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Hey, some days it takes hours to come up with newsletter material. Today, we have wayyy too much. And I don’t know where DGB wandered off to, so you’re stuck with me again. Let’s dig in …
It’s been four whole days since our last newsletter, and if you stepped away for the long weekend (in Canada) or just to get a late-June hockey break (anywhere else), we have you covered.
Here are the 10 biggest player movement happenings since we last touched base:
1. The Maple Leafs and Golden Knights are working on a sign-and-trade deal for Mitch Marner’s UFA rights that would likely involve Nicolas Roy coming back to Toronto. But it’s not done — and now there are tampering allegations at play. Drama!
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2. The Islanders dealt star defenseman Noah Dobson to the Montreal Canadiens for two first-round picks and Emil Heineman. They then signed Dobson to an eight-year deal with a $9.5 million AAV, tying him for the fifth-highest cap hit for a D in the league. Watch out for the Habs.
3. Playoff MVP Sam Bennett stayed in Florida on an eight-year deal for $8 million a season, taking a sizable discount to continue partying at the Elbo Room. Hey, he did say “Eight more years!” between shots, didn’t he?
4. John Tavares also took a hometown discount to stay in Toronto, signing for four years at just $4.38 million a season, giving the Leafs more room to work with in free agency. That’s a contract that can take the 34-year-old into the top 10 all-time in games played as a Leaf, if he’s healthy.
5. The Leafs got 22-year-old RFA Matthew Knies signed last night as well, as he passed up the potential for offer sheets in agreeing to a six-year deal with a $7.75 million cap hit.
6. The Red Wings landed goaltender John Gibson from Anaheim in exchange for Petr Mrazek and two draft picks (a second and a fourth-rounder). Prediction: Detroit is by no means done, as word is it has something big planned for the next few days.
7. The Blue Jackets helped the Avalanche out of a cap jam, taking on overpriced forwards Charlie Coyle and Miles Woods and their $7.75 million in salaries in exchange for second- and third-round picks and a prospect.
8. Veteran Claude Giroux re-signed at the last minute to stay a Senator, agreeing to a one-year deal with a $2 million base salary and a pile of bonuses.
9. Dante Fabbro signed a four-year deal with a $4.125 million AAV to stay in Columbus, taking one of the few top-four UFA defensemen off the market. He was claimed on waivers last season.
10. The Oilers gave bottom-sixer Trent Frederic a massive eight-year contract for $3.85 million a season. He had eight goals this past season.
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Bonus: Late last night, Vegas traded Nicolas Hague to Nashville, where he signed a four-year contract with a $5.5 million AAV to bolster the Predators’ blue line.
Plus a whole pile more happened, some of which I’m sure I’m forgetting, but we don’t want this newsletter to last as long as Day 1 of the draft did!
All that movement has certainly thinned out the free-agent class, as teams are anxious to get deals done before the mad scramble. The window opens at noon ET on Tuesday. We’re following all the action live from now through Wednesday.
Islanders come away the big winners
Winning the draft lottery and being able to select defenseman Matthew Schaefer at No. 1 was obviously a coup for new Islanders GM Mathieu Darche. But his club had a good weekend at the draft table beyond the top pick, too, as our prospect expert Corey Pronman graded out its draft as an A+ overall.
Other teams getting top marks? The Flyers, Sharks, Predators and Mammoth. (The Avs, Devils, Leafs, Oilers and Panthers finished on the low end.)
Scott Wheeler also published his massive winners and losers list for a further deep dive into how every team fared.
Our draft coverage was incredibly in-depth throughout the weekend, despite the fact it was an unusual year given the remote setup. Check out our hub page for more.
Mitch Marner could join an exclusive club if he signs a UFA deal worth $100 million or more on July 1. By my count, just seven NHL players in the cap era have signed deals that large, five of whom were signing extensions with their existing teams. The other two involved a controversial UFA contract in 2010 and a blockbuster offer sheet in 2012. Who were those two star players?
🏒 What is every NHL team’s toughest decision in free agency this year? Our army of writers weighs in for all 32 clubs.
💸 How on earth do the Golden Knights fit Marner under the salary cap given all their high-priced talent? Jesse (The Lone) Granger investigates.
📑 What’s this big move the Red Wings could be cooking up in free agency? Max Bultman in Detroit has a good look at the possibilities.
🤔 Michael Russo has the latest on Kirill Kaprizov and his future in Minnesota, as he stands eligible to sign an extension tomorrow.
Tomorrow is going to be a wild day. How wild?
Well, I hit up a few of our writers around North America for their predictions to find out. Here are some of the spiciest takes they could come up with. It’ll be fascinating if any of these play out.
Shayna Goldman, national writer: “The Hurricanes are going to trade for Erik Karlsson after July 1. The tradeoff will be less salary retention in exchange for the Penguins covering his signing bonus. Few teams can maximize Karlsson’s game like the Hurricanes can; he’ll join a growing line of defenders that play their best alongside Jaccob Slavin.”
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Peter Baugh in New York: “If Brad Marchand goes to market, I predict the Devils make a hard run at him. They’re in need of a top-six forward whose game can translate to the playoffs, so on paper Marchand would be a perfect fit. Plenty of teams will be after him.”
Thomas Drance in Vancouver: “It’s going to be a bad day for the 2026 free agent class. The combination of a growing salary cap, a new CBA and a weak unrestricted free agent class is going to result in July 1 being marked with an unusual number of long-term deals for newly extension-eligible players.”
Tom with the buzzkill there at the end; 2026 was supposed to be our only hope. But at least more signings will make for more news for us this year?
To better understand the UFA landscape, Dom Luszczyszyn and Sean Gentille ran a great series last week breaking down all 32 teams’ biggest needs in free agency by position. Here’s their analysis of how teams stack up at center, on the wing and on defense.
As for what things look like in goal for every team, this was my breakdown right before the Gibson deal went down.
Gentille said what stood out the most to him after going through the analysis was how thin the Rangers roster was after a tough year last season:
“I wouldn’t have tried to argue that the Rangers were in good shape — they just spent six months making their own case pretty effectively — but I also wasn’t expecting them to be in the 20s at all three position groups. Not much upside, either. Pretty brutal stuff.”
Luszczyszyn, meanwhile, thought the analysis highlighted how much the Leafs could be primed for a step back without Marner in the fold. The Toronto defense, surprisingly, ranked fairly meh by their measures:
“I was surprised that my famously pro-Leafs model was really sour on them at all three positions. Losing Marner hurts, but it was pretty sobering to see the Leafs D come out as only average. The pushback is ‘Look how good the blue line is defensively!’ and that is true. But I would counter by saying to look at how bad they are offensively. The Leafs have a lot of needs for a team in win-now mode.”
It’ll be interesting to see how these Original Six franchises address their weaknesses in what’s a very challenging landscape to try and get better. Both GMs, Chris Drury and Brad Treliving, are under a tremendous amount of pressure this offseason.
Those players were Ilya Kovalchuk, who received $100 million over 15 years from the Devils in free agency, and Shea Weber, who signed a 14-year, $110 million offer sheet with the Flyers only to have the Predators match it and keep their captain. (Before later trading him to Montreal.)
Those days of the ultra-long contracts sure were nutty, which was why the league put in a new rule limiting deals to no more than eight years beginning in 2013.
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(Top photo of Mitch Marner: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
James Mirtle is a senior writer covering the NHL for The Athletic. James joined The Athletic as the inaugural editor in Canada in 2016 and served as senior managing editor of The Athletic NHL for four years. Previously, he spent 12 years as a sportswriter with The Globe and Mail. A native of Kamloops, B.C., he appears regularly on Sportsnet 590 The Fan and other radio stations across Canada. Follow James on Twitter @mirtle
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