NHL Rumors: Dawson Mercery, Thomas Harley, and Phil Kessel

No angst when it comes to RFA defenseman Thomas Harley and the Dallas Stars

Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Sid’s Coming Back episode, on RFAs Dawson Mercer and Thomas Harley.

** NHLRumors.com transcript

Okay. Dawson Mercer, New Jersey again with Dawson Mercer. I’ve said before, and I’ll stick with it. I just don’t think there’s space for the devils to do long-term, so I think that’s going to be a bridge.

I’ve also said the same thing about Thomas Harley. It was interesting, I did have a couple of people who said to me they think there will be an attempt to go long-term there, but I just don’t know how Dallas can make that work, necessarily.

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I mean everybody, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. There also doesn’t seem to be as much angst about Harley’s deal as there has been about some of the other ones. One of the reasons is that Jim Neil tends to be a pretty calm guy generally, but there just doesn’t appear to be the angst around Harley as some of the other contracts,

Phil Kessel still wants to play in the NHL

Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Sid’s Coming Back episode, on free agent forward Phil Kessel still wanting to play and hoping to get the interest from some NHL team.

** NHLRumors.com transcription

Bukauskas: “Phil Kessel, Elliotte, he has not played a National Hockey League game since four games during the Golden Knights’ run to the Stanley Cup in 2023. But you seem to think he’s not done trying to land somewhere to continue his career.

Friedman: “He wants to play. I’ve heard this. So Paul Bissonnette had a tweet week about how come Phil Kessel can’t get a job, and I was looking at it, and because I had heard and I was going to check that Kessel was calling teams and really wanted to play, and that seems to confirm it. And then I heard it from a couple of people, he’s legit about it.

Like that, three-on-three league that was supposed to start up but didn’t, I heard Kessel was one of the guys, they were really talking to about playing there.

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You know he wants to play he loves hockey and he wants to play. I don’t know if this is going to happen, but it’s very, very legitimate that he has put it out there that he wants to play.