Vogl of the Buffalo News:

It was March 4 in Philadelphia when Dmitri Kalinin's eight-year run with the Sabres came to an end. He was skating laps around Wachovia Center, and coach Lindy Ruff was in his face screaming, "Show some [expletive] passion!" Sure, the mistake-prone defenseman likely deserved it, but with unrestricted free agency coming up, why would he go through it again?

Agent Jay Grossman said by phone last week he had not had one discussion with the Sabres, who reportedly aren't interested in Kalinin, either. It was clearly time to split ways, something that's been obvious for sometime. The 1998 first-round pick can start anew elsewhere. Hopefully, the quiet and gracious guy can live up to his potential there.

Here is the short entry.

Kalinin will certainly attract interest on the free agent market. He can skate and move the puck, those are two attributes which are of vital importance in today's NHL. It appears this split will make both sides happy.