Chris Johnston of TSN reports that Blake Comeau and Tanner Kero of the Dallas Stars and Rocco Grimaldi of the Nashville Predators have all been placed on waivers.
Comeau is clearly the biggest surprise of the three given his place with the Stars and history in the NHL. The veteran winger has been wearing an “A” as an alternate captain at times this year and has more than 900 games played at the NHL level. Many of those have come with the Stars, a team he has been with since 2018, when he signed a three-year, $7.2M deal with the club in free agency.
Now on a one-year, $1M contract he signed in June, Comeau’s cap hit will be entirely buried in the minor leagues even though he is a 35+ player. The restrictions on those contracts were changed in the 2020 CBA Memorandum of Understanding, but even before that his one-year deal would have been able to come off the cap if assigned to the minor leagues.
It’s been years since Comeau was forced to play in the AHL though, and it seems as though he and Grimaldi could potentially get claimed if teams need an experienced forward. Grimaldi has been a regular for the past three years in Nashville and even scored 10 goals in 40 games last season. Kero doesn’t have quite as much experience but did suit up 39 times for the Stars.
Notably, this is a change for Dallas, which has seemed unable to drag itself out of the bottom of the Western Conference standings. The team has lost another two games in a row, sit at 4-6-2 on the year, and has a -12 goal differential. The organization has some young players who could potentially inject some energy into the lineup, but Comeau’s placement on waivers still comes as something of a surprise.
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