The ten biggest NHL storylines entering free agency

All 32 NHL teams have packed up their gear from the NHL Draft and are back in their respective cities where the true line in the sand that separates one season from the next is drawn with the start of free agency.

At Noon EST, the free agent market opens up. With it comes the process of remaking teams, initiated for some teams in the days leading up to the draft, begins in earnest.

Here are the top storylines to follow as the NHL moves quickly into off-season mode.

1- Steven Stamkos And The Tampa Bay Lightning

No team has made as many dramatic moves in the past week than the Tampa Bay Lightning. On Saturday, the second day of the NHL draft, the Bolts dealt defenseman Mikhail Sergachev to the Utah Hockey Club and moments later sent disappointing trade deadline add from a season ago, Tanner Jeannot, to Los Angeles, shedding about $11 million in salary cap commitments for next season in a matter of minutes. The assumption was that some of those savings would be devoted to inking future Hall of Famer Victor Hedman to a contract extension as he prepares to enter the final year of his current deal. And some thought that the additional cap space would go to keeping captain and pending unrestricted free agent Steven Stamkos with the only NHL team for whom he’s played. But Sunday, Tampa GM Julien BriseBois sent a third-round pick to Carolina for the rights to pending UFA Jake Guentzel, who they then signed to a seven-year deal. BriseBois is one of the top GMs in the game in spite of a relatively low profile, and it’s hard to imagine he would make that move if he didn’t believe he has a deal that will keep Guentzel in Tampa. That would almost certainly spell the end of Stamkos’s run with the Lightning, who selected him first overall in 2008.

2- Where Could Stamkos Go?

It seems like only yesterday but Stamkos did talk to a number of other teams before signing the eight-year deal that is now expiring with the Lightning. Toronto would be a fit given it’s Stamkos’s hometown, but unless the Leafs can find a way to move Mitch Marner (or John Tavares) that’s not happening. Boston needs scoring. Vancouver is looking to make a big addition. Detroit is in the mix for some major changes given GM Steve Yzerman’s cap shedding in recent days. Plus, of course, Yzerman had Stamkos in Tampa when Yzerman was the GM there. Even with Patrick Kane signing a one-year deal late Sunday to stay in Detroit, the Red Wings could still be in on Stamkos. Nashville is another team with cap space and a desire to make a big offensive addition. Then there’s Stamkos’s desire to keep winning. What about Carolina whose efforts to extend Guentzel, whom they acquired at the trade deadline, were unsuccessful? At 34, Stamkos doesn’t really fit their age demographic (Guentzel is 29), but maybe on a short-term deal, the sniper could find the same kind of success that Guentzel found with top center Sebastien Aho.

3- Moving And Shaking In Gotham

One place that might be appealing to Stamkos, pending other (many?) moving parts, is New York where Rangers GM Chris Drury has been pulling levers trying to find the right combination after the Rangers were handled easily by the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final. He’s already shed Barclay Goodrow by putting him on waivers and having the Sharks repatriate the gritty winger. He’s locked up former number two overall pick Kaapo Kakko to a one-year deal, and is rumored to be open to including him in a deal that might open up another roster spot. And there is persistent talk that the Rangers are looking to move captain Jacob Trouba, who has two years left on his current deal at $8 million per year. Larry Brooks of the New York Post has written about a possible deal with Detroit for Trouba. Does Kane signing a one-year deal with Detroit with a full no-trade clause change that? Unlikely.

4- Utah Taking Care Of Business

We talked on the pre-draft podcast about what the fledgling Utah Hockey Club might get up to leading up to and through the draft and GM Bill Armstrong was busy on Day 2 of the draft, Saturday. He added Sergachev, 26, who is under contract at $8.5 million per year through 2030-31. The talented defenseman is coming off a season where he broke his tibia and fibula in a gruesome incident in early February, but amazingly came back to play in the playoffs. He’s a legitimate top-four defender. Armstrong also added another top four defender in John Marino not long after making the Sergachev deal. Marino, 27, has all the tools to be a key part of the new hockey club in Utah but ran out of time in New Jersey where the Devils are expected to pursue free agent defenseman Brett Pesce. With Sergachev and Marino joining an already solid young defense corps the UHC’s transition game should be much-improved as it relates to getting the puck to a group of young, skilled forwards. I don’t think Armstrong is done. According to CapFriendly.com the UHC still have $28.26 million cap space left and could use an impact forward or two to ensure they are going to be in the playoff mix moving forward after years of wandering, literally, in the desert as the Arizona Coyotes. 

5- What Now For Leon Draisaitl And The Edmonton Oilers

While Tampa looks to move quickly to lock up Hedman the Oilers are in a similar position with star forward Leon Draisaitl who is heading towards the final year of his current deal. He was a bit non-committal about his future in Edmonton as one might expect him to be after the Oilers lost Game 7 of an epic Stanley Cup Final 2-1 to the Florida Panthers. Draisaitl was battling injuries and looked out of sorts the final two rounds of the playoffs. That said he’s a world-class talent and will get dollars and term whether it’s in Edmonton or elsewhere that should put him near the top of the salary mountain. Everyone knows that. Now it’s up to team president Jeff Jackson, who is searching for a new GM after Ken Holland and the team agreed Holland would move on from the Oilers, to get someone in place who can get a deal done and sooner than later. For a team like the Oilers the unpalatable truth is they will have to look at trading Draisaitl if it doesn’t look like he’ll sign an extension. Lots of time to get it done but the clock is officially ticking.

6- What now in Columbus?

The Blue Jackets have been one of the most underachieving teams of the past two decades with just one traditional playoff series win (even if it was one of the greatest upsets of all time as they swept Presidents’ Trophy winning Tampa in 2019) since coming into the NHL. They also beat Toronto in the qualifying round in the Covid playoffs of 2020 if you’d like to count that. Still, the Blue Jackets have been a pretty colossal disappointment in a town that is an underappreciated hockey market. Don Waddell, fresh from remaking a moribund Carolina team into a perennial contender with six straight playoff appearances, is now tasked with reviving the persistently underachieving Blue Jackets. This includes finding a new head coach after a disastrous turn last year where the team hired and fired Mike Babcock before he coached a single practice, and likely trading star winger Patrik Laine who has endured problems on and off the ice since coming to Columbus. Todd McLellan’s name has featured prominently in rumors for the coaching position. The bigger question is what happens to oft-injured scoring winger Laine who is expected to be released from the joint NHL/NHLPA player assistance program. Both sides seem to agree that a new start for Laine would be preferable but Columbus won’t be giving him away even if they are selling with Laine’s value at a low ebb. Waddell and his staff in Columbus turned aside multiple offers to trade the fourth overall pick which they used to select highly regarded center Cayden Lindstrom. But Waddell isn’t afraid to make moves – he sent popular Alexandre Texier to St. Louis for a fourth-round pick in 2025. Stay tuned.

7- Trade Possibilities To Watch

Even though the salary cap is going to take its first sizable jump since before the pandemic, going to $88 million up $4.5 million from this current season, there are still lots of teams who are looking to move bodies and salary cap hits in order to make other roster moves this off-season. We already saw that with Los Angeles moving on from the disappointing P.L. Dubois just one season after he signed a whopper eight-year deal with an annual cap hit of $8.5 million. The Kings sent Dubois, just 25 and already on his fourth NHL team, to Washington in return for former Kings netminder Darcy Kuemper who had lost his starting job in Washington to Charlie Lindgren. Who else is rumored to be on the move? Ottawa has a plethora of young defensemen and it looks like Jacob Chychrun, who has one more year left on his current deal, is going to be the odd man out. He has, according to CapFriendly.com, a limited no-trade clause, and has the skills to be a top four defender and is just 26. In short, he should command a top return for a team trying to break out of a cycle of despair and mismanaged assets. Philadelphia is a team rumored to be interested with forwards Scott Laughton and/or Travis Konecny’s names in the air.

8- Flyers Get Michkov Ahead Of Schedule

I remember all kinds of debate about where Matvei Michkov, the highly skilled Russian winger, would be selected in the 2023 draft. Was he close enough to Connor Bedard to be selected second? Or was his uncertain status as a Russian player during a time of an unlawful conflict in Ukraine making him too high a risk no matter how skilled he might be? The Philadelphia Flyers, under new management with Danny Briere as GM and Keith Jones as head of hockey ops, rolled the dice and took Michkov with the seventh overall pick. The feeling at the time was he might not be available for three or four years pending the dispensation of his current deal as a player in the Kontinental Hockey League. Looks like Briere et al made the right choice as news broke recently that Michkov was going to be released from his Kontinental Hockey League contract and will be headed to North America for the coming season. No guarantees, of course, that he steps into a starring role, but a Flyers team that is ahead of its retooling will get an unexpected look at a top prospect and that can’t be anything but good.

9- Whither Martin Necas?

One of the team’s that will be most interesting to watch in the coming weeks will be the Carolina Hurricanes. For the first time since Tom Dundon bought the team in 2018 there is a new GM at the helm with Eric Tulsky moving in recent days from ‘interim’ GM to the full-time role. With Waddell taking over in Columbus Tulsky, considered one of the brightest young minds in the game, is facing a trial by fire as he has a long list of things to figure out personnel-wise starting with what to do with talented young forward Martin Necas. The 25-year-old has shown flashes of being a top tier offensive producer and his defensive game has improved under head coach Rod Brind’Amour. But there remains something just a little disappointing at how Necas has evolved. Tulsky explored a number of potential deals involving Necas at the draft including trying to pry the fourth overall pick out of Columbus. But it didn’t happen and so Tulsky will have to move a Plan B. He also ended up shipping Guentzel to Tampa as noted above. Carolina isn’t out of the running to keep Guentzel although that looks like less of a possibility now.

10- A Maple Leaf Of A Predicament

Speaking of predicaments, so much discussion in Toronto around what might happen with Mitch Marner although I must admit I don’t see how it gets resolved unless Marner, the uber-talented winger entering the final year of his deal at $10.903 million, wants to go somewhere else and that seems unlikely at this stage. Marner commands a full no-trade clause according to CapFriendly.com and then there’s the not so small issue of if you do get Marner to agree to a fresh start somewhere else, where does he go and how do you go about replacing the 100 points or so that goes out the door with him? It seems like bad business to simply try and unload one of the best offensive players in the game because you’ve made such a hash of your cap allotment. But maybe that’s the reality of the Leafs’ situation as they try to improve their blue line with limited cap resources. The Leafs did acquire the rights to defenseman Chris Tanev who will become an unrestricted free agent Monday and will be highly sought-after if he does come to market. Do they have the flexibility to add the hard-nosed Tanev as the roster is currently constructed? By spending so much on the cadre of offensive stars including Marner, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Morgan Rielly, the Leafs are perpetually up against the wall trying to make any kind of meaningful changes to a roster that’s won one single playoff round since 2004. I’m guessing it’s pretty much status quo with the Leafs with the hope being that new head coach Craig Berube, who oversaw a magical Cup run in St. Louis in 2019 and has already spoken glowingly about Marner, can be the difference-maker.