Much to get done as NHL camps open

COVID looks to be a lesser risk, but there's lots of questions to answer on the personnel front

Will Jack Eichel get traded? Will Zach Hyman find chemistry with Connor McDavid? And will Brady Tkachuk, Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes end their contract holdouts?

Training camps open across the National Hockey League on Wednesday, with medical tests and physicals. But aside from who showed up with too many pounds around their midsection, the big questions are what will the next two weeks look like as teams prepare for a full season of (somewhat) normalcy?

From winning a roster spot to naming a captain to whether COVID-19 will cause a quarantine, here are 10 pressing questions as we head toward the start of the season:

Will COVID-19 be an issue again?

It was last week when NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told reporters that the league expects 98 per cent of its players to be fully vaccinated by the start of the season. That's great news for the NHL, which will be opening up its borders to travel between Canada and the U.S. for the regular season, and appears to be taking the pandemic more seriously than the other major sports leagues. Several teams have already announced they are fully vaccinated, including Toronto, Calgary and Columbus, with the latter sending home assistant coach Sylvain Lefebvre, because he declined to be vaccinated, as well as dumping unvaccinated Zac Rinaldo to its minor-league affiliate.

“The ball is in his court now,” GM Jarmo Kekalainen told reporters. “We do everything as a team. That's a requirement of being a Blue Jacket.”

This kind of approach still might not prevent a positive case of COVID from popping up. But with more players now double vaccinated, the chances of another outbreak happening are slim to none.

Will Eichel show up at training camp?

The Sabres captain, who has been out since March with a herniated disc in his neck, is reportedly planning to show up for his pre-training camp physical on Thursday. What happens next is still very much up in the air. Eichel has made it clear that he wants out of Buffalo, which is in the early stages of yet another rebuild. But the Sabres have also made it clear that they won't simply give him away for nothing. Further complicating the issue is that Eichel is in favour of a somewhat experimental form of neck surgery that the team hasn't signed off on.

In other words, don't expect to see him on the ice anytime soon. That is, unless he's wearing another team's jersey. And the likelihood of that happening will decrease if he fails to pass his physical.

Lots of stars could be on trading block

Whether it is Eichel or St. Louis' Vladimir Tarasenko, there appears to be a lot of big-name players sitting on the trading block. Cap space could be a motivating factor in any deal. Heading into training camp, 10 teams were above the US$81.5-million limit, meaning something will have to give between now and the start of the season. Of the teams having to make a move, look for Boston to be pretty active. The Bruins enter training camp with about $80-million cap level — and that's without them having a safety net in place for goalie Linus Ullmark or a second-line centre to replace David Krejci. They also have a forward in Jake DeBrusk, who has received interest in the past from Edmonton and Calgary, and who became even more expendable after the team signed Taylor Hall. A deal for San Jose's Tomas Hertl would appear to make a lot of sense.

Young standouts remain unsigned

Another year, another crop of talented, young players are still unsigned. You can partiy blame William Nylander for this trend. When the Toronto winger sat out for two months in 2018-19 before agreeing on a deal, he helped shift the balance of power from the owners to the players.

Two years ago, Mitch Marner, Brayden Point, Brock Boeser, Patrik Laine, Kyle Connor and Mikko Rantanen signed their extensions after training camps had opened. This year, don't be surprised if Minnesota's Kirill Kaprizov — who won the Calder Trophy last season and signed a fiveyear, $45 million contract extension on Tuesday — Buffalo's Rasmus Dahlin, Ottawa's Tkachuk and Vancouver's Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes all seem ready to exploit do the same. After all, the Canucks won't even get close to sniffing a playoff spot without Pettersson and Hughes in the lineup.

Who will play beside Toronto's stars?

Zach Hyman was not technically part of the Maple Leafs' core. But anyone who paid attention to the team over the past several years will tell you that he was an important piece. As a top-six winger, he twice scored 21 goals alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. With him gone to Edmonton, a number of players will be auditioned to fill that role, including Nick Ritchie, Ondrej Kase, Michael Bunting and Ilya Mikheyev. Another option could be rookie Nick Robertson, who has similar speed and forechecking ability to Hyman, and who has also shown topline potential in junior.

Where will Hyman fit in with Oilers?

By all accounts, the Oilers signed Hyman so that Connor McDavid finally had a wingman not named Leon Draisaitl to get him the puck. And yet, even though the two players spent time working out together this summer, don't assume Hyman and McDavid will necessarily be spending the season together. After all, the argument can be made that if McDavid was able to score 105 points on a line with a couple of Average Joes, then maybe it makes more sense to balance out the lineup and put Hyman on his own line, where he can provide secondary scoring for when McDavid and Draisaitl aren't on the ice. Then again, you probably don't pay a guy $5.5-million just to play third-line minutes.

Will Drouin make Habs comeback?

The Habs lost Jesperi Kotkaniemi to the Hurricanes. But the team looks like it will be adding Jonathan Drouin back to its roster after the 26-year-old forward took a leave of absence last season due to anxiety. “It wasn't an easy thing to do, but I'm proud of what I've done and I'm happy I did it,” he told RDS this week. “It's hard to step away and watch all the guys. But at that time, I made my decision and stuck with it.”

Can a rejuvenated Drouin, who scored just two goals in 44 games last year, get back to being the player who had 18 goals and 53 points for Montreal in 2018-19? Perhaps. But with Mike Hoffman signed as a free agent and Tyler Toffoli coming off a 28-goal season, Drouin will have to earn his spot back in the top-six.

Will any 2021 draft picks step into NHL?

Owen Power's decision to return to college rather than play for the Sabres means that for the first time since 2006, the No. 1 overall pick won't be stepping right into the NHL. It's not just Power who is taking himself out of the Calder Trophy conversation. Matty Beniers, who Seattle selected at No. 2, will be joining Power at the University of Michigan. That leaves Anaheim's Mason McTavish, who was the third-overall pick and played against men last season in the Swiss league, as perhaps the only player out of this year's draft with a chance at cracking an NHL roster this year.

Of course, with Montreal's Cole Caufield (15th, '19) technically still a rookie, the Calder seems to be his to lose.

Former stars now playing for a job

The 34-year-old James Neal had just five goals and 10 points in 29 games last season. So it makes sense that his phone wasn't ringing off the hook when free agency opened in the summer. Instead, the former 40-goal scorer who had 19 goals a couple of years ago signed a professional tryout with the Blues, trying to show he can still produce. He's not the only one who is playing for a job. Tyler Ennis is back with Ottawa, Brian Boyle is in Pittsburgh and a pair of ex-Leafs (Frederik Gauthier and Jimmy Vesey) are on PTOs in New Jersey.

Captain role still has six vacancies

Six teams (Arizona, Calgary, Columbus, the New York Rangers, Ottawa and Seattle) are entering training camp without having a captain this year.

And while some of those teams are probably content to go the entire season without naming one — we're looking at you, Arizona — the Rangers have made it clear that they believe having a captain is necessary for playoff success. For that reason, expect the vacancies to get filled in a timely fashion.

Chris Kreider and Mark Giordano are the obvious choices in New York and Seattle, respectively, while Matthew Tkachuk seems like the kind of player Darryl Sutter would want to wear the “C.”