Mark Gandler, Semin’s agent, told ESPN on Monday that his client was heading out to test the free market in the summer. On Tuesday, he joined TSN Radio 1050 and reiterated the fact that Semin is no longer happy with how things look to be progressing in Washington.

“There’s no question, he likes Washington and the organization,” Gandler said. “He does not like the way he’s being used. He does not like the role he has under the [Capitals'] new direction.”

This is likely related to the team’s new defensive direction, one that has stifled stars like Semin and Alex Ovechkin in an effort to play a more responsible system-based brand of hockey. Dale Hunter was a key component to the new system in Washington and the club shows no signs of turning back to their own ways, even with Hunter’s departure.

Still, Gandler argues that the club – even at its most defensive – could still be using his client more.

“I think that Alex, even within that direction that the team wanted to take, can play that way,” he said. “If you watch the Capitals, he is the first guy back on every shift.”

The knock in Semin has often been related to his work ethic, but, like any good agent, Gandler isn’t having that.

“Alex Semin is not a lazy player,” he said. “Alex Semin works damn hard at each practice and goes to the gym every day on the days off. His birth certificate is one of the reasons, but I think the bigger reason is that he’s an unassuming person. He doesn’t say much, he just plays the game and it’s easy to bully somebody like that.”

Semin has 187 goals over the past six seasons and generally posts impressive offensive numbers, even if his playoff production tends to fall off.

The plan, at least at this point, is to have Semin test the open market in the summer. It’ll be the first time he’s been out there, so it could be a learning experience for him. He would’ve been an unrestricted free agent last year, but the Capitals locked him into a one-year deal in January that fetched $6.7 million. Gandler says that he’d “consider” an offer from Washington – if the terms satisified.

“If the team were looking to lock Alex up to a long-term contract we would definitely consider it,” Gandler said. “But we felt that we really needed to find short-term deals until such time that either we were sure we wanted to go long-term with the Capitals or just become an unrestricted free agent and see who else is out there.”

Hunter said that “family reasons” were behind the decision. He and his family run the London Knights of the OHL, so it’s expected that he’ll head back to that post.

“This was a tough decision,” Hunter said. “I enjoyed coaching these guys here and being back with the team that I always figured…is still my team. So it was a tough decision to make, but it was the right thing to do for me and my family.”

“I guess we’re all fathers and sons and husbands first, before anything else,” McPhee said, “and if we have our priorities right in this life, family comes first. Dale needs to go home.”

Hunter only agreed to a one year deal with the Capitals, so the coaching change wasn’t exactly unexpected. He led the Capitals to a 30-23-7 regular season record and managed to get his club to within one win of the Eastern Conference Final. Hunter had a “brand” of hockey that he wanted to instil in the Capitals and it worked well, for the most part. The second he replaced Bruce Boudreau in the post, Hunter was ready to get his guys to play hard.

“We loved everything about Dale,” McPhee said. “We were delighted that he could come in and spend six months with us, or whatever it was, because it was great. I’d rather have him for six months than not at all, because he had quite an impact on this club. He really taught this club the ‘how’ of how to win. They all wanted to win, they just didn’t know how. The ‘how’ is being a team and sacrificing, and he sure got that out of this club.”

“He brought in so many good things,” forward Nicklas Backstrom said. “The whole team was closer this year and everybody was pushing each other, I think. That’s something we haven’t been doing the last couple years. I really like the way we played. … I really wanted to see him back here next year, but unfortunately he’s not.”

Hunter will return to London as his Knights compete in the Memorial Cup starting Saturday. And after putting the Capitals on the “right path,” he says that he doesn’t anticipate stepping behind another NHL bench again.

“It’s a great feeling to see we stayed focused whatever happens,” said Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist. “Yeah, we give up a goal and they get on the power play but we know what we have to do. We’ve been in this situation so many times this year and I think it helped us a lot today and moving forward as well.”

The last time the Rangers met the Devils in the third round of the post-season, the Blueshirts took the win in seven games and went on to win their first Stanley Cup in 54 years.

For the Rangers, the key to Saturday night’s win was the top line of Carl Hagelin, Brad Richards and Marian Gaborik. They had 10 shots on goal, a goal and three assists. Once Rangers head coach John Tortorella realized the line was clicking, he put them on the ice as much as possible.

“We doubled them up right away,” Tortorella said. “With Ritchie, we talked about him shooting the puck right away and not hesitating. They block shots very well and we needed to try to get more shots through. The first goal of the game was a very important goal. Hags doesn’t end up with many points, but he ends up with a couple tonight. He’s been very good this series as far as chasing down pucks and I thought that was key tonight. Gaby was skating tonight, so to get a lead against that team is very important.”

Firing the offensive cylinders was critical to the Rangers’ success, as the first team to score in the series won all seven games.

When the Capitals did manage to break through, they were met with an on-fire Henrik Lundqvist in the Rangers’ net. ”They caught us a couple times with long shifts and we just ended up collapsing and hoping for a save or we get the puck out and try not to get hurt,” said New York defenceman Marc Staal. “They kind of got some momentum off of that but we did our best job to not let that hurt us.”

The season has now ended for the Capitals – and it was a wild one. They fired Bruce Boudreau in November and replaced him with Dale Hunter, putting a more defensive bent on the club that some players struggled with.

The Rangers will commence their series with the Devils on Monday.

Stillman, the chair and CEO of Summit Distributing in St. Louis, was a minority partner of the Blues with the outgoing Dave Checketts and SCP Worldwide group. They’d held the Blues since 1997.

Now, Stillman owns a majority of the franchise with a group of 15 partners. The group owns the Blues, the lease to Scottrade Center, the team’s American Hockey League affiliate Peoria Rivermen and interest in the Peabody Opera House.

“We think this is a monumental, historic and really terrific day for St. Louis and for the Blues,” said Bettman. ”We know how important St. Louis is to the NHL as a hockey market and we also know how important the Blues are to St. Louis as evidenced by the fact that there are so many active alumni from the Blues who choose to stay here and live in retirement here.”

“To have the opportunity to lead this organization, to be stewards of its present and future, is way beyond my wildest dreams,” Stillman said. “It’s an honor that I take very seriously, as will the rest of our group. A lot of times I didn’t think it was going to happen. It was something I thought, and the members of our group thought, was the right outcome. I said to some people if there was another strong local option, I’d have been OK with that, too. I thought it [was] best to have the Blues franchise in the hands of local owners. That’s the best outcome for the Blues.”

According to NHL.com, the investment group includes “the Taylor family, which owns St. Louis-based Enterprise Holdings, former U.S. Sen. John Danforth, who is Stillman’s father-in-law, Donn Lux, CEO of Luxco, and Steve Maritz, CEO of Maritz Inc.”

Stillman signed a purchase agreement in January after getting word that local investors would be interested in signing on.

“These are dedicated St. Louisans who’ve shown long-time commitment to our community,” St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said of Stillman and the new owners. “We know they will continue to lead the Blues in success in the future, and we appreciate that. The Blues have been a mainstay in our community for so many years. Not only are they a great and exciting team to watch on the ice, but they give back to our community in so many different ways as an organization and individually as players. We can only expect that their work and their commitment to grow and to get even stronger in the future.”

In other Blues news, Stillman is apparently trying to woo one Brett Hull into the new management team.

Few people picked the Devils to take the Flyers in the series, let alone in just five games, but New Jersey managed to contain Philly and took away opportunities in front of the net. When the Flyers could break through, they still had Brodeur to contend with.

In the Flyers goal, Ilya Bryzgalov was inconsistent and uneven. An error in the first period led to the Devils’ 2-1 goal and he was simply no comparison to his counterpart at the other end of the ice.

Offensively, the Devils also had the edge. While the Flyers had to deal without Claude Giroux for their final game this season, the Devils had their big guns rolling. Ilya Kovalchuk scored a goal and added an assist, while Bryce Salvador and David Clarkson also contributed. Maxime Talbot had the sole marker for the Flyers.

Kovalchuk, along with Travis Zajac, led the Devils offensively. Both have 10 playoff points thus far, with Zajac scoring five goals.

Giroux had 17 playoff points this season, but a Shanaban for his hit on Dainius Zubrus in Game Four cost the club his presence in the pivotal Game Five.

For the Flyers, the loss marked the second time in as many years that they saw elimination in the conference semifinals.

This is the first time the New Jersey Devils have advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals since 2003. They missed the playoffs last season, but managed to rebound under coach Peter DeBoer and have once again become a formidable playoff club. The sixth-seeded Devils are the first Eastern Conference team to win four straight games this post-season.

They’ll take on the winner of the New York/Washington series, obviously. There is still no start date on that series.

Monday was a good day all around for the Coyotes franchise, with news of a tentative deal involving a group involving former San Jose Sharks CEO Greg Jamison to keep the team in Arizona coming earlier in the day.

With the 2-1 victory over the Predators, the Coyotes opened the door to a Pacific Division affair to see who’ll challenge the Eastern Conference winner for Lord Stanley’s Cup. The Coyotes will be heading to the conference finals for the first time in 33 years as a franchise in the National Hockey League.

The Coyotes were a notoriously unfussy team in the post-season and they’ll take their ground-and-pound attack to the Kings. Thanks to goalie Mike Smith and a solid defensive group, Phoenix gave the Predators fits at both ends of the ice. They used their counter-attack to great effect, too, and managed to slip the puck past Pekka Rinne when it counted.

With a 2-0 lead, the ‘Yotes turned to their A-game and bl0cked the shooting lanes. Nashville’s Colin Wilson did manage a goal on Smith, but the Coyotes goalie nearly responded with an empty-netter.

The game also saw Coyotes stalwart Shane Doan play in his 50th career playoff game. He assisted on Derek Morris’ goal.

The Predators had Alexander Radulov and Andrei Kostitsyn back in the fold, but the two didn’t seem to matter in the end. The offensive spark that they were supposed to bring simply didn’t show up.

Also, the Coyotes were without defenceman Rostislav Klesla. He was serving a one game suspension for his hit on Nashville forward Matt Halischuk.

There is no start date for the Western Conference Finals yet, but it’s sure to be an interesting series. The Coyotes and Kings have played each other six times during the regular season and split the series. Both clubs have quality goaltenders (three of the six games in their season series ended in shutouts) and both are capable of playing some hard-nosed hockey, which should make for one heck of a series.

Giroux was suspended by the NHL for his hit on Devils forward Dainius Zubrus at 19:56 of the second period. You can check out the hit and Brendan Shanahan’s explanation of the suspension here.

Giroux was given a minor penalty on the play. Zubrus was shaken up but returned to the ice in time to pot an empty net goal as Sunday’s game drew to a close.

This is the first time Giroux has been suspended or fined by the NHL.

“This is a violation of the illegal check to the head rule which states: ‘A hit resulting in contact with an opponent’s head, where the head is targeted and the principal point of contact, is not permitted,”‘ Shanahan says in the video clip.

After the game, Giroux said that he never intended to hurt Zubrus. He was “just finishing his check.”

“I was trying to finish my hit and he kind of leaned in and I kind of hit him, my shoulder to his head,” Giroux said. “My elbow was down. I didn’t jump. I’m a pretty honest player. I’m not a dirty player. I’m not out there to hurt anybody. I was just trying to finish a hit.”

“As the video shows, after pulling even with Zubrus on the back check, Giroux chops down on Zubrus’s stick and then well after the puck has been chipped into the corner, Giroux comes across Zubrus’s body and drive upward with his shoulder, making principal point of contact with Zubrus’s head,” Shanahan said.

After the suspension was announced, Giroux stated that he respected the decision and wanted to move on.

Giroux currently leads the NHL in playoff points with 17. While the Devils have been relatively effective at containing him, the Flyers will certainly miss their leading scorer as they face elimination on Tuesday night.

The Kings completed their sweep (!!) of the St. Louis Blues on Sunday, stunning the higher seed with a 3-1 victory at the Staples Center.

The Kings will now have a bit of a break as they await the winner of the Phoenix-Nashville series. That series, for those of you not scoring at home, finds the Coyotes up three games to one.

The Kings, the eighth seed in the Western Conference, dominated the Blues the entire way and never seemed to let up on the gas. They took out the President’s Trophy-winning Vancouver Canucks in the first round and, thus far, have only lost one game in two rounds of playoff action.

The Kings have, of course, been bolstered big time by the play of one Jonathan Quick in goal. Quick had 23 saves in the Sunday victory.

“It’s a special group, and we knew that all along this season,” said Kings forward Anze Kopitar. “Maybe we didn’t break out when we would have liked to, but I think we’ve peaked at the right time, and that’s the most important thing.”

The last time the Kings made it to the conference final, Wayne Gretzky and Luc Robitaille led the way in scoring and helped Los Angeles beat the Toronto Maple Leafs for a Stanley Cup Final berth. The Kings eventually lost to the Habs in the 1993 match-up.

“I can only imagine how happy Kings fans are right now,” said Kings captain Dustin Brown. “They’ve been through a rough stretch, and to win on home ice, that’s huge for everyone in this room. It’s nice to see the fans get jacked up as much as they could. They haven’t an opportunity to celebrate like that at home.”

Los Angeles has only managed to sweep one other team in their playoff history: the Calgary Flames in 1976.

Radulov and Kostitsyn missed the last two games due to disciplinary reasons. The Predators suspended the pair for a “violation of team rules” for the first game and the second game had the two sitting out as a “hockey decision.”

“I think there’s a high probability that they’ll both go in,” said Trotz. “I think they’re motivated. There’s some guys, as I said, that didn’t bring their best games and therefore I think there would be a couple of changes.”

Trotz said on Thursday that Radulov and Kostitsyn had stayed out too late on the previous Saturday night, showing up for Sunday’s game in less than working order. They were suspended for Game Three, sat out Game Four (largely because the Predators managed to win Game Three) and look to be back in business for Game Five. For those scoring at home, that’s about a week of Nashville drama.

“They wanted to be a in a position and their hoping to be in a position so they can get on the ice and help,” Trotz said. “I said you’ve got to wrap your arms around the situation we’re in and be ready to go. That’s what I’ve asked. They’re getting in the mindset that they’re ready to go. They want to help this team. They’re not happy that we’re down 3-1 in this series. You’re a player and you’ve been a good player for a long time and you want to be on the ice. You don’t want to be in the stands, so they’re back in the right mindset that they can make a difference here.”

Some, including Don Cherry (albeit with his usual nuttiness), have said that benching the pair was a mistake. It indeed could be argued that it was a bad idea to bench two of the team’s top playoff point-producers, but team chemistry is an important thing and Trotz had to send a message. The fact is that Radulov and Kostitsyn haven’t bought into the Predators’ system and, as hired guns in effect, they’ve struggled to play the way Trotz would like. While they’re putting points up, they aren’t playing “Predators hockey.”

That’s a problem in the long-term, but isn’t there something to be said for short-term success? If you’re working with some players who are obvious rentals, to what extent do you demand they commit to the system? To what extent can they commit to the system in Nashville?

Essentially, the Radulov situation was one of Nashville’s own making. They wanted the player, they got the player. And now they have to live with the consequences, even if they wind up costing the team the series.

He first experienced “discomfort” starting during a March 22 game against the Minnesota Wild.

The surgery took place on Tuesday and Jokinen is expected to make a full recovery.

As some remember, Jokinen spent much of the conclusion of the Flames’ season in a slump. In a six game stretch following the Wild game, he was a minus-10 and only scored a couple of goals. The Flames were clawing for a playoff spot, but Jokinen was playing hurt.

The surgery was nothing major, but the timing of it is interesting in that Jokinen is expected to no longer play for the Flames. He’s an unrestricted free agent starting July 1 and will probably test the waters.

Jokinen was second on the Flames in scoring this past season, finishing with 23 goals and 38 assists for 61 points – just six points back of the team-leading Jarome Iginla’s digits. It was certainly what could be termed a bounce-back season for Jokinen, so he could fetch a pretty penny in the open market.

The trouble is that the last stretch of the regular season could really cost him some dollars, so the Flames’ announcement of his surgery and the revelation that he was playing hurt could be used as a sort of boost to his possibilities in free agency.

On the other hand, lots of players play hurt and that comes with the territory. The last thing Jokinen needs is a line of excuses and he never used it as one, even when the season was over. “I don’t want to comment,” Jokinen said at the end of the Flames’ regular season. “I never comment on my status in the media, and I won’t do that today. The only thing I can say is everybody plays through injuries. Everybody is hurt.”

With the Flames’ signing of Roman Cervenka of the KHL to a one year deal said to be worth quite a bit of coin, the writing is on the wall for Jokinen.