Colorado Avalanche scout three straight Columbus Blue Jackets games …
Mark Schieg: Avalanche assistant GM Chris MacFarland has scouted three consecutive Blue Jackets games. For the first two games, the Avs play those teams later in the season.
The last game was against the Canadiens, and the Avs don’t play either the Blue Jackets or Canadiens again this season.
Ottawa Senators GM out scouting this week …
Mark Spector: Senators GM Pierre Dorion scouted the Edmonton Oilers-San Jose Sharks game last night. It was his second consecutive night watching the Oilers.
Jim Matheson: Dorion scouted the Oilers-Flames on Tuesday. Mike Hoffman?
(Dorion was also at the Sharks-Red Wings game on Monday night.)
On the Ottawa Senators …
Chris Nichols of FanRag Sports: Bob McKenzie was talking with Ian Mendes of TSN 1200 about Bobby Ryan’s comments that he heard a trade was basically done on the Sunday before the trade deadline, but one of the teams involved backed out at the last second. McKenzie was asked how close it may have been.
McKenzie doesn’t think a trade was as close as Ryan believed it was but did add that just before they were to do a TSN show at 7:00, there was a buzz for two hours or so that things were really heating up.
“And over the course of the evening we determined that wasn’t the case. But there was, I want to say, at least a 90-minute minute maybe two-hour window between 6:00 and 8:00 or 8:30 where there were a lot of people who did think that it was happening. And a lot of those people that thought it was happening were Ottawa Senator players. And you know what players are like – they talk to other people, and that was what kind of created the thing.
“So I don’t doubt that Erik Karlsson or Bobby Ryan felt like or thought they were going to be traded on that Sunday. And the fact that they probably mentioned that to some of their teammates and their teammates mentioned it to other people – and before you know it, there was incredible wildfire of rumors in that two-hour window right around dinnertime on Sunday night just as we were doing a live show. Because by the time we went on the air later that night on SportsCenter at 10:00, we knew that the rumors were not true and that it was a false alarm and all that heat was – I don’t want to say much ado about nothing, but it wasn’t nearly as close as a lot of people thought it was.”
