Former Nashville Predators forward Rocco Grimaldi is headed overseas.

The 32-year-old native of Rossmoor, Calif. signed a two-year contract with KHL team SKA St. Petersburg on Wednesday.

Grimaldi was rumored to be headed to Russia late last week. His most recent NHL action came in 2021-22, when he appeared in seven games with the Predators without registering a point. His first full NHL season came with Nashville in the 2018-19 season, when he registered 13 points in 53 games.

The 5-foot-6, 181-pound forward was drafted 33rd overall by the Florida Panthers in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft. He spent three seasons at the University of North Dakota, collecting 77 points (31-46-77) with 68 penalty minutes and a +22 rating over 86 games.

Grimaldi also played in the USHL with USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. In 55 appearances, he recorded 45 points (23-22-45) with 40 penalty minutes.

Grimaldi has played in 203 NHL games during his career between Florida, Colorado and Nashville, tallying 30 goals and 37 assists for 67 points, along with four points in 11 post-season games.

While his NHL success has been fleeting at best, the right-shot forward has thrived in the American Hockey League. In 499 career AHL games, he’s totaled 428 points (192-236-428).

Grimaldi was mainly a bottom-six forward with the Predators. Despite concerns about his size, the Panthers took him in the second round, though much of his success has come at the AHL level.

Having failed to crack the NHL in the last three seasons, Grimaldi will now try his hand in the KHL.

Former Florida Panthers coach Gerard Gallant will be joining the Shanghai Dragons as their new head coach. 

Gallant was a long-time NHL head coach, but he hasn't worked in the NHL since the 2022-23 season, when the New York Rangers fired him. He coached over 700 NHL games, winning a Jack Adams Trophy with the Vegas Golden Knights. 

Gallant spent two full seasons with the Panthers as the bench boss before they fired him in his third season after an 11-10-1 start to the 2016-17 season. The Panthers missed the playoffs in Gallant's first campaign but won the Atlantic Division in his second, recording 103 points and winning 47 games. The Panthers were defeated in the first round of the post-season by the New York Islanders in six games.

After various levels of success following his Panthers tenure, Gallant has seemingly fallen out of the pecking order in the NHL head coaching job search and has decided to make the move to Europe.

 

The Shanghai Dragons, formerly known as the Kunlun Red Star, were established in 2016 as a Chinese-based team, but they haven't played a game in China since 2020. The franchise has missed the playoffs in eight consecutive seasons and has been near or at the bottom of the KHL standings for most of its existence. 

Since 2020, the Kunlun-Shanghai franchise has played its home games in the Moscow area and will play this season in St. Petersburg. However, according to the club’s announcement, they would like to return to China in 2026-27, or 2027-28 at the latest.

The Dragons have high expectations for Gallant as they attempt to cement their placing in the KHL.

“As it turned out, Gallant emerged as the clear choice, meeting every single one of team’s criteria,” Dragons CEO Sergey Belykh is quoted in the club’s announcement. “We reached out to him outlining the club’s vision and key objectives.”

“We understood that building a strong team usually takes more than one season,” said Belykh. “Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time. That’s why the Dragons needed not just an experienced, high-profile head coach, but a specialist capable of building a competitive team in the shortest possible time.”

With these high expectations comes a whole heap of pressure. Gallant has shown previously that he can turn things around very quickly, but on the opposite side of the world, playing a different brand of hockey, jumping out to a start as quickly as the club's CEO is hoping for might be wishful thinking. 

Gerard Gallant Takes Over KHL’s Shanghai Dragons Gerard Gallant is the new head coach of the Shanghai Dragons, the KHL club announced on Wednesday.

Gerard Gallant has been named the head coach of the KHL’s Shanghani Dragons. 

The Dragons were previously known as the Kunlun Red Star, before officially rebranding this summer.

The 61-year-old coach takes over for Mikhail Kravets, who was let go after one season on the job.

Throughout his career, Gallant has served as head coach for several teams, including the Columbus Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, Vegas Golden Knights, and most recently, the New York Rangers.

Gallant coached the Rangers for two seasons from 2021 to 2023. 

He led the Blueshirts to the Eastern Conference Final in 2022, but in his second season in New York, the team failed to live up to expectations and ultimately lost in the first round to the New Jersey Devils. 

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“I don’t know if he’s (Gallant) been in any of these particular interviews this year, I just don’t know,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said. “I have heard he’s eager to prove that when he got let go by the Rangers, It wasn’t only about him, and he wants an opportunity to show people that. We’ll see if he gets an opportunity with teams to talk about that.”

If Gallant plans to one day return to the NHL, this opportunity in the KHL will be a chance for him to put his name back on the coaching radar.

The Ides of August have arrived, and the Anaheim Ducks, along with general manager Pat Verbeek, still have one outstanding order of business in which to attend: the signing of RFA center Mason McTavish.

McTavish (3rd overall in 2021) is the third player considered (at the time of the negotiation) to be part of the long-term outlook of the organization that Verbeek has negotiated with after the expiration of their ELCs. The first two were notoriously Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale in the summer of 2023.

Both Zegras and Drysdale’s negotiations bled into training camp, the Ducks’ first with then-new head coach Greg Cronin. After finally signing, they both sustained injuries in camp while attempting to get up to speed, which impacted their output early in the 2023-24 season and likely had a lasting effect. Both players are no longer part of the organization.

McTavish’s situation is eerily similar, and as the saying goes, “twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.”

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Verbeek and assistant general manager Jeff Solomon now have reputations league-wide as tough negotiators who are willing to play “hardball” with RFAs, especially in situations where they hold all leverage, like with players coming off ELCs. Verbeek has also verbalized his desire to bridge young players, counter to recent trends of teams extending core pieces who are 21-24 years old to seven or eight-year contracts.

“Part of my philosophy is I like to do bridge deals with players,” Verbeek said at the annual post-trade deadline ‘Ducks Migration’ event for season ticket holders. “It allows the players two things. It allows them to have no pressure to grow and get better before they have the long-term contract. It also allows the team to assess them over the three years of how good they are really going to be. From a team approach, I prefer to do bridge deals, two to three years, and then if it warrants, a seven to eight-year deal after that.”

That sentiment has echoed through the summer, beginning with premier NHL insider Elliotte Friedman in early July.

“Verbeek, he’s careful. I don’t think he wants to hand anybody money too quickly. If you want the money, you’re going to have to earn it,” Friedman said on his “32 Thoughts” podcast on July 6. “I think if there’s long-term extensions, they’re at numbers that are very favorable to the Ducks, to the point where I’d be surprised. I would be shocked if they got long-term deals done at big numbers.”

Since then, and as the summer has gotten longer with endless trade and/or offer sheet speculation, reports have surfaced of McTavish and his camp’s preference for a long-term contract with Anaheim.

“He’s not being shopped by any means,” Jimmy Murphy of RG Media said on ‘The Sick Podcast with Tony Marinaro’ on Aug. 8. “Pat Verbeek wants a bridge deal, (a) two to three-year deal. McTavish wants a longer deal; he wants more AAV than they’re offering.”

“With McTavish, I’ve always felt he’s going to stay in Anaheim, and I still do,” Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects stated while on the ‘Sekeres & Price Show.’ “I think the issue with them is that (McTavish) would like a nice, big, fat, long-term deal that pays him out, and I think Anaheim would like to bridge him.”

The benefit and the prominent reason teams have favored signing their young core pieces to long-term contracts early lies in the potential that they will outplay their AAV and their contract will become a positive value for the team.

In a landscape like the one the NHL finds itself in, now with a seemingly ever-rising salary cap ceiling, players are likely to outperform their salary far quicker, like Lucas Raymond, Jack Hughes, Matt Boldy, etc.

It will likely never be reported, but if McTavish were willing to sign a seven or eight-year contract at an AAV under $8 million, he would likely eclipse that value in short order.

McTavish (22) has improved his on-ice play and production in every one of his three seasons in the NHL. He followed up a 43-point (17-26=43) performance in 82 games (.54 points per game) in his 2022-23 rookie year with 42 points (19-23=42) in 64 games (.66 points per game) in 2023-24 and 52 points (22-30=52) in 76 games (.68 points per game) last season, stats made more impressive considering where the Ducks finished in the standings and how poor their offensive totals have been to this point in his career.

McTavish has elevated his two-way and detailed play in all three zones year after year as well. He has become the high-motor, small-area creator he was projected as when he was drafted. Defensively, where he was once a considerable liability in coverage, his mistakes diminished in 2024-25, and his diligence was more pronounced.

He’s also shown improvements in terms of play-dictation and vision with the puck on his stick, driving play on a more consistent basis. He will likely never have the foot speed to become a transition ace, but he has more than enough capability to connect, build, and extend plays from goal line to goal line.

With a new incoming head coach who carries the second-best resume in NHL history in the form of Joel Quenneville (along with an elite staff), and a roster more populous with insulating forwards, McTavish is primed for a true breakout season in 2025-26. It’s shaping up to be a season where, behind Leo Carlsson, he won’t face opposing shutdown lines, and ahead of centers like Mikael Granlund, Ryan Strome, and/or Ryan Poehling, he won’t face opposing top scoring lines either.

If Verbeek truly intends to repeat his negotiating tactics from two summers ago, where talks extend into training camp, one hopes lessons were learned and McTavish is gradually reintroduced to the rigors of camp under a new coaching regime to avoid related injury.

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Former Pittsburgh Penguins forward Joseph Blandisi is heading overseas, as he has signed a two-year contract with SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL. 

Blandisi was acquired by the Penguins from the Anaheim Ducks during the 2018-19 season in exchange for forward Derek Grant. From there, he would appear in six games for Pittsburgh during the 2018-19 campaign, where he was held off the scoresheet. He also played in 27 American Hockey League (AHL) games with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in 2018-19 following the move, posting nine goals, 20 points, and 58 penalty minutes. 

Джозеф Бландизи – в СКА!
Соглашение с канадским форвардом рассчитано на 2 года – до конца сезона 2026/27. Нападающий ранее выступал в Северной Америке, где провел 101 игру в НХЛ, а также 448 матчей в АХЛ.

Подробнее  https://t.co/Tf29EoBkfkpic.twitter.com/rvfKd9uH54

— Хоккейный клуб СКА (@hcSKA) August 12, 2025

Blandisi then appeared in 21 games with Pittsburgh during the 2019-20 season, where he had two goals, three assists, five points, 26 hits, and a minus-3 rating. This is the last season Blandisi played at the NHL level, as he spent the next five seasons exclusively in the AHL, where he played for the Laval Rocket and then the Toronto Marlies. 

In 101 career NHL games over five seasons split between the New Jersey Devils, Anaheim Ducks, and Penguins, Blandisi recorded 10 goals, 21 assists, 31 points, 78 penalty minutes, and 114 hits. Now, he will look to be a key player for SKA St. Petersburg after landing this two-year deal from the KHL squad. 

Former Penguins Forward Joining New TeamEarlier this summer, the Pittsburgh Penguins elected not to send forward Emil Bemstrom a qualifying offer. Due to this, he became an unrestricted free agent (UFA) on July 1. 

Brett Berard will be competing for a spot on the New York Rangers’ opening night roster in training camp. 

Berard stood out during both rookie camp and training camp for the Rangers last year, as he almost made the team before ultimately being one of the final cuts to be sent down to the Hartford Wolf Pack of the American Hockey League. 

Eventually, Berard got his chance with the Rangers during the 2024-25 season. He played 35 games, recording six goals, four assists, and 10 points while averaging 10:43 minutes. 

The 22-year-old even played parts of the season with a torn labrum in his shoulder. 

After showing signs of promise, Berard will have an opportunity to carve out a permanent spot with the Blueshirts.

It will be a battle for Berard though. He’ll be competing with other players for a roster spot, including Brennan Othmann, Gabe Perreault, Juuso Parssinen, and Conor Sheary. 

There’s a world where Berard starts the season in the AHL, but he’s been gearing himself up to become a full-time NHL’er. 

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“I’ve put on some weight so far, so that’s been good,” Berard said. “But I just need to treat it like a first impression. Even though I’ve been in the organization for a few years now, it’s a new coaching staff… I want to show what I can do right from the start.

“I’ve worked on a lot of rims and (defensive) zone and stuff like that to get more comfortable,” Berard said. “Anything can happen. I’m preparing for all outcomes.”

Both previously acquired in trades, Luke Toporowski and Graeme Clarke have both signed contracts with the Washington Capitals.

Toporowski, 24, was acquired from the Boston Bruins in exchange for Pat Maroon. The native of Iowa, recorded 13 goals and 28 points in 53 games for the Iowa Wild during the 2024-25 season.

He signed a one-year AHL contract with the Hersey Bears.

Clarke, 24, was acquired from the New Jersey Devils in exchange for Adam Beckman. He recorded 16 goals, 21 assists and 37 points in 64 games for the Iowa Wild during the 2024-25 season.

He signed a one-year, two-way contract ($775,000 in NHL/$350,000 in AHL) with the Capitals.

Both players the Wild did not extend qualifying offers to which made them free agents.

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