NHL Rumors: Canadiens … Maple Leafs and William Nylander … Erik Karlsson
San Jose Sharks defenseman Erik Karlsson isn't worried out his future right now.

Canadiens letting teams know they could trade a forward

TSN: Bob McKenzie notes that the Montreal Canadiens are open for business as their forward group is getting crowded.

“Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin has let his 31 general manager colleagues know that he is available for business in terms of potentially trading a forward.  On any given night, Nikita Scherbak and Tomas Plekanec have been healthy scratches sitting in the press box and with Nick Deslauriers soon expected to come back off injury as well as Jacob de la Rose, the Canadiens could have 16 healthy forwards.  Somebody could go down on waivers, but they may also lose somebody for nothing, so Marc Bergevin is being a little preemptive here and saying, hey, if you want to talk about one of my forwards, give me a call.”

Status quo between the Maple Leafs and Nylander

TSN: Pierre LeBrun: The Toronto Maple Leafs and restricted free agent William Nylander are still not close on a deal and the sides haven’t moved much off their opening position.

“Here is why it’s important for the Leafs, I think, to not really go much north of $6.5 million a year, if they do get there and I think they will.  Any dollar north of $6.5 million impacts what they can do in terms of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner on their extensions.  This isn’t philosophical towards Nylander from the Leafs, I think it’s just a mathematical thing with the salary cap.  On the flip side, if you’re William Nylander there is a concern that if he signs in the ($6 million range) which is way below what he wants, then he gets traded because he can’t get a no trade clause in this deal and then he gets overlapped pretty significantly by a Mitch Marner deal next summer.”

Karlsson on what is next for him?

Dan Rose of NHL.com: (Interview with San Jose Sharks forward Erik Karlsson) Karlsson is in the last year of his contract and was asked: “what’s next?”

“Yeah, as of right now I’m not worried about what’s going to happen in November or December or moving forward. I’m worried about now. That’s how I kind of approached every year, whether I was in Ottawa long term, just when I signed. I take it day by day. As I said, every season is a new season. It doesn’t matter what you do the year before, what you did good or what you did bad. I’m excited to learn from the past and try to improve everything I can. As of right now, whatever my future holds, I can’t tell you right now because I’m not really there.”