The long wait is finally coming to an end. Fantasy hockey season is almost upon us. Rookie camps and training camps open this month, and for those who detach from everything to focus on soaking up the summer sun or turn attention to their favorite baseball, football or WNBA team, a lot has happened since the Florida Panthers captured the team’s second-straight Stanley Cup by defeating the Edmonton Oilers, this time in six games.
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Defenseman Matthew Schaefer went No. 1 overall to the New York Islanders in an NHL Draft that featured few surprises, and the subsequent opening of NHL free agency was more of the same. It was highlighted by one big decision, Mitch Marner, but was relatively quiet aside from that.
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With the NHL salary cap jumping from $88 million in 2024-25 to $95.5 million in the upcoming season (an increase of $7.5 million) teams had the ability to maintain their pending free agents in ways that they haven’t been able to in years prior, and, for the most part, took full advantage of the newfound flexibility.
With free agency being a bit of a dud, trades were where most of the action happened, and there were certainly a couple of big names that have new homes for the upcoming season.
Here’s a full recap of the big moves made over the doldrums of the summer months:
Mitchell Marner’s Big Move to the Vegas Golden Knights
After a nine-season tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs, in which he had 741 points in 657 career regular-season games, Marner is officially moving on from his hometown team. The 28-year-old, who has 13 goals and 50 assists in 70 playoff appearances in his career, is off to the Golden Knights, acquired with an eight-year, $96 million extension in a sign-and-trade for Nicolas Roy. Marner joins an already stacked forward group that includes established NHL stars Mark Stone, Jack Eichel and Tomas Hertl, along with last year’s breakout star, Pavel Dorofeyev. The Golden Knights currently sit over $7 million clear of the salary cap, but the news that defenseman Alex Pietrangelo will miss at least the entirety of the upcoming season, and potentially more, will likely take care of that overage.
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Marner was undoubtedly the biggest fish available in an otherwise underwhelming group of free agents. As previously mentioned, the class was severely weakened by players re-signing with their current teams ahead of the opening of free agency. Brad Marchand, Aaron…