NHL Rumors: Latest Buzz on Erik Karlsson, Max Pacioretty Trade and More

It seems the phrase "dog days" is being used more by NHL insiders than "I'm being told that..." It's a key piece of evidence to support that notion that, yes, we are in the dog days of summer. As the calendar flipped to July, hockey fans braced for a flurry of trades that would shift the league's landscape.

It seemed like there was a new Erik Karlsson development every day. Max Pacioretty was as good as gone from the Montreal Canadiens. The news that Artemi Panarin wasn't interested in re-signing with the Columbus Blue Jackets seemed to indicate that the organization was going to be forced to trade him.

Yet summer has failed to deliver on the promises of early July.

Sure, we got the long-awaited Jeff Skinner trade, and the Ryan O'Reilly swap gives the St. Louis Blues a dynamic forward core. But just ahead of free agency, we were all but promised some superstar shakeups, and they simply haven't happened yet.

Fear not, though. While it's sleepier than it was 30 or so days ago, the NHL's rumor mill continues to churn out tidbits worth keeping track of. Here's the latest on some of the situations around the league that are looming largest.

Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Max Pacioretty Not Planning to Boycott Training Camp

When news is as slow as it has been recently, the faintest whiff of smoke can send pundits in search of the fire. That's what happened on Monday, when speculation that Pacioretty would skip the Montreal Canadiens' annual golf tournament and training camp ran wild.

By the end of the day, the news had snowballed on social media, and fans from around the NHL wondered whether the Habs captain would take such drastic action.

This led TVA Sports hockey reporter Renaud Lavoie to investigate. According to him, it doesn't sound like there's any truth to the rumblings that "Patches" is planning to bail on training camp to facilitate a trade.

It's been an ugly situation that seems to be devolving as the months go by, but at least it doesn't look like we're going to get a player sit-out on top of everything else that has gone down between the two parties.

Edmonton Oilers Likely to Bridge Darnell Nurse

Sometimes it's easy for teams to decide whether they want to skip the bridge deal for restricted free agents. Cases like Connor McDavid stick out; he's already established himself as one of the best players in the world.

Why not lock him up now before the cap ceiling—and therefore contracts—rises?

Sure, the cap hits can get pretty outlandish when NHL teams start buying up UFA years of players before they can legally drink alcohol, but the cost-benefit analysis isn't too tough to hammer out in cases like McDavid.

Look at Sidney Crosby and the 12-year, $104.4 million deal he inked back in 2012. That commitment is massive (and teams can't even sign players to 12-year pacts anymore), but at $8.7 million, No. 87 has one of the most reasonable cap hits in the game.

Then there are cases like that of Darnell Nurse—another member of the Edmonton Oilers who hasn't quite proved himself as a lights-out top-four defenseman. He's solid at five-on-five and a strong penalty-killer, but 14 goals in 197 regular season games don't give Edmonton a lot of reason to skip the bridge deal.

If Nurse appeared to be an offensive defenseman on the rise, like John Klingberg was with the Dallas Stars back in 2015, then the Oilers would have a greater incentive to sign him to a similar deal: six or seven years with an annual cap hit of around $5 million.

But the defenseman hasn't proved that he's capable of doing that yet, which has some fans concerned about his future in Edmonton. Oilers radio analyst Bob Stauffer doesn't seem to think there's much to be worried about on this front, however.

It sounds like a bridge deal is coming for Nurse, giving him every opportunity to prove he's worth bigger money.

Erik Karlsson Trade Chatter Has Gone Dark

It's amazing how quickly things can escalate and then de-escalate in the NHL.

Odds seemed high that all-world blueliner Karlsson would be a member of a new team by now. After all, he was nearly moved to the Vegas Golden Knights before February's trade deadline.

The notion that he would still be with the Ottawa Senators in August would have seemed fanciful back then. Yet here we are. It's August, and Karlsson is still on Ottawa's roster.

Not only that, but the trade chatter that was once at fever pitch has died down altogether. If this were a smaller name, then perhaps it could be a byproduct of many of the game's top insiders phoning it in while taking some much-deserved time off late in the summer.

A trade involving Karlsson isn't the kind of news that these people would want to miss, however. If there were something to report, they would have shared it.

As Lyle Richardson wrote for Sporting News at the start of August: "The Stars and [Tampa Bay] Lightning were considered the main suitors. At one point, there was anticipation that a trade sending Karlsson to the Lightning was imminent. The deal failed to materialize, and the trade chatter regarding the Senators captain has largely died down."

Can you imagine how much of a field day local media will have if Pacioretty is still in Montreal while Karlsson remains in Ottawa when training camp opens? What seemed impossible in July seems plausible as summer rolls on.