For 16 NHL teams, there will be no Stanley Cup Playoffs. Instead, there will be players packing up their gear, reflecting on the season and looking toward the future, as well as front office members analyzing what went wrong.
Baggie Day Buzz is your one-stop shop for the latest news and analysis from the teams that did not advance to the playoffs.
Here is the most recent news:
Calgary Flames
Jacob Markstrom was noncommittal about his future with the Flames on Friday.
"I don't know, but what I do know and what I tell you guys every day is I love winning hockey games," said the 34-year-old, who went was 23-23-2 with a 2.78 goals-against average, .905 save percentage and two shutouts. "I think that's the competitive side of me ... that every time I lace up the skates that's something I urge and I want to accomplish. You want to win hockey games and I know everyone in that locker room wants to win hockey games, too. That's pretty much where my head is at right now.
"It's been a long season and a short season, and playoffs start tomorrow. It's something you want to be a part of, but now you have to watch it on TV."
Calgary failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the third time in four seasons. The Flames (38-39-5) finished fifth in the Pacific Division and 17 points back of the Vegas Golden Knights for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference.
Calgary general manager Craig Conroy was also noncommittal when asked if he envisioned Markstrom playing with the Flames next season; he has two seasons remaining on a six-year, $36 million contract ($6 million average annual value) he signed Oct. 9, 2020.
"Time will tell with all that ... with everything we're doing," Conroy said. "The one thing we're trying to do is how to move this thing forward to get to a point where we're not sitting here talking to (media) right now. You don't want to know when the end-date is. You want to know, 'OK, we lost in Game 6' or 'We won the Stanley Cup.' Those are things you're trying to achieve here.
"It's hard to put, today, expectations on what's going to happen in a month or a day or a week moving forward." -- Aaron Vickers
Philadelphia Flyers
Rasmus Ristolainen is expected to be ready for training camp in September after having surgery Thursday to repair a ruptured triceps tendon.
Recovery is expected to take three months.
The defenseman last played Feb. 10, and missed the final 29 games of the season because of the injury.
The 29-year-old had four points (one goal, three assists) in 31 games. He missed the first 20 games of the season because of a lower-body injury, making his season debut Nov. 25.
Philadelphia (38-33-11) missed the playoffs for the fourth straight season. -- Adam Kimelman
Buffalo Sabres
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen is open to signing a long-term contract with the Sabres.
The goalie can become a restricted free agent with arbitration rights after this season.
“I think that’s what everybody wants, to sign a long-term contract,” he said Thursday. “I like Buffalo. I’ve spent more or less five years here in camps and even playing now. I like it here. I think we have a really, really good group of guys here who signed for a longer contract. In the end, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I for sure would not be against it.”
His representatives and the Sabres are in the early stages of discussions.
“We have started to kind of see what we want to do here and started the talks, but nothing too crazy yet,” Luukkonen said.
The 25-year-old, a second-round pick (No. 54) by Buffalo in the 2017 NHL Draft, emerged as the No. 1 goalie after starting the season third in the three-goalie rotation, behind Devon Levi and Eric Comrie. He played an NHL career-high 54 games (51 starts) and finished 27-22-4 with five shutouts, tied for second in the NHL with Thatcher Demko of the Vancouver Canucks and Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets. He also had a 2.57 GAA and .910 save percentage in his fourth NHL season.
“The biggest thing is just kind of proving to myself and everybody else that I can be a starter in this league and a good a starter, too,” Luukkonen said. “I feel like my numbers were good this year and I feel like I had a good number of great games, and I helped the team to win pretty much every night. So, I think just kind of finding my confidence and being a confident goalie out there was the biggest thing for me this year.”
Buffalo (39-37-6) finished sixth in the Atlantic Division and missed the playoffs for a 13th straight season, which is an NHL record. -- Heather Engel
Minnesota Wild
Marcus Foligno and Jared Spurgeon are expected to be ready for training camp.
Foligno, a forward who had season-ending core muscle surgery April 2, has just begun leaning into workouts.
Spurgeon, who played in 16 games before being sidelined with a lower-body injury Jan. 2 that ultimately forced the defenseman to have left hip surgery Feb. 6, then had back surgery one month later, has been skating for the past four weeks.
Only defenseman Brock Faber and forward Marco Rossi played all 82 games for Minnesota. It was revealed Friday that Faber played two months with fractured ribs. He is expected to heal on his own, but the defenseman will not join GM Bill Guerin, coach John Hynes and the United States at the 2024 IIHF World Championships, behing held May 10-24 in Czechia.
The Wild (39-34-9) finished sixth in the Central Division and missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2018-19 season. -- Jessi Pierce
