The SCF finally gets going tonight at 8 pm Eastern time. Game 2 is Friday, and then they take the weekend off and come back on Monday in Florida. Yes this is a fairly bizarre schedule. Game 5 is the next Saturday, so maybe they calculated it was most likely to be the final game.

The NHL announced yesterday they are doing a one-hour NHL Awards show before Game 4 on June 12.

The AHL is not quite at the finals stage:

The Checkers are the Florida AHL franchise.

There were a few minor contracts signed in the last couple of days for players, but with the SCF about to start, the attention will move off trade and signing rumours to some extent. This is the biggest deal of the recent past:

Flyers re-sign forward Noah Cates to four-year, $16M deal
The Philadelphia Flyers are committing to forward Noah Cates. General manager Daniel Briere announced Monday that the Flyers will be re-signing Cates to a four-year contract with a $4 million average annual value.
Sportsnet.caSportsnet Staff

Elliotte Friedman made a good point in a recent 32 Thoughts, one that applies both to the player movement market and to CBA talks. They're all still in the phase of this effort where everyone is trying to put one over on the other side. Serious conversations about real-world deals won't start quite yet.

As well, everyone now knows they have at least a week between the end of the playoffs and the draft, something that hasn't happened in a while. No one is rushing to make pick trades yet.

As for the CBA, it seems like having this done by training camp is a nice thing to aim for, but don't count on it.

And while the new CBA might address contracts of long term for older players directly, no this is not circumvention. And it doesn't "border circumvention" either.

Is Yanni Gourde’s new contract with Lightning an example of cap circumvention?
Gourde’s contract will last until he is 39 years old.
Daily FaceoffHunter Crowther

Here's the simplest way to know the answer: the NHL registers every contract as CBA compliant. You can't decide a contract is circumvention because he might not play out the full term because that is true for every contract signed.

In other news lately, there has been an expectation that both Boston and Pittsburgh will announce their new head coaches, so that might happen today.

It's still all about the draft around here and today's feature is on Václav Nestrašil, someone who has become one of my favourites so far in Brian's profiles. Be sure to read it.

Have a good Wednesday, everyone.

From The Branches