Friday's Daily Dosage - Selanne, A.Markov, Pavelski...

So Teemu Selanne is officially back, having signed a one-year deal with the Ducks yesterday.  He says his knee has been pain free for the last month while he's been skating.  It's probably bad business to bet against this guy as he shows no signs of slowing down but scoring over a point-a-game, like he did last year, will be tough to repeat.  In the three seasons prior to last year his points-per-game were .88, .83 & .89.

Andrei Markov is coming off a season where he played only seven games after just 45 the year before so his owners have to be a little nervous when there are reports that he suffered a setback in his rehab recently and his status to start the season might be iffy.  We should hear more about this in the coming days... but now is the time to get worried.

Training camp hasn't even started and Antero Niittymaki is complaining about his groin already.  The Sharks say that he could need surgery but that would put him on the shelf for about three months.  Stay tuned, could mean some more NHL action for Thomas Greiss this year or maybe the Sharks go after a short-term veteran fill-in.

Sharks coach Todd McLellan will likely juggle the lines all season but he says he's going to experiment with Joe Pavelski playing RW on the top line with Thornton & Marleau.  Good news for JoePa fans as with Couture & Clowe anchoring the 2nd line, Pavelski would be playing with some scrubs if he gets stuck in the #3C role.

The whole point of the ELC system was to avoid teams throwing Alexandre Daigle-type money at kids who hadn't established themselves yet.  Well the owners are finding ways around it as a day after John Tavares received a big extension after two promising seasons, Tyler Myers signed a seven-year extension for an average of $5.5M per season.  Myers has been excellent his first two years in the league but I don't see why a deal this large is necessary for a player this early on in his career... maybe this is part of the reason why I'm not an NHL owner?

Two more RFAs signed as Luke Schenn & Josh Bailey both came to agreements with their teams on the eve of training camp.  Dragging it out seemed to play off for Schenn as he'll make around $3.5M/yr on a five-year deal whereas Bailey caved and will only make an average of $1.05 over the next two years.

The Jets rookies beat the Canucks 2-nil last night, Mark Scheifele with another goal (he had 2+1=3 in three games) [boxscore].

Scott Reynolds of Copper & Blue with a post where he looks for the best players who have a cap hit of less than 1% of the $64.3M team cap hit.  A couple of names to take note of if you're in a Salary Cap League that requires you to find some bargains.  Evgeni Nabokov is one that I like as he's cheap and his value could skyrocket if he's traded.