It’s been a pretty fun NHL off season eh?

I mean, at least I thought it is.

I already saw people whining about how free agency wasn’t exciting because all the big names moved around prior to the start of free agent. That’s still… movement though, you do understand that? Multiple stars are now on new clubs.

Before Free Agency

Major signings got started with Matt Duchene staying in Dallas to be their Joe Pavelski for the next four seasons. Next was John Tavares also taking a sort of, “I’m a veteran about to take way less after making a ton of money to show how much I believe in this team” deal with also four years in Toronto. Tavares took less than Duchene, which was really funny to happen in the middle of the, “no tax teams have an unfair advantage” debate because everyone forget about the, “Toronto stars get endorsements larger than most markets unfair advantage” and hopefully that’s the last we hear about market advantages.

(Of course it won’t be.)

Right before free agency opened up, Mitch Marner did the one thing he never said he would do: sign a contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs before free agency began! Of course he did it to go to Vegas on an 8 year $12M deal (same as Mikko Rantanen in Dallas) which meant Toronto actually got a return on Marner. Sure, it was Nicolas Roy, but I was convinced start of the year Toronto was getting nothing.

My midway season prediction was Mitch Marner re-signing with Toronto before the season was over. He re-signed before free agency began and took $1M less than I predicted and was then traded. Close enough! Taking a victory lap.

By July 1 we got news that the Florida Panthers were keeping the entire band together. June 27 saw Sam Bennett stay in Florida on a 8×8 which is crazy for a second line centre but he’s a second line centre who won the Conn Smythe trophy with a league STARVING for second line centres right now. There’s seriously a dozen teams looking for one right now. I did think we could see Anton Lundell get moved to 2C but nope.

Next was Aaron Ekblad signing 8 years at a discount of $6.1 million. I’ve talked before about how Ekblad saw his replacement in Seth Jones join the club and saw the writing on the wall. Apparently he saw it and didn’t care. He was willing to take much, much less for the stability. Ekblad is a Windsor, Ontario, Canada boy so the community where I live was happy to see him stay. They would have preferred him going to Detroit, but, you know, beggars and choosers.

Start of July

Trade deadline acquisition Brad Marchand signed a massive six year deal on July 1 killing all the weird speculation of Marchand going to Toronto. Glad that never happened. Seeing him in Florida sucks but at least the rat isn’t a Leaf.

We soon got on July 1 one of the craziest signings we’ve seen in some time as Christian Dvorak signed a one year $5.4 million contract with the Philadelphia Flyers. Montreal Canadiens fans have been going back and forth for months on Dvorak. He really looked like he was playing half heart for most of his tenure in Montreal only to really kick it up a notch in the second half of this season. He was fine as a third line centre but $5.4 million? It’s clear Philly wanted to make a splash and didn’t care about throwing money around. That $5.4M will next summer will be split up between Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale probably, so expect Dvorak at 50% traded at the deadline to a contender.

Brock Boeser staying in Vancouver for seven years at $7.25 million per was probably the biggest surprise to me. I really thought he was on his way out to replace Mitch Marner on the Toronto Maple Leafs. Well, now he can afford a house in Vancouver.

The worst contract of the free agency was absolutely Tanner Jeannot for five years $3.4 million by the Boston Bruins. It reminded me of that one year where Vancouver signed a bunch of gritty bottom six guys and it ended up screwing their cap up for years. Terrible signing.

Speaking of terrible signings, Ken Holland put his mark on the Los Angeles Kings signing Cody Ceci for the next four years. There’s still defencemen as of writing this on the open market better than Ceci! I would trust Oliver Kylington before I ever trusted Cody Ceci.

A real odd signing was Mikael Granlund, who plays centre with a market starving for second line centres going to Anaheim for three years at $7 million. Maybe nobody except Anaheim offered him the $7M but I’ve heard people saying the Trevor Zegras trade meant they needed to fill the centre spot. Zegras barely plays centre now! The Ducks have Mason McTavish (still need to re-sign as an RFA), Leo Carlsson, Ryan Strome, with Ryan Poehling as a fourth line centre. Granlund makes five! So unless they are moving Strome or McTavish I don’t know why they signed Granlund.

The biggest free agent signing of July 2 was Pius Suter to St. Louis, one of the last credible second line centres left to sign. I’m not crazy on Suter but he can play the role. Another team with a surplus of centres with Brayden Schenn and Robert Thomas. He can play 3C but I’ve heard rumours of St. Louis looking to trade Brayden Schenn while his value is higher than it’ll ever be in the future.

The last big signing has been Bowen Byram, who was still an RFA but rumoured to be on the trade block, staying with the Buffalo Sabres. The Sabres need any win they can get.

Trade Frenzy

So how did trades go in the offseason? The first big one was Chris Kreider going to the Anaheim Ducks to reunite with former New York Rangers captain Jacob Trouba. Anaheim needed help getting to the cap floor (they still have the most money open as of writing) so Kreider should help as a veteran presence who can still put the puck in the net in his mid 30s.

The Chicago Blackhawks sent an expiring Joe Veleno to the Seattle Kraken for Andre Burakovsky, which was mostly a cap dump. Good trade for Chicago. I like Burakovsky. Joe Veleno would use the Montreal media to beg the Montreal Canadiens for a contract and got it. Good on him.

I brought up earlier how Trevor Zegras is now a Philadelphia Flyer. He needs a new deal in the summer. I’ve been a Zegras fan for some time so I hope he finds peace in Philly. He looked real depressed in Anaheim.

Vancouver bailing the Edmonton Oilers out on Evander Kane is one of those moves you might never understand.

J.J. Peterka demanded out of Buffalo and got sent to Utah for Josh Doan and Michael Kesselring. It’s honestly very good for Buffalo who needed a right handed defenceman. Kesselring could play top pairing. Might end up working out for the Sabres.

I brought up Marner earlier, but the official trade was for Nicolas Roy. The Marner derangement is pretty wild already. I’ve heard people mad he was already thinking of leaving. Yeah, that’s what happens when you don’t like your job. Toronto should have moved him the month Brendan Shanahan fired Kyle Dubas. Everyone knew it then. They didn’t. This is the price they pay. People are so messed up about it there’s people thinking the NHL schedule was designed so Mitch Marner could avoid the Toronto press on his return. Silly stuff.

Oh, the two big Montreal Canadiens trades! The first was at the draft as Montreal moved two first round picks (16 and 17) plus Emil Heineman for Noah Dobson of the New York Islanders. The Isles were trying to move up in the draft to select James Hagens but he ended up drafted by the Boston Bruins. Long Island still did great in the draft taking Matthew Schaefer first overall and taking Victor Eklund and Kashawn Aitcheson with the picks they got from Montreal. Montreal gets Noah Dobson, who Isles fans fell out of love with this past season when he was a -16 and put up 39 points instead of a +12 and 70 points the year prior. While I’m sure he has his issues defensively, I think being in Montreal will be a good place for Dobson. He isn’t the top name on the blueline despite being top paid. That’s Lane Hutson. Defence can be handled by Kaiden Guhle on his left. The expectation isn’t for him to be a world beater. Just be a first pairing top right handed defenceman for the bulk of his next eight years. I never had Noah on my radar but the fact he requested to be moved to Montreal and the Isles had no expectation to trade him to Montreal over say Columbus, and they did it? Thanks Mathieu Darche.

But the trade I’m even more crazy about was Zack Bolduc. I keep wanting to write Zac not Zack. Anyway, Habs got him for Logan Mailloux. Never cared for Mailloux. He reminds me of guys like Justin Schultz and Tyson Barrie. That’s how I saw his ceiling. He makes it, he’s clueless defensively (shut up Schultz defenders I know he won a Cup) but helps the offence on the powerplay enough to make him hard to move off of. The Habs drafting him in the first place was a disgrace. I’ve wanted him off the club. I never, ever in my wildest dreams thought Montreal was getting Zack Bolduc for him.

Bolduc was drafted same year and his season with the St. Louis Blues was just him getting better and better. Reports say he listens to his coaches and always works on his game. His March and April was fantastic and is why he scored 19 goals as a rookie. That’s the thing, he’s a rookie! In a way, it’s Montreal losing Emil Heineman and replacing him with Bolduc. If you sandwich the two trades together, Montreal got Dobson and Bolduc to replace Mailloux and Heineman. It’s wild! Bolduc was fourth in rookie scoring and everyone has said he would have had far more if his coach was Jim Montgomery from day one. This isn’t just a guy that’s going to play bottom six for Montreal. Bolduc is going to be a STAR for Montreal. I can feel it. I might get his #76.

Okay enough of me being a Habs fan through and through (I was 50/50 with Montreal and Seattle at one point but I’ve given up on the Kraken. They won’t be good until Ron Francis leaves. He’s doing a terrible job with that club) the next big moves were K’Andre Miller doing a sign and trade from the Rangers to the Carolina Hurricanes to essentially replace Dmitry Orlov. Big upgrade.

There was an interesting development (or interesting to me) that two major player on the Abbotsford Canucks, who just won the Calder Cup, ended up not staying in Vancouver. Arthurs Silovs, a 24-year-old goaltender was the playoff MVP for Abbotsford. Instead of calling him up as their backup and moving on from Thatcher Demko they re-signed Demko and traded Silov to Pittsburgh. I really hope Silovs does great in Pittsburgh. One of the other most important players of that Abbotsford run was Sammy Blais, who has been trying to scratch and claw his way back to the NHL. Everyone expected him to sign in Vancouver. He instead went to his native Quebec to sign in Montreal. Sammy is slow but he’s a hateful player. He’s the kind of guy a team needs when someone else is acting up. He will go for the throat.

Hockey Insiders need something to say

So what do we possibly have to look forward to this off season? Well, there’s all those rumours of Jordan Kyrou getting traded. At first the rumours was Kyrou to Montreal, which didn’t make sense because the Habs needed a centre. Montreal instead did the Bolduc for Mailloux trade. The rumours, despite Kyrou’s NTC now locked in, still persist. I get he’s friends with Nick Suzuki but I honestly think hockey reporters just know Montreal is an active team and are trying to run this lead into the ground.

My Habs of course are also in rumours about Nazem Kadri. Calgary made a pretty good attempt at making the playoffs and will try again. I don’t see Kadri leaving unless he wants to, and the rumour is he would waive for Montreal and Toronto. Both teams need a 2C. I guess I could see that, and would love Kadri on Montreal, but I don’t know what we’re sending out to make it work.

There’s also Marco Rossi in Minnesota. Rossi is really skilled but a small centre so teams don’t want to pay him what he wants. With the centre market so starved, you gotta wonder if he just re-ups in Minnesota at a lower price, or someone finally offers the Wild something good for him.

You then have all the craziness with Pittsburgh. Most think Pittsburgh is trying to tank and keep the generational player train from Mario Lemieux to Jaromir Jagr to Sidney Crosby to now Gavin McKenna. That would mean trading Erik Karlsson to a contender, possibly moving away from Evgeni Malkin (who is arguably also generational), trading Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell, and maybe convincing Kris Letang to move on. That would put the Penguins in complete freefall mode, which sure that could happen. You know what also could happen? Kyle Dubas is told to keep the team competitive since ownership plans to sell them and doesn’t want to sell them without their stars. Gavin goes somewhere else. Pittsburgh plays with Crosby for a few more years before he retires a Penguin forever. Yeah, not as exciting as Crosby in a Canadiens or Avalanche sweater but that’s far more likely.

Heading to 2025-2026 Season

I’ll of course do the Likely Wrong predictions for 2025-2026 closer to October. This will be my last hockey thing unless I decide to talk about something else in August or September.

September it’s expected once September 1 rolls around and Carey Price receives his final $5.5 million signing bonus on his eight year contract with the Montreal Canadiens that the Habs will be moving the contract. Essentially it’s $10.5 million on the cap, but the actual cost of the contract is only $2 million for a team. So it’ll help someone get beyond the cap floor in a big way. If someone like Pittsburgh does unload a bunch of big money contracts, they would want the Carey Price contract to be a pretend cap hit. Anaheim is still under the floor but I expect them to sign McTavish to get over it. Chicago and San Jose are likely still in bad mode, so they are also candidates for Montreal to send the contract over.

There’s very little left on the open mark. Matt Grzelcyk could be a good powerplay quarterback. Jack Roslovic should be signing in Toronto anytime soon unless they do get Kadri. Victor Olofsson is a useful player for your bottom six. Nikolai Kovalenko is only 25 and Colorado Avalanche fans thought he’d be a star when he was younger. Either he ends up a disappointment like his father or he has a fresh start somewhere. Alex Georgiev and Ilya Samsonov have gone from starters on Cup chasing teams to unable to get an NHL contract. James Reimer could back up most NHL teams but nobody likes him anymore.

I’ll do a full prediction thing in the fall but here’s my early thoughts:

1. The Eastern Conference Wildcard Race will be insane. I talked all last year about how tight the East was and was 100% correct. It took multiple teams falling apart in March for Montreal and Ottawa to squeak into wildcard spots. Next season will be no different. I’m sure Toronto, Tampa Bay, and Florida stay near the top of the Atlantic. I’m sure Ottawa and Montreal try for spots again too. I think the Detroit Red Wings getting John Gibson is their “Devils trading for Jacob Markstrom” and will at least put up a fight to the playoffs. Boston and New York could always rebound too.

2. The Utah Mammoth make the playoffs. I’ll stake my name on that one now. Adding Peterka and Tanev plus giving Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther another year to develop? Sean Durzi hopefully playing a full season? I see playoffs in the Mammoth’s future, especially if they can make one more big deal to get them over the hump. Maybe it doesn’t have to be big. Montreal needed the Carrier trade and for Patrik Laine to be healthy. Utah might just need that.

3. Someone pays the Nashville Predators an unreal haul for Ryan O’Reilly for this season and next. I absolutely see a team around December/January struggling on offence after their top line and saying you know what? We got lots of assets. We got lots of picks. Who cares if we overpay for Ryan O’Reilly? He’s a former Cup champion. Conn Smythe trophy winner! Let’s offer multiple first rounders or our best prospect. Fuck it let’s go! It will be this trade that in a few years turns around the Nashville Predators once Barry Trotz has been fired off into the sun, so Nashville won’t get to enjoy it for a long time, but I do think it happens.

4. If Mikko Rantanen, Miro Heiskanen, and Jake Oettinger are healthy for the 2026 playoffs? The Dallas Stars will be in the Stanley Cup final. Yes, I keep picking Dallas and Carolina and seeing my toes shot off. Shut up.

5. I think Connor McDavid leaves the Edmonton Oilers after they stumble this year and don’t find a starting goalie better than Stuart Skinner. Oilers fans. I’m okay if you hate me for this. I loved you trading Kane away but then you sign Trent Frederic for EIGHT YEARS and bring in Andrew Mangiapane? Heck I liked the Isaac Howard trade too! You improved the defence with… well, a full season with Jake Walman I guess? But still did nothing with the goaltending? If Edmonton doesn’t fix the goaltending I don’t see them getting to the Cup final again and I don’t see McDavid sticking around. That’s my big overarching prediction. Stan Bowman may ruin everything here. Fuck everyone involved in the Kyle Beach scandal who chose the team over the victim.

And on that lovely note, enjoy your summer!

“New York Rangers at Seattle Kraken – October 21, 2023 – Yanni Gourde misconduct Chris Kreider (53281792327)” by Jenn G from Seattle, WA is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .