Five days into NHL free agency, the list of impact players remaining on the market is … not lengthy. How's your favorite team doing so far?
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Five days into
NHL free agency, the list of impact players remaining on the market is …
not lengthy.
Has your favorite team gotten the help it needed?
The Athletic asked its NHL staff this week for their assessments of the early moves. The analysis is subjective to each beat, not based on a scale, and factors in a team’s ability to make moves under the salary cap. Trades and re-signings since the season are also considered.
Here are the grades our writers assigned for the work done so far.
C+
If you just look at free agency, the Ducks struck out in their bids for
Steven Stamkos or
Jonathan Marchessault and didn’t make any noise beyond that. You can understand general manager Pat Verbeek only wanting to spend big money on a difference maker and not tying his club up with large contracts to more second-tier or third-tier types, but the fact is they still came up empty. What keeps their grade from sinking is the addition of
Robby Fabbri and a decent 2025 draft pick for a surplus organizational goalie and solid shutdown defenseman
Brian Dumoulin for a 2026 fourth-round choice. Those veterans will improve the team’s depth at their positions, though the Ducks now have a lot of left-shooting blueliners. —
Eric Stephens
A
The Bruins filled their need at No. 1 center with
Elias Lindholm. They signed a heavy left-shot defenseman in
Nikita Zadorov. They added to their forward depth with
Max Jones. General manager Don Sweeney did his business while leaving more than enough cap space to re-sign
Jeremy Swayman. —
Fluto Shinzawa
B-
The Sabres made their fourth line faster and more physical during free agency and then traded
Matt Savoie for
Ryan McLeod, adding even more speed to their bottom six. This Buffalo team should be more defensively responsible and harder on the forecheck than last season’s. Adding McLeod,
Jason Zucker,
Beck Malenstyn,
Nicolas Aube-Kubel and
Sam Lafferty boosts Buffalo’s depth in a big way. But the question is whether general manager Kevyn Adams has done enough to improve their 23rd-ranked offense from last season. He’s hoping Lindy Ruff can coach some individuals to better seasons, while the increased team speed will lead to a better overall offensive team. —
Matthew Fairburn
C
The Flames weren’t expected to be big players in free agency despite having almost $29 million in cap space. For the sake of their rebuild, it’s a good thing they weren’t. They made some minor signings to insulate their lineup with veterans, and don’t be surprised if some of those players end up as trade fodder for more assets down the road. Calgary still has more than $21 million to play with if something comes along, but it could also use that cap space in other ways, like taking on bad contracts with picks or acquiring a young player through trade. —
Julian McKenzie
B
The Hurricanes were going to be hard-pressed to replace everything they were set to lose on July 1, and that proved to be true. Still, new general manager Eric Tulsky and the front office were able to pivot, first rounding out the defense with reasonable contracts for
Sean Walker and Shayne Gostibehere. Depth additions at forward —
William Carrier,
Eric Robinson and
Tyson Jost — should fill help fill out the bottom of the lineup and the AHL team in Chicago, and the signing of
Jack Roslovic gives Carolina a right-handed player who can help with faceoffs and provide insurance should
Jesper Fast not be able to play at the start of the season. —
Cory Lavalette
B
The Blackhawks may not have elevated themselves into Stanley Cup contenders this offseason, but they’ve certainly upgraded their roster. General manager Kyle Davidson upgraded at nearly every position. He brought in more top-six-caliber players to play with
Connor Bedard. He signed more depth at forward. He also added veterans in the defense and at goalie. —
Scott Powers
Teuvo Teravainen’s return, plus the addition of other veterans, should give Connor Bedard more help in 2024-25. (Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
C-
Colorado entered free agency without much cap space to work with and as a result lost more production than it brought in. The Avalanche saw
Yakov Trenin, Sean Walker and
Brandon Duhaime walk out the door as unrestricted free agents. The biggest win for Colorado was extending
Jonathan Drouin on another one-year deal with a reasonable cap hit ($2.5 million). I also liked the under-the-radar move of picking up
Erik Brannstrom — a former first-round pick who never lived up to expectations in Ottawa but should fit nicely with Colorado’s high-paced style. Still, considering the cap circumstances, free agency was never going to be a win for the Avs. —
Jesse Granger
B
The Blue Jackets had to straddle a line of adding veteran players to a too-young group but not adding too many players on too long a term that would end up getting in the way of their emerging young players. They did that with one significant option on each end of the ice.
Sean Monahan, coming off a 26-goal season with
Montreal and
Winnipeg, will allow
Adam Fantilli, 19, to slot into a No. 2 center’s role and
Cole Sillinger to play on a checking line. That’s where they belong at this stage of their careers, and Monahan, as he gets older, may end up sliding down the lineup as his five-year contract progresses. Meanwhile, on defense, the Blue Jackets have two young defensemen — David Jiricek and Denton Mateychuk — who are close to ready for the NHL. But signing
Jack Johnson to an NHL-minimum contract (one year, $775,000) gives them breathing room in case those players aren’t ready. Monahan and Johnson are expected to be big voices in the dressing room, too. —
Aaron Portzline
C+
For a second consecutive offseason, the Stars knocked it out of the park with
Matt Duchene. Re-signing
Sam Steel was a solid move, too, as was buying out Ryan Suter and getting out of
Radek Faksa’s contract a year early. But the approach to addressing the blue line was confusing, at best. Handing out multi-year deals at an excess of $3 million per year to
Matt Dumba and
Ilya Lyubushkin hardly changes the blueline outlook in the present and limits the team’s cap situation for the next few years. —
Saad Yousuf
C
The Red Wings’ free agency was perfectly average — largely geared toward replacing departing players like
Shayne Gostisbehere,
David Perron and Robby Fabbri, with a potential upgrade in goal in
Cam Talbot. They did well to keep all of their free-agent contracts to two years or fewer, maintaining long-term flexibility, and while there’s no truly open spot in the lineup, there is at least a path to playing time for their top prospects at some point this season. The issue is they didn’t really get clearly better in any area except goaltending.
Vladimir Tarasenko should be better than any one departing forward, but Detroit is losing a lot of offense up front and may score less this season. They’ll certainly hope to defend a bit better as a team, but as of now, it looks like much of that charge will fall on the shoulders of young defenseman Simon Edvinsson, who looked good at the end of last season but may still experience some ups and downs. Taken all together, Detroit looks similarly positioned to last season, with the hope that better goaltending can make up for lost scoring. —
Max Bultman
A
Signing
Viktor Arvidsson,
Jeff Skinner,
Adam Henrique,
Connor Brown and
Mattias Janmark to short-term, team-friendly deals was a major coup for acting general manager Jeff Jackson. The Oilers should now have their best top six — and maybe even top nine — since the glory years of the 1980s. Slight demerits are due for the
Josh Brown and
Corey Perry contracts, though. The Oilers are still over the salary cap even with Friday’s trade of Ryan McLeod, but that’s a small problem for another day. The person Jackson hires as general manager can deal with that. —
Daniel Nugent-Bowman
B
The champs lost a key contributor in
Brandon Montour and several important depth pieces —
Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Vladimir Tarasenko among them. Bill Zito’s top priority for the world’s shortest offseason, though, was to retain
Sam Reinhart, and he did just that. Locking up a 57-goal-scorer at a below-market rate guaranteed that this grade would be a good one, as did extensions for
Dmitry Kulikov and
Anton Lundell. Adding
Nate Schmidt to the third pair didn’t hurt, either. —
Sean Gentille
C
Getting out from under the potential albatross contract of PL Dubois and picking up a proven netminder in
Darcy Kuemper is a victory.
Warren Foegele could be a nice addition. The 28-year-old winger will fit as a quality forechecker who has the speed to play with highly skilled players and is willing to do the grunt work on a line. Using a 2025 second-round pick and adding a fourth-rounder this year for
Tanner Jeannot feels like too much.
Joel Edmundson brings more size and bite to the defense and could be a mean stay-at-home partner for Brandt Clarke or
Jordan Spence. But the Kings couldn’t add those traits to their defense for less than four years and a $3.8 million cap hit? —
Eric Stephens
C+
The average grade has nothing to do with the Yakov Trenin addition, per se. John Hynes knows him well, Wild players know his style well, and the consistent message from the Wild brass and Trenin’s new teammates is he’ll fit in on the third line because he skates well, “forechecks like an animal,” according to defenseman
Jake Middleton, and should improve one of the league’s worst penalty kills. But adding another four-year term at a $3.5 million average annual value just adds to the lack of flexibility next offseason, when $13,076,922 of Zach Parise/Ryan Suter buyout dead money comes off the books. —
Michael Russo
Montreal Canadiens
B+
The Canadiens were not going to be overly aggressive in free agency, but they would have liked to add a top-six forward on a short-term deal and didn’t manage to do so. Still, they took care of their most important piece of business by signing
Juraj Slafkovský to an eight-year deal, at $7.6 million a year, which could look like a serious bargain within two years. —
Arpon Basu