Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Today’s waiver wire madness: Isles claim Grabner, Lightning snag Ritola

After the last few days of waiver wire action went quietly with players being placed on waivers and then unclaimed to be sent to the minors, today brought some action.

Yesterday saw the Panthers put Michael Grabner on waivers for the purpose of sending him to Rochester in the AHL. He won’t be heading to Rochester, however, he’ll instead end up on Long Island with the New York Islanders as the Isles claimed him on waivers. For the Islanders the move makes sense given the injuries up front to Kyle Okposo (out up to 2 months) and now to Rob Schremp who’ll be out 3-4 weeks.

Michael Grabner, Zdeno Chara

Florida Panthers right wing Michael Grabner of Austria tries to get around Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara (33) of Slovakia during the third period of Florida’s 3-2 shootout win in a preseason hockey game in Boston Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)

AP

It wouldn’t be a flurry of moves without Lightning GM Steve Yzerman getting involved and he did, this time taking a player away from his old team as they claimed young forward Mattias Ritola from Detroit. Not-so coincidentally, the Lightning released Eric Perrin from his professional tryout.

Also hitting waivers today: Jeff Tambellini - Vancouver, Kirk Maltby and Derek Meech - Detroit, David Hale - Ottawa, Tim Kennedy and Todd White - NY Rangers, Ryan Potulny and Jassen Cullimore - Chicago, Ryan Craig and Andrew Hutchinson - Pittsburgh, Andy Hilbert - NY Islanders, Brett Sutter - Calgary, Ryan Parent - Vancouver.

Tim Kennedy and Todd White being waived by the Rangers is interesting because both were brought in to make bids for spots on the third line. Instead, both hit the waiver wire and while John Tortorella expects that they’ll both clear waivers, Kennedy and his $500,000 contract certainly make it easy for someone to grab him.

Parent being waived by Vancouver might be news to those of you that missed he was traded there by Nashville today for Shane O’Brien.

Yesterday’s big waiver name Erik Ersberg of the Los Angeles Kings cleared waivers and will head to Manchester of the AHL.