NHL Hockey Betting

As a rookie a few months ago, goaltender Antti Niemi shut down the San Jose Sharks, helping the Blackhawks to a sweep of the Western Conference Finals on their way to becoming Stanley Cup champions. Because of salary cap drama, the Sharks were able to sign Niemi to a one-year, $2 million contract on Thursday. Earlier in the offseason an arbitrator said the Blackhawks should give the Finnish goaltender $2.75 million for next season, but the team chose to go for cheaper veteran Marty Turco instead.

The Sharks had already parted ways with goalie Evgeni Nabokov and signed another Finnish goalie, Antero Niittymaki.  Niitymaki has played six NHL seasons, previously with the Flyers and Lightning. “Our goal this summer was to create the best goaltending unit we could and we feel we have successfully done that,” said Sharks general manager Doug Wilson. “Antti’s play last season speaks for itself.”

On Tuesday in Toronto, EA Sports gathered 16 top NHL prospects to show off the new NHL 11 video game. The most exciting video game matchup featured the two top picks in the 2010 NHL Draft, Taylor Hall who went first to the Edmonton Oilers, and Tyler Seguin, who went second to the Boston Bruins. In their video game faceoff, Hall again got the better of Seguin.

Both players played as the video game versions of their new clubs, but without their video game selves in the lineups.  Hall got goals on his first two shifts, and coasted to a 5-1 video victory. The number one pick admitted that the victory was easy since he basically has no life. “The past couple of weeks, I’ve been playing the demo online,” Hall sheepishly confessed.

On Sunday, right wing Lee Stempniak signed a two-year, $3.5 million deal to stay with the Phoenix Coyotes.  He said did it because of “unfinished business” — he joined the Coyotes for the final 18 regular season games last season and was stellar, but he was a non-factor in Phoenix’s getting bounced from the playoffs in the first round by the Red Wings.  However, Coyotes general manager Don Maloney believes Stempniak’s choice to return was mostly based on economics.

Maloney’s happy to get Stempniak back, but understands that in most markets Stempniak could’ve expected a bigger contract:

… in a normal market or in a past market [Stempniak's performance and production] would probably garner him one of those three- or four-year, $2 ½ to $3 million and above level contracts, but the market changed, and it wasn’t there for him. I know how good this player is, and I know how good he’ll be for us, and fortunately it worked. We were able to find a way to make him happy, and we’re thrilled with it.

Of all the players taken in the 2007 NHL Draft, only Chicago’s superstar Patrick Kane has scored more points than Edmonton’s Sam Gagner.  Gagner just turned 21, but he already has three solid NHL seasons under his belt and his 131 career points rank are already the 48th-most by an Oiler. Gagner recently agreed to a new two-year, $4.55 million contract to stay in Edmonton.  Now his goal is to lose some weight.

Gagner played around 200 pounds last season, but has already slimmed down to a svelte 193 pounds.  His goal is to lose a few more pounds:

When you’re coming into this league, everyone’s telling you to put on weight … you get caught up in it, but I’ve worked this summer to lose pounds, to work on my fast-twitch, work on my speed with my trainer. I hope to see dividends from that. If I get to 190, I won’t get knocked around at that size, and I think I can get in and out of places quicker.