NHL general managers will have some extra money to play with next season.

The league unveiled Friday to the Board of Governors that next season's salary cap is projected to come in between $78 million and $82 million, according to TSN's Pierre LeBrun.

The cap is currently set at $75 million, meaning teams can expect a raise of $3 million to $7 million.

The increase would also bring the salary cap to it's highest point since it was introduced at $39 million ahead of the 2005-06 season.

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With the topic of Seattle expansion running rampant, Winnipeg Jets forward Blake Wheeler instead made the case for a club to relocate Thursday.

After the Jets visited the Florida Panthers, Wheeler criticized the ice conditions at BB&T Center, suggesting the game should've been taken outside.

"We'd be better off going out to the parking lot and playing roller hockey," Wheeler said, according to Brian Blessing of SportsbookRadio.com.

Of course, the hot climate in Florida tends to be a catalyst for poor ice conditions.

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Where there's smoke, perhaps there's fire.

The NHL Board of Governors are meeting in Florida, and on Thursday the topic of expansion to Seattle was discussed, according to TSN's Darren Dreger.

This news comes after Seattle's city council approved plans Monday for a $600-million redevelopment of KeyArena for the purpose of a multipurpose sports and entertainment area.

It's believed with the arena deal, former president and CEO of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, Tim Leiweke, will make a pitch to have an NHL club housed in the facility.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is expected to speak to the media Thursday at 6 p.m. ET.

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It was another depressing result Wednesday for the Ottawa Senators, being shut out for the second-straight game, 3-0 versus the Anaheim Ducks.

The blanking was just the latest in an almost unbearable stretch for the Sens that's seen them go 1-8-1 in their last 10 games. That said, if the optimists out there can hang their hats on one thing, it's that things can't get much worse.

Things began to go off the rails after the Senators swept the Colorado Avalanche in Sweden, just after the blockbuster trade in which Kyle Turris was swapped for Matt Duchene.

On Nov. 11, after a 4-3 win, the Senators had an 8-3-5 record, good enough for fourth in the Eastern Conference and third in the Atlantic Division (just three points back of the Toronto Maple Leafs for second with three games in hand).

However, since then the club has plummeted 10 spots in the East and sit tied with the Florida Panthers with the second-worst record, ahead of only the lowly Buffalo Sabres.

So what's gone wrong? Well, in a word, everything.

During the 10-game slide, the Senators have averaged just 1.5 goals per game, while giving up 3.6. In addition, they've been out-shot by nearly three shots per game.

Their special teams have been pitiful with the power-play connecting on just 8.57 percent of opportunities, and the penalty kill giving up a goal 25 percent of the time.

Further to that:

It's been a wide-scale failure. Since the Duchene deal, much has been made about his mere two points in 12 games, but the fact is no one's been immune from terrible play over the last 10 games.

Mark Stone leads the way offensively with six points, while Ryan Dzingel and Mike Hoffman have scored the most goals (three each). Perhaps most puzzling is that Erik Karlsson has gone pointless in 10 straight games, the longest streak of his career.

Between the pipes, both Craig Anderson and Mike Condon have struggled with consistency. Last season, Anderson's .926 save percentage was third among goalies with at least 25 games played, but he's gone winless during the current stretch and sports a .894 save percentage and a goals-against average greater than three. Condon hasn't been much better. In four games, he's gone 1-2-1 with a .900 save percentage and 3.38 goals-against average.

So where do the Senators go from here? There appears to be only one direction: up. And here's why that may happen: with the NHL's worst PDO - generally a good indicator of a team's luck - the Senators have been extremely unlucky. Furthermore, Karlsson and Duchene are too talented offensively to continue down this road, while Anderson and Condon may be dealing with a loss of confidence.

Things are looking bleak for the Senators, but it's hard to envision things getting any worse.

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The potential players tasked with avenging last year's loss to the United States in the gold-medal game of the World Junior Hockey Championship were announced on Wednesday.

Canada unveiled the 32 members of the team's selection camp roster for the tournament, a list that includes seven returnees from last year's silver-medal-winning club.

Here is the full list:

Forwards

Defense

Goalies

Following the selection camp the above crop of players will be reduced 22 skaters.

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Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov believe Russian athletes should compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics, at all costs.

On Tuesday the IOC banned Russia from the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, removing the flag, the anthem, and any athletes with a history of doping.

However, clean athletes from Russia will still have the opportunity to participate under a neutral flag, and the Washington Capitals' top Russian-born players believe those who have that opportunity should still participate, according to Isabelle Khurshudyan of the Washington Post.

Related: Kovalchuk says all clean Russian athletes must go to 2018 Olympics

On Tuesday, Russia released the roster for an upcoming Olympic tuneup tournament. The team, on paper appears to be incredibly talented and includes many former NHL players, including Ilya Kovalchuk and Pavel Datsyuk.

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Sweden apparently won't have the luxury of dressing one of the NHL's top rookies at this year's World Junior Hockey Championship, as the New Jersey Devils won't loan forward Jesper Bratt to the team, according to Sportsnet's Chris Johnston.

The 19-year-old burst on to the NHL scene this season after being selected in the sixth round in 2016 and sits tied for ninth in rookie scoring with nine goals and 19 points in 27 games.

Meanwhile, Sweden - who named their preliminary roster Wednesday - is still waiting to get word from the Buffalo Sabres as to whether forward Alexander Nylander will be made available.

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Vancouver Canucks forward Daniel Sedin scored a power-play goal midway through the third period of Thursday night's game against the Nashville Predators to record the 1,000th point of his career.

Sedin entered Thursday night stuck at 998 career points, but sealed the deal on his sixth goal of the year after earlier tallying an assist on Loui Eriksson's fourth of the year.

The 37-year-old is now the 87th player in NHL history to reach the mark and the eighth active player. In hitting the milestone, Henrik and Daniel are now the only brothers in league history to each score 1,000 points.

Henrik was able to score his 1,000th point last January in a game against the Florida Panthers. The two have the second-most points among any two brothers in league history behind Wayne and Brent Gretzky.

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Carolina Hurricanes president Don Waddell confirmed that Dallas billionaire Thomas Dundon is in the midst of discussions to purchase the franchise, according to Sportsnet's John Shannon.

While nothing is set in stone, a potential deal would see Dundon given controlling interest of the Hurricanes, according to Shannon.

The news is just the latest in what has become an ongoing saga regarding the sale of the Carolina franchise. Back in July, owner Peter Karmanos Jr. received an offer to buy the franchise from Chuck Greenberg - co-owner of the Texas Rangers - for approximately $500 million.

However, last month Karmanos said he felt Greenberg couldn't afford to purchase the team.

Back in August it was reported there were up to 12 groups interested in purchasing the team and the news of Dundon's discussions doesn't appear to have dampened that figure. As Shannon notes, the team appears to be having discussions with other potential buyers as well.

Karmanos has owned the franchise since 1994 when he purchased the then-Hartford Whalers and eventually relocated the team to Raleigh.

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Matt Duchene's inauguration with the Ottawa Senators hasn't gone quite as smoothly as he had likely hoped.

Since being acquired by the Senators, as the catalyst of a three-way trade with the Colorado Avalanche and Nashville Predators, Duchene's offense has dried up. The 26-year-old has gone pointless with a minus-8 rating in six games - a fact that's been hard to stomach for some Sens fans, especially with Kyle Turris having tallied five points and adding a shootout-winner in six games with the Predators.

All that aside, Duchene still appears to be settling in nicely with his new club - despite the offense - and as far as the play-by-play voice for the Senators on TSN 1200, Dean Brown, is concerned, it's too early to be pushing the panic button.

"He has played well actually, that's the irony," Brown told theScore. "He's actually played very well and had some good chances and just has been unlucky, certainly more than anything else. If you were playing bad and not getting any chances and not really doing the things you need to do, people would probably be more concerned and maybe upset. That really isn't the case, he's played very well since he's been here."

The underlying numbers are quite intriguing. Through his first six games with the Senators, Duchene has thrown 23 shots at the opposition, an average of just under four per game and the same number he put up in 14 games with the Avalanche prior to the trade.

Meanwhile, Duchene's played largely on a line with Bobby Ryan and Ryan Dzingel, and the trio are rocking a Corsi For of 60.78 at 5-on-5. However, the three have just one goal to show for their possession efforts. So is it time for a rejigging of the lines?

"Maybe yes, maybe no. The thing that - well not last night's game in Washington - but the game in New York, Guy Boucher tried 25 different line combinations," said Brown. "So, I suppose you could never say no, but again it’s not like he's played badly and it's not like he hasn't gotten chances with whoever he's played with. It's just one of those things that when it snaps it will snap. I think sometimes in situations people look for immediate answers to their problems and sometimes the solution isn't immediate."

(Photo courtesy: Getty Images)

Of course, as a team, the Senators are playing some of their worst hockey of the season. After rifling off two wins in Stockholm against the Avalanche in Duchene's first two games, Ottawa has gone 0-3-1 in its last four, scoring just five goals while conceding 14.

In fact, the team has averaged just 26.25 shots per game, which means Duchene has actually put up a respectable 12.3 percent of the team's shots over the last four games, and the quality has been there as well.

In his six games with the club, Duchene is averaging 11.95 scoring chances per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, the highest such total on the Senators next to Nick Paul - who has played in only three games - and 5.4 more than Duchene was averaging with the Avalanche.

And while the chances in the offensive end appear to be there, fans and Guy Boucher can rest easy knowing Duchene has been playing strong on the opposite side of the puck as well.

"I think knowing he's on a team where that is an important thing he's put extra emphasis on that," said Brown. "He is very rarely out of position. He's not a guys who's out waiting at center ice banging his stick waiting for a breakaway pass. He's in his own zone, the forwards all leave together, and he's been very responsible."

The team's new center is probably gripping his stick a little tighter these days as both he and the club are becoming more and more desperate for a goal, but he's getting too many chances to continue failing. Things are bound to start going his way.

"I don't know if it's time for them to be concerned, if they think that he is that terrible of a player and not worth keeping then I guess that would make them concerned," said Brown. "I think he's kind of the same as this team's been right now, he's a good player that's going through a tough stretch. They're a good team that's going through a bad stretch. Every team goes through slumps and they're going through one right now. He's got a personal one going, but I'm not sure fans should be all that concerned about."

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