from Ansar Khan of Mlive,

Several former first-round picks will be vying for roster spots -- forwards Evgeny Svechnikov, who missed all of 2018-19 due to a knee injury, Michael Rasmussen, Filip Zadina and Joe Veleno and defensemen Dennis Cholowski and Moritz Seider.

Undrafted free agents in the mix include wingers Taro Hirose and Ryan Kuffner and defenseman Oliwer Kaski.

“It just gives us a real good chance to watch a whole bunch of guys in action,” Blashill said. “The challenge in the exhibition season is the varying rosters. Sometimes you are seeing guys that are real NHL players and sometimes you’re seeing guys that’ll probably play in the American League. You try to balance that.

“You’d think that when we go to (Pittsburgh) we’ll probably see a really good roster (on Sept. 25), so you try to put a similar roster together. When you go to the New York Islanders (Sept. 23) I’d like to get a hold of (coach) Barry Trotz and have a conversation, just so we know if we can try to match up rosters the best we can. We got a whole bunch of competition for jobs. I think that’s shown in how competitive each practice was. This gives us a chance to see those guys play.”

more