“We continue to chip away here,” Stars GM Joe Nieuwendyk told ESPN.com on Tuesday. “Our intention is to move his rights and hope to do that prior to the draft here.”

Nieuwendyk wouldn’t give up much, but they may have an offer for Richards. They would have to convince Richards to waive his no-movement clause. The Stars would like to bring Jamie Langenbrunner back, but only a reasonable price. The Predators and Shea Weber continue to work on a new deal. They offered him salary arbitration, so no other team can give him an offer sheet. There hasn’t been any talks between Josh Gorges and the Montreal Canadiens. The Lightning and UFA Sean Bergenheim are not close.

“There are several different options that we’re exploring, from young up-and-comers that are going to cost assets to acquire, to searching the UFA market to see who might be the right fit for us, to talking to some NHL teams,” Maloney told ESPN.com. “There’s three or four goaltenders that we might have interest in where the team in question might want to make a change. So really, the factors we’re looking at are acquisition cost, contract term, contract amount and age of the player.

“That’s all being evaluated and discussed. At some point, we’ll make a decision; at some point, we will have a goalie here. We’re just not there yet in regards to which way we want to go here.”

Goalies on his list could be free agents Tomas Vokoun, Jose Theodore, Marty Turco, JS Giguere, Ty Conklin, Mike Smith, Pascal Leclaire, Ray Emery, and Brian Boucher. On the trade side of things, Jonathan Bernier, Cory Schneider or Evgeni Nabokov. They are not close to signing any of their free agents which includes: UFAs Ed Jovanovski, Radim Vrbata, Vern Fiddler, and Eric Belanger, as well as RFAs Keith Yandle, Kyle Turris, Mikkel Boedker and Lauri Korpikoski.

“You don’t always know how it’s going to unfold,” Snow told Newsday in a recent telephone interview. “If there is an opportunity to trade up or down, we’d be open to anything like that.”