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08-14-2018, 10:44 AM
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 The Stanley Cup Final begins Monday.
The New York Jets signed former Lions linebacker Brandon Copeland and re-signed defensive lineman Xavier Cooper on Monday.
Copeland missed last season after tearing a pectoral muscle during the preseason. He had 30 tackles and one forced fumble in 32 games the previous two seasons with the Lions. The 26-year-old Copeland is expected to serve as a backup on defense and be a key part of the Jets’ special teams unit. ”Too many different levels of excitement to put into words Kyle Long Jersey ,” Copeland told the Jets’ website. ”Coming off of injured reserve, having to sit every Sunday, Monday and Thursday and watching other people play, I’m first and foremost excited to get back to the game that I love.” He signed with Baltimore as an undrafted free agent out of Penn in 2013 and spent time later that season on Tennessee’s practice squad. After signing with Orlando of the Arena Football League in 2015, Copeland impressed Detroit after participating in the NFL Veterans Combine. His grandfather, Roy Hilton, played for the Baltimore Colts against the Jets in the Super Bowl in 1969. ”He played defensive end against Joe Namath and all those guys,” Copeland said. ”I know he’s going to be very proud of his grandson and now my job is to continue to make him proud.” Cooper was not tendered as a restricted free agent, but was brought back to serve as a rotational defensive lineman. He had 16 tackles and one sack in eight games, and his play increased when Muhammad Wilkerson was benched at the end of last season. Cooper was a third-round pick by Cleveland out of Washington State in 2015. He has also spent time with San Francisco Tre'Davious White Jersey , and has 56 career tackles and three sacks. — George McPhee’s endgame has always been about making the Golden Knights contenders. Strategic moves to keep winning. The veteran general manager has ridden his savvy all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, a stirring run by the first-year franchise and the first major sports team in Las Vegas. While the expansion draft gets most of the attention in attempts to explain the unusual success, the moves made by McPhee in late February, when the trade deadline came along, have proven just as important. ”I wanted to wait as long as we could to determine what we had as a team,” McPhee recalled. ”At the trade deadline we felt it was a very good team. But it was getting thin, we were getting banged up, guys out of the lineup, we had other guys playing hurt. We wanted to do the very best we could for this team that was playing its guts out, to help it.” He began moving pawns across the NHL chessboard Da'Ron Payne Youth Jersey , starting with the acquisition of forward Tomas Tatar from the Detroit Red Wings in exchange for three draft picks: a first-round pick in 2018, a second-round pick in 2019 and a third-round pick in 2021. Tatar brought with him a contract worth $15.9 million through the 2020-21 season. While the Golden Knights did send Brendan Leipsic to Vancouver for Philip Holm, perhaps the biggest trade was the one for bruising forward Ryan Reaves from Pittsburgh, a move that included the Golden Knights acquiring 40 percent of Derick Brassard’s contract. Brassard going to Pittsburgh from Ottawa meant the talented center would not be going to Winnipeg – the team Vegas just beat in a rugged Western Conference final. Many wondered whether the trade would be worth it given Reaves’ notoriety for physical play. But Reaves brought some brawn to the Golden Knights and scored the game-winning goal in Game 5 at Winnipeg. ”We just thought when we get into the games down the stretch and we’re in the playoffs, we can have a guy that can play the game right,” McPhee said. ”Ryan did a good job of providing the line and getting us good, hard, safe minutes on some nights. Even though they’re not scoring like some of the other lines, they’re one of our better lines because they’re playing the game right. The other team isn’t getting chances, we’re keeping it deep on them and playing physical on them.” McPhee and coach Gerard Gallant also wanted to make sure the chemistry built over the first five months of the inaugural season wasn’t disrupted. And that meant keeping most of the lineup intact. That included unrestricted free agents David Perron and James Neal Vita Vea Jersey , both of whose names swirled in trade rumors, and at the beginning of the season were perceived as rentals until the deadline. Nobody saw the Golden Knights doing as well they did, so it was conceivable guys like Perron and Neal could’ve been sent to playoff contenders for future draft picks or younger, up-and-coming players by the deadline. As it turned out, Perron and Neal were already on a playoff contender and on their way to stellar seasons. Perron registered a career-high 66 points in the regular season, while Neal piled up 25 goals, scoring at least 20 in each of his first 10 NHL seasons. The only other current players to do the same: Jaromir Jagr, Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews and Thomas Vanek. ”We knew that we weren’t moving anybody out Quenton Nelson Youth Jersey ,” Gallant said. ”We were happy with our lineup, we were happy with the group of players we got. We talked about adding players to our team, to make our team better and we definitely did that. But there was no thought about moving any of players out at that time. We had a great season, everything was going good and we wanted to make sure we had enough security for a playoff run and that’s what they did.” The Golden Knights await the winner of the East final between Tampa Bay and Washington, with Game 7 set for Wednesday night. The Stanley Cup Final begins Monday. — . |
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