"We're going to be really cautious," head coach Guy Boucher said of the forward, according to the Ottawa Sun's Bruce Garrioch.
A Senators first-round pick, 17th overall, in 2013, Lazar had six goals and 14 assists in 76 games last season while averaging 13:52 in ice time. His 14 helpers and 20 points were career highs.
"St. Louis has become home," Steen said in the announcement. "I've been here eight years. I've gotten to know a lot of people within hockey and outside hockey here. We seem to be spending less and less time in Sweden to make sure we get our time in here as well. It's been an incredible journey and St. Louis is definitely somewhere I see as home now."
Steen, 32, was heading into the final season of his contract, which pays him $5.8 million against the salary cap. He was one of the big-ticket free agents ahead of July 1, 2017. He's off the board now.
A former first-round draft pick by the Toronto Maple Leafs, Steen had 17 goals and 35 assists in 67 games last season. He added four goals and six assists in 20 playoff games, as the Blues went on a run.
"We are extremely excited to have Alexander signed for the next four seasons," said general manager Doug Armstrong. "He has developed into one of the league’s premier 200-foot players and is a key member of our leadership group. He has shown tremendous loyalty to the Blues organization, its fans and the St. Louis community."
The 2016-17 season was Steen's third straight registering 50 points or more. He's a four-time 20-goal scorer and one of the game's best two-way forwards.
Steen underwent shoulder surgery over the summer and has said his recovery is ahead of schedule. He's hoping to be in the lineup when the Blues open their season Oct. 12.
Giroux and Muzzin played Wednesday in Canada's 4-1 win over Europe. Giroux played 15:50, finishing with one shot, three hits, two takeaways, and a 57 percent success rate on faceoffs. Muzzin played 17:42 and registered a hit and two blocked shots.
Holtby has watched the entire tournament.
You can't argue with the results, as Canada's 3-0 with a tournament-best plus-11 goal differential. And Babcock likes continuity:
Mike Babcock on building a predictable team: "I don't like surprises; not on Christmas, not on my birthday. I don't want one tomorrow."
The 29-year-old, still playing professional hockey at the highest level, highlights Canada Post's "Great Canadian Forwards" stamps series, which was unveiled Friday at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
Crosby, Phil Esposito, Guy Lafleur, Mark Messier, Darryl Sittler, and Steve Yzerman comprise the collection.
Their career accomplishments are staggering. From the NHL:
The six legends hail from five provinces. As a group, they played in more than 8,300 NHL games and scored more than 3,800 goals and more than 5,700 assists - more than a point per game (regular season and playoffs). Between them, they have won 18 Stanley Cup® Championships.
That'll do.
Crosby wasn't in attendance Friday, as he was practicing with Team Canada ahead of its Saturday matchup with Russia in the World Cup semifinal. The captain's parents accepted the honor on his behalf.
Jones turned 32 on Aug. 10 and had 11 goals and seven assists in 75 games last season. He was acquired by the Minnesota Wild before the trade deadline, and had two goals and an assist in 16 post-trade contests. He added one assist in the Wild's first-round playoff loss to Dallas.
A veteran of 462 regular-season games, Jones has 104 goals and 87 assists in his career.
The Philadelphia Flyers are largely the same team they were in 2015-16, when they snuck into the playoffs as the second wild-card team in the Eastern Conference before being dispatched by the Washington Capitals in six games.
Weise gives the team some flexibility on the wing, and he's proven he can play a top-six role if necessary.
Defense
LD
RD
Nick Schultz
Mark Streit
Michael Del Zotto
Shayne Gostisbehere
Andrew MacDonald
Radko Gudas
Gostisbehere went on an incredible run of offensive production toward the end of last season and looks more than comfortable in the top four.
Ivan Provorov, the Flyers' seventh overall pick in 2015, could also work his way into the picture on the Philadelphia blue line.
Goalies
G
Steve Mason
Michal Neuvirth
Mason is still the starter, but Neuvirth outplayed him (albeit in a smaller sample size) last season. He's proven to be a reliable replacement when Mason falters.
NHL Depth Charts
ANA| ARI | BOS | BUF | CGY CAR | CHI | COL | CBJ | DAL DET | EDM | FLA | LA | MIN MTL | NSH | NJD | NYI | NYR PHI | PIT | OTT | STL | SJ TB | TOR | VAN | WSH | WPG
After Ho-Sang's tardiness last September, Islanders GM Garth Snow told Newsday's Arthur Staple, "Enough with the bullshit. It's time (for him) to grow up."
One would think showing up on time for the first day of training camp bodes well.
The seminal moment of the World Cup might have occurred in the round robin, when Nathan MacKinnon scored a sublime overtime goal against Sweden to keep North America alive for another day.
The 83-year-old broadcaster was among 46 distinguished Canadians honored Friday, including women's hockey pioneer Fran Rider and author Lawrence Hill.
Cole was the lead play-by-play announcer on CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada" from 1980 until 2008, and still calls select games for Sportsnet. He revealed to NHL.com's Dave Stubbs on Thursday that he'll be back this season.
The native of St. John's, Newfoundland joined the iconic Canadian TV broadcast in 1973.
This was the simple rationale behind much of the internal processing among executives and players at the World Cup of Hockey. It's why the Americans misguidedly designed their roster with one opponent in mind. It's why a six-minute stretch of hockey is the reason we'll probably never see Connor McDavid on a line with Auston Matthews again.
And it's why Finland failed to ever recover from its embarrassing loss to North America.
"The first game was like ‘Game Off’ right from the start. North America played great. They won every battle, everything. They scored four goals, but I think they should have scored eight."
That was Aleksander Barkov's response when asked what contributed to the Finns being limited to one goal in three World Cup games. One lousy goal, and one hardly worth celebrating, as all it accomplished was cutting down the largest deficit they built for themselves.
Barkov didn't have an answer as to why 81 of the team's 82 shots were stopped by opposing goalies, or why moments after Mikael Granlund hit the post behind Sergei Bobrovsky, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ivan Telegin scored 79 seconds apart for Russia to zap what was left of Finland's fight.
But the incoming face of the Suomi knew where it all went wrong, harkening back to the nation's loss to North America when asked to assess why the offense never arrived.
More often than not, Finland's the wild card in these tournaments. It's a nation that doesn't produce high-end players in limitless quantities like Canada, but one that, without fail, provides fits for teams that look stronger on paper.
A quick glance at Finland's roster, and it was natural to reason the same, but it was different this time. The nation has been riding a wave of international success of late, not frustrating teams with tactical organization, but with a juggernaut attack.
Patrik Laine and Sebastian Aho, two players who were, in fact, in Toronto this week, led an offense that produced 35 goals in seven games, and scored on better than 37 percent of its power-play opportunities en route to gold at the 2016 World Junior Championship.
Then several months later, Finland's World Championship roster, which paled in comparison to its World Cup entry, produced more than four goals per contest before being shut out by Canada in the final game of a tournament in which Laine was named MVP.
"We just couldn’t find the net," forward Teuvo Teravainen told theScore about Finland's performance at the World Cup. "I think we created a lot of good chances, but it just didn’t bounce (our way) in the tournament for us. We just needed to get that ugly one, maybe, and then we could get more goals.
"But it's a short tournament, and sometimes you just can't find the net."
There it is again.
True to form, though, Finland would indeed frustrate in the end.
At the end of a game that ended appropriately with Sami Vatanen reluctant to emerge from behind his own net, instead delicately stick-handling the puck until the horn sounded, Finland had earned a small measure of revenge with its impotent effort against the Russians.
The loss meant that the North American team that spoiled Finland's bid was now out of contention, too.
