Thursday Evening Post

• The Edmonton Oilers have re-signed restricted free agent Chris VandeVelde to a one year, two-way contract. VandeVelde had turned down the Oilers' qualifying offer, but he has impressed the Edmonton staff enough in training camps, AHL action, and call-ups to earn the new contract. The Edmonton Journal offered its take on the signing of the former Sioux centerman, and below is the updated status of this summer's former Sioux NHL free agents:

PLAYER	2011-2012 TEAM	STATUS	NEW TEAM	SIGNING/CONTRACT DETAILS
Jason Blake	Anaheim	UFA
Taylor Chorney	Edmonton	UFA	St. Louis	1 Year, 2-Way Contract
Mike Commodore	Tampa Bay	UFA
Matt Frattin	Toronto	RFA	Toronto	2 Years, $1.7 Million
Chay Genoway	Minnesota	RFA	Minnesota	2 Years, 2-Way Contract
Brian Lee	Tampa Bay	RFA	Tampa Bay	2 Years, $2.3 Million
T.J. Oshie	St Louis	RFA	St. Louis	5 Years, $20.9 Million
Zach Parise	New Jersey	UFA	Minnesota	13 Years, $98 Million
Chris Porter	St Louis	UFA	St. Louis	1 Year, 2-Way Contract
Chris VandeVelde	Edmonton	RFA	Edmonton	1 Year, 2-Way Contract
Matt Watkins	Phoenix	UFA	NY Islanders	1 Year, 2-Way Contract

• The WCHA has released the 2012-13 men's composite schedule. The women's composite schedule was released earlier this month.
• The New York Islanders blog Lighthouse Hockey decided to revisit the Islander's decision to pass on Zach Parise in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft. New York had the 15th pick in the draft, and Parise ended up going 17th to the New Jersey Devils. And for what it's worth, after sharing this article via Twitter earlier today, I followed it up with a Tweet stating that "Matt Greene has a pretty decent NHL career going for him as well." That, of course, was in reference to the portion of the article that states, "The only other player to have any sort of career in the NHL from that Dakota team was Brandon Bochenski, who played 152 games and is in Europe now." Brad Schlossman then added that David Hale had a solid NHL career (7 seasons, 327 games) and Matt Jones saw action in 106 NHL games.