The NHL season kicks off tonight with two games! The first one will feature the Stanley Cup champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning, against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Later in the evening, the two most recent teams to enter the Bettman circuit, the Vegas Golden Knights and the Seattle Kraken, will cross swords.
Of course, with the official start of the season, all 32 NHL teams had to make their final cuts yesterday in order to meet the salary cap and maximum number of players allowed in the lineup. Among the players who were victims of the cut, two of them did not take the news well and decided to stay away from their organization.
The first one is defenseman Mikko Lehtonen who belonged to the Columbus Blue Jackets. The latter did not show up in Cleveland where the Blue Jackets' training club is located. The organization finally placed his name on unconditionnal waivers in order to end the agreement with the Finnish defenseman.