McKenzie wondered if Oilers or Devils might claim Harding

Bob McKenzie was on Toronto’s TSN 1050 on Tuesday evening.

On Josh Harding going unclaimed, and if it might not have been worth it for someone to have taken a shot at him :

“I wondered if somebody might. I wondered - I know Edmonton has been kind of nibbling on goaltenders a little bit as to whether they need somebody better than Scrivens and Fasth or not. New Jersey hasn’t found a suitable backup, because Cory Schneider is basically playing all of the games. So I wondered a little bit.

“And $1.9 million, he’s got another year to run. So teams don’t take on contracts lightly. And listen, let’s not kid anybody here. He’s got the situation with Multiple Sclerosis that he’s battling through. Has done a remarkable job of that. But outside of the team that signed you, and has been your home, other teams might be thinking – although I’m not sure that should scare them off so much, because if, heaven forbid, he’s not able to play because of illness, there’s insurance to take care of those types of things and you get salary cap relief in terms of LTI.

“Really unfortunate situation, because he was supposed to be the No. goalie for the Minnesota Wild this year. He came into camp and looked great in camp and everybody were excited about the prospects for him. And then he breaks his foot in an off-ice altercation with a teammate. Which sounds really bad, and I don’t know all the details, but what little I know, it’s probably not as bad as it sounds and he wasn’t doing something altogether terrible. And yet he ended up getting suspended without pay while he was injured. And in the meantime, Darcy Kuemper has come in and has become the No. 1 goaltender. Backstrom, who’s an older goaltender, with a bigger contract – I mean, in a perfect world, I bet Minnesota would rather have Harding than Backstrom as their backup; but he’s got a shorter term deal, he’s easier to put in the minors, and the salary cap penalty is not as great. So it’s kind of just a tough situation for him.

“And hopefully – the other thing is, I think teams might have taken a chance on him a little bit on waivers, but he hadn’t played a game this year. So you get injured in training camp, so now, here we are almost American Thanksgiving and he hasn’t had a training camp. He hasn’t played games. So how long is it before you get the benefit of a guy coming in. And I think when you take a guy on waivers, most people want somebody who is ready to go. Just drop him in the lineup.

“... There’s always that possibility if he plays really well down there, that there will be teams that would say to Minnesota, ‘Hey listen, you know what? Call him back up. Put him back on waivers and we’re going to give him a run here.’ Or give them a late round pick because Minnesota, I’m sure at some point in time, would be happy to get rid of the salary cap hit.

“The flip side of that is Backstrom is known as a goaltender who gets hurt a lot. So all it would take for Harding to get back up and play games and get back into the mix, would be an injury to Backstrom or Kuemper.”

Source: TSN 1050/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey