Dan’s Daily: Candidate Out of Penguins GM Search, Hornqvist on Fire

It was an interesting 12 hours for the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Rangers, beginning with the faceoff between the two on Saturday night, the injuries, news on the Penguins GM search, Penguins trade chatter surrounding Vince Dunn, a fight in the New York locker room Saturday night and finally a high-profile defenseman on waivers. Also, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl went off against Matt Murray.

If you took Sunday off, good for you. My eyes are still bleary from accounting work.

Penguins GM

We’ll start with the Penguins GM search. Thus far, we’ve only officially confirmed interest in Colorado AGM Chris MacFarland. The rest is assumptive, presumptive, and speculative. However, Montreal Canadiens AGM Scott Mellanby has publicly pulled out of the process (TSN)

The last time this very Penguins search committee went shopping for a GM, things got messy and qualified candidates steered clear. Let’s hope everyone learned from that.

Are the Penguins looking at former GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, now AGM of the Boston Bruins John Ferguson (Boston Hockey Now)

Pittsburgh Penguins

This morning, we should find out the extend of Kris Letang’s injuries. Here’s the video of what happened on Saturday night (Pittsburgh Hockey Now)

PHN had multiple sources from each side confirm Penguins trade chatter. They were “close” on Vince Dunn before Jim Rutherford resigned (Pittsburgh Hockey Now)

Definitely check out this week’s “Off the Record.”More teams are chasing Dunn. And there are warning signs in Calgary and Philadelphia that we could see bombshell names on the NHL trade block (PHN+)

Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were historically good on Sunday night. Poor Matt Murray was a shooter-tutor without defensive help as Edmonton picked apart Ottawa (Sportsnet)

Patric (expletive deleted) Hornqvist.

“SOOOO Disruptive.” You may remember Patric Hornqvist from such moments as the 2017 Stanley Cup Final and the 2020 offseason trade to Florida. He’s on fire and was a big reason Florida beat Detroit on Sunday night (Florida Hockey Now)

As we wrote at the time, this is a trade the Penguins could regret. We’ll see what becomes of Mike Matheson, but Hornqvist is making a statement, eh?

Tony DeAngelo has gone from top-pair defenseman to the waiver wire in one month. Saturday night, the Rangers had a fight in the locker room, and DeAngelo was cut loose (New York Post)

National Hockey Now

Uh oh. Nathan MacKinnon suffered a lower-body injury. Colorado is getting banged up quickly (Colorado Hockey Now)

It was a weird scene in Vegas for the Silver Knights. The teams came out for the second period, then were sent home, and the came stopped due to COVID (Vegas Hockey Now)

The New York Islanders are in a bad spot. They lost AGAIN to Philadelphia (NYI Hockey Now)

The San Jose Sharks were in a cage. Away from home for over a month, quarantined and locked up in a hotel. It may be coming to an end, hopefully. Sheng Peng gives us an inside look (San Jose Hockey Now)