NHL Rumors: Wild Card changes being discussed, Avalanche need Erik Johnson to waive no move clause, and more

The Colorado Avalanche are a team that needs to figure out what they need to do in preparation for the Seattle Kraken expansion draft. Yesterday I wrote about using free agency as a tool to protect more players. One big name stands out here is UFA Gabriel Landeskog. However they also have Brandon Saad and Phillip Grubauer heading towards free agency.

Joe Sakic is likely to resign all three come post expansion draft. Let’s face it, signing Grubauer now means they need to protect him and risk losing Pavel Francouz. Not signing Landeskog and Saad also lets them protect Joonas Donskoi and Valeri Nichushkin.

Still the Avs need Erik Johnson to waive his no move clause in order to protect either Ryan Graves, Sam Girardi, or Devon Toews. Even if he does, Sakic may have to work out a side deal in order to not lose one of those defensemen.

NHL paid almost $19 million in legal fees to fight concussion lawsuits

A great read in The Athletic yesterday by Daniel Kaplan as he notes the league paid $18.49 million dollars in legal fees fighting concussion lawsuits.

Two years ago, the NHL paid $18.49 million to settle a concussion lawsuit brought by more than 100 former players.  Compared to a previous NFL concussion settlement of more than $1 billion, the consensus was the NHL won.

The NHL paid handsomely, however, for the legal counsel that led to the outcome. The league paid legal bills of $70.6 million between the time of the first case in 2013 through shortly before the settlement in November 2018, according to a series of letters from 2017 and 2018 presented in new court documents. That means for every dollar the league agreed to pay the injured players, it spent nearly $4 in legal fees (and possibly more), covering hundreds of individual lawyers who worked on the case.

The Athletic