Decoding the NHL's dog days. Plus: Mitch Marner's weirdest league record

New York Times

3 days ago

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Good morning to everyone except people who try to tell you that 'scoreless' isn't a score. Don't worry, it's fine, he's at the cottage and will never see this. Let's see if we can find any news to talk about …
Let's just say we're officially into the NHL's slow period, as the only league that packs its entire offseason into a roughly 10-day blitz is emerging into what we would call 'next year.' Can we find anything to talk about? We don't really have a choice, so let's dig in.
Here's what hasn't happened (yet?)
A classic literary trope is 'the dog that didn't bark,' the Sherlock Holmes-inspired idea that you can sometimes learn more from what didn't happen than what did. We're not solving any murder mysteries here, but there's still some value in looking around the NHL landscape and taking note of the stories that haven't happened.
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• The Oilers haven't upgraded in goal: Other teams have, notably the Red Wings trading for John Gibson. But so far, the Oilers are standing pat, despite another playoff run that ended partly due to losing a goaltending battle. With the goalie carousel largely finished spinning, that would seem to lead to one of two conclusions: Either the Oilers are really going to risk what could be the final year of the Connor McDavid era on the status quo, or they've got something even bigger in mind.
• Some bad teams haven't really tried to get better: The Ducks and Sharks both did enough UFA shopping that they at least feel like they're trying. But the Blackhawks are apparently done before they ever really started, part of a patience-preaching plan which makes it seem like they're content to let Connor Bedard go a third season without playing meaningful games. And the Sabres' only big move so far made them worse, at least in the short term. There's still the Bowen Byram situation to figure out, so the Sabres aren't 'done.' But they're also not good, or really all that close, and I'm not sure what Kevyn Adams thinks his path to changing that looks like.
• None of the big names have signed extensions: As we all know, July 1 is the first day that players with one year left on their contract can sign an extension. But teams and players can talk before then, and a deal is often done in time to announce on day one. That didn't happen this year with any of the biggest names, a group headlined by McDavid, Jack Eichel and Kirill Kaprizov. That's no reason to panic — there's lots of time to get something done, and history tells us that few if any true superstars ever taste UFA in their prime. But so far, it's been awfully quiet.
• There's a ton of cap space floating around out there: There's even one team, Anaheim, that's still well under the floor. According to Puckpedia's team data, the Ducks are joined by the Sharks and Hawks as teams with at least $20 million in cap space, while four more teams have at least $15 million and an additional seven have $10 million. That's nearly half the league with lots of space, and increasingly little to spend it on. This is where we used to talk about 'weaponizing' cap space, and maybe some of these teams could take on bad contracts. (Carey Price, anyone?) But I'm not sure that cap room is that much of a weapon when half the league has it, so it will be interesting to see if this all shakes out into something beyond a whole bunch of teams just sitting on space.
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• There are still a few decent UFAs who haven't signed yet: I mean, Jack Roslovic is good, right? Jeff Skinner? Victor Olofsson? Yeah, the list is looking rough. But history tells us that there will be some value to be found in what's left. I'm more interested in seeing what the prices look like, and how this piece merges with the extra cap room we just mentioned. This is typically the time of year where the remaining UFAs would be looking at short-term deals at big discounts, just to ensure they'd have a job. But with all the space floating around, maybe the supply-and-demand dynamic shifts.
We haven't seen a trade since July 2, and with apologies to Shane Bowers, we haven't seen a significant deal since July 1, a busy day that included moves like Zack Bolduc to Montreal and K'Andre Miller's sign-and-trade to Carolina. Since then, it's been quiet.
Too quiet.
So what's the deal with the lack of deals? It's hard to say. We expect the offseason to quiet down around this time, but we typically see at least a few moves over the first week of July. And you could have made the case that we'd see even more this year, because there was too much cap space and not enough UFAs making it to market, so we'd inevitably wind up with lots of teams who still had roster holes to fill and money to do it with who'd have to turn to trades instead of free agency.
So far, it's not happening. I have three theories:
• It's Mitch Marner's fault. Too many teams had made Marner their UFA priority and just didn't have a reasonable Plan B for when he inevitably wound up in Vegas instead. Or their Plan B was Nikolaj Ehlers, and now he's in Carolina. Clearly, lots of teams we assumed were in on Marner should have seen this coming, since this particular game of musical chairs had way too many open seats. But maybe what we're seeing now is some of those teams going back to the drawing board, and only now starting work on deals that should have been mostly nailed down by now.
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• No cap crunch = no urgency. This is usually the time of year where some teams overreact to missing out on UFAs. But it's also the point where some teams realize that they've overspent, or that their moves have shoved other players further down the lineup than makes financial sense. When that happens, and there are only a few teams who have cap space to burn, it can lead to some urgency, if not outright panic. As we've already covered, there's a ton of cap room floating around out there. So with everybody feeling like they'll find a partner eventually, maybe that lack of urgency is slowing down the market.
• Something big is cooking. Wishful thinking? Yeah, probably. But while smaller deals can come together quickly, we're often told true blockbusters take time. That always seems a little weird, given that other leagues have GMs who are smart enough to pull stuff like this together. (Seriously, read that headline and then tell me NHL GMs aren't timid little babies.) But maybe they're right, and the radio silence on the trade wire just means somebody out there is quietly grinding away on something that's going to shake the league.
• Bonus fourth theory: There are actually a ton of trades happening, but now that Bob McKenzie is retired, we have no way of knowing about them.
Throughout the cap era, the maximum limit for any individual player's cap hit is 20 percent of the current upper limit at the time the deal is signed. Who is the only star to ever sign a multi-year deal that hit the full 20 percent ceiling?
🚨 Our staff got together to hand out grades to every team based on the first few days of offseason moves. Two teams got an A+, while two others took home a D.
👶 It's mock draft time! Specifically, it's time for Corey Pronman's way-too-early-but-still-fun mock for the 2026 entry draft. Spoiler: Your team can't believe the guy they got was still available in that slot.
🕒 If you missed it, be sure to check out Fluto Shinzawa's eye-opening piece on the principles of the 24-hour athlete.
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✈️ Jonathan Toews is home at last, and he sounds like a guy who's happy to be back.
🔮 The 2024-25 prediction contest results are in. And for the first time, playing it safe turned out to be the right strategy. (Mainly because Auston Matthews ruins everything.)
Mitch Marner has been in the news lately, and people have strong feelings about the new Vegas Golden Knight and his legacy. For today, at least, let's put all of that aside. I have a cool Marner stat that I want to share with you. (Thanks to commenter Andrew M. for flagging this to me a few years ago.)
In fact, before I tell you, let's see if you can find it yourself. Mitch Marner set an NHL record on April 5, 2022. Here's the box score of that game. Can you spot the record?
A hint: Focus on the second period.
Did you find it? The record comes from those first two goals, both scored by Marner at 0:30 and 1:07 of the period. That 37-second gap is impressive, but hardly record-breaking. But then you look a bit closer, and it comes into focus:
Mitch Marner holds the record for the shortest time between scoring a short-handed goal and a power-play goal.
Think about it. The order matters here — we're talking a SHG first, then a PPG. That's hard to do without some time elapsing in between. Specifically, you need to score short-handed, then have that penalty expire, then have the other team take a penalty, and then score a power play goal. To have all of that happen in 37 seconds of game time is pretty impressive.
Mix in that you have to be a player who gets time on both special teams, and this feels like a tough record to break. Tough, but probably not impossible, which is the best kind of record.
While it's technically possible to exceed the 20 percent limit on a one-year deal under very specific circumstances — Jeremy Welsh fans, rise up — only one player has ever signed a multi-year deal that nudged up to the ceiling.
That would be Tampa Bay's Brad Richards, all the way back in 2006. He signed a five-year deal that carried a cap hit of $7.8 million, exactly 20 percent of the then-$39 million limit.
At the time, less than one year into the cap era, we assumed it would be the first of many. But almost two decades later, not only has it never been matched, nobody's even come especially close.
(Photo of Connor McDavid: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)