Training camp story lines to watch

NHL training camps open this week, with the exhibition schedule starting Sunday. That means we all get to spend the next few weeks speculating about goaltending battles, line combinations, special teams time, and which scrappy underdogs will claim which roster spots.

We’ll do all of that while ignoring that, in the salary-cap era, 90 percent of each team’s roster is set in stone before camp ever starts. We’re getting pretty good at that, because as little as most of this will end up mattering, training camp is fun. It’s a chance to ease back into the NHL for a few weeks with your fellow fans, before opening night arrives and we all start stabbing each other with screwdrivers over a faceoff violation.

But until stabbing time arrives, here are a half-dozen story lines to keep an eye on as the preseason unfolds.

How Will All of Those PTOs Shake Out?

The NHL’s summer of fiscal sanity has shifted directly into the autumn of the PTO — i.e. the professional tryout, an offer to an established player to come to training camp as, essentially, a walk-on. The deals come with no strings attached; teams are under no obligation to sign the player to an actual contract, and players can pick up and take their services to any team willing to offer full-time employment.

PTOs are far from an ideal scenario for the veterans who end up taking them; most have solid NHL résumés and were hoping to land multiyear deals in free agency. But in a perfect world, the player turns some heads in camp, earns a one-year contract, puts together a strong season, and then cashes in on a better deal the following summer. Call it the Mason Raymond model — after a decent career with the Canucks, Raymond took a PTO with the Maple Leafs in 2013, earned a roster spot, played well, and then parlayed that into a three-year deal with the Flames that totaled almost $10 million.

Of course, that’s the best-case scenario, and most PTOs end with the veteran being sent packing, often spelling the end of an NHL career. But it’s a shot worth taking, and plenty of veterans have done just that in recent weeks.

Some of the more recognizable names include Scott Gomez (St. Louis), Devin Setoguchi (Toronto), Tomas Fleischmann (Montreal), Sergei Kostitsyn (Calgary), Patrick Kaleta (Buffalo), Brad Boyes (Toronto), Derek Roy (Washington), Martin Havlat (Florida), and Curtis Glencross (Toronto). None of those guys sounds like a future All-Star, but most could help the right team for a year, and at this point they should come cheap.

History tells us that a few will make it; most won’t. But it’s hard not to root for them at least a little bit.

What About Those Still Unsigned?

Most years, we’d still have a star player or two sitting at home waiting for a new contract, which everyone would call a holdout even though it was no such thing. There’s no P.K. Subban or Ryan Johansen this year, but there are a couple of good young RFAs who are still waiting for deals.

Panthers winger Jonathan Huberdeau is a tricky player to evaluate. He was the third overall pick in the 2011 draft but didn’t make the team as an 18-year-old. He put up a solid rookie year in the lockout-shortened 2013 season, then struggled as a sophomore before posting an impressive 54-point campaign last year. That kind of inconsistency probably translates to a bridge deal, one that sounds like it should be signed soon.

In Brooklyn, the Islanders need to figure out what to do with Brock Nelson. The 23-year-old is coming off a 20-goal campaign in his second NHL season and would presumably be looking at a short-term deal. But there’s a complicating factor here: The Islanders have a team policy that prohibits negotiations with players once camp starts. It’s a weird stance, and one that means Nelson needs to sign by Thursday or sit out the whole season. It’s hard to imagine that happening, and since Nelson has little leverage here, the deal probably gets done.

As for unsigned UFAs, there’s not much left out there. Sean Bergenheim could probably help someone, and Jiri Tlusty is reportedly turning down PTO offers and eying the KHL if he can’t find an NHL deal. With the great Cody Franson Watch finally behind us and just about everyone else with a pulse signing PTOs, that’s pretty much it.

Of course, when you mention signing contracts, there’s one more group of players we need to talk about …

Will Any Big Extensions Get Done?

While this year’s free-agency ranks are getting dangerously thin, next year’s remain tantalizingly stacked. And that’s unusual. For the better part of a decade, it’s been accepted wisdom in the NHL that star players in their prime just don’t make it to unrestricted free agency — they always sign extensions well before their deals run out.

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Lessons from the NHL's summer on fiscal sanity

With September here and training camp on the horizon, it’s time for an end-of-summer NHL tradition: looking back on the past few months and slapping a broad theme on them. Every year around this time, we pick through the summer’s headlines and arrive at a pithy title to summarize an entire offseason. Last year was the Summer of Analytics. The year before that was the Summer of LOL Maple Leafs. In 2012, it was the Summer of Lockout Preparation. (OK, technically that one was the Summer of Lockout Preparation Part III, Snider’s Revenge — but we all agreed that felt a little wordy.)

As for this year, it looks like it will go into the books as the Summer of … Fiscal Sanity?

Granted, that doesn’t have much of a ring to it. But looking back on the past few months, it’s hard to arrive at a different conclusion. After a decade of increasingly disastrous offseasons in the salary-cap era — filled with awful free-agency signings, panicked extensions, and other nonsensical spending sprees — this was the year when the league’s general managers got conservative.

Now, it would be wrong to treat this as a phenomenon that appeared without warning, as if all 30 NHL GMs bolted upright in bed one night with the realization that the game’s economics needed to change. But it would be just as wrong to act as if this summer’s market correction was somehow inevitable and predictable. Many of the contracts handed out to pending free agents during the regular season showed no indication that it was anything other than business as usual; remember, it was only April when Canucks fans were rationalizing the ridiculous deals given to bit players Derek Dorsett and Luca Sbisa under the logic that surely someone would have given them more on the open market. And in any other year, they’d have been right.

But by the end of June, even before the champagne had stopped flowing in Chicago, the league’s teams were busy tightening their belts. Let’s look back at how it all played out.

RFAs on the Move

The first signs that the winds were changing came before free agency even opened, with the trading of two young stars who were about to hit restricted free agency.

For years, the reality of top young RFAs had been this: They didn’t move. Oh, they’d inspire all sorts of rumors. They’d posture, and their teams would posture right back. Occasionally, they’d pretend to be considering an offer sheet, and in rare cases, they might even hold out. But young RFAs almost never actually went anywhere, because young players are the most valuable asset in today’s league, and teams were ultimately willing to hold on to them at just about any cost.

That changed this year, as both Chicago’s Brandon Saad and Boston’s Dougie Hamilton were unexpectedly traded in the days around the entry draft. Both are already very good players, and both could have superstar-potential ceilings. And yet both were dealt, at least partly due to fears of an incoming offer sheet. Those kinds of threats have rarely scared teams in the past — every single one has been matched since 2007 — but this year it was enough to spook two teams into moving on from future stars.

The two deals were received very differently; the Hawks were generally seen as having made the best of a bad situation, while the Bruins were widely criticized for getting too little in return. But both pointed to the possibility that the ground was shifting in advance of free agency. When the markets opened, that seemed to be confirmed.

The Free-Agent Frenzy That Wasn’t

Brian Burke used to say that NHL GMs made more mistakes on trade deadline day than in the rest of the year combined. But over the past decade, the undisputed title for the league’s dumbest 24 hours had clearly shifted to July 1, when the league calendar rolls over, free agency opens, and teams with newfound cap space throw those dollars at anyone with a pulse. Agents salivate, fans cringe, and sportswriters get ready to write their annual roundup of all the worst deals.

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The ten most intriguing free agents left

We’re into mid-July, which means sunshine and cookouts and cold beer on the patio. It also means that, if you’re an NHL unrestricted free agent who hasn’t signed a contract yet, you’re probably screwed.

The market for UFAs dries up around the second week of July every year, with limited cap space leaguewide meaning fewer dollars available to the unfortunate leftovers still looking for work. That’s been especially true this year; the market was uncharacteristically reasonable at the start, indicating that the league’s GMs had finally realized that good teams aren’t built by throwing around millions in July.

That all paints a grim picture for the many players still available. If there’s any good news, it’s that at least a few of the remaining names present some interesting possibilities for the right team. There’s not much point trying to rank the available players in terms of best or worst; at this point, success or failure is as much about fit as anything, and one team’s best will be another team’s bust. So instead, let’s pick out a few guys who are still on the market and rank them from least to most intriguing. That’s a broad term that leaves us with plenty of room to get subjective, granted, but here are 10 names that would be worth keeping an eye on in between cold ones.

10. Christian Ehrhoff

2014-15 numbers: 49 GP, 3 G, 11 A, 14 pts; $4M cap hit

Why teams should sign him: Ehrhoff spent the first few years of his career in San Jose and Vancouver as a “so underrated he might be overrated” defenseman, topping out with an impressive 50 points as part of the Canucks’ near-Cup-winning team in 2011. That earned him a ridiculous 10-year, $40 million contract with the Sabres, one that was heavily front-loaded to keep the cap hit down. That front-loading made it a mild surprise when he was bought out last summer — the Sabres had already paid him $23.6 million for three years’ work — and his one-year deal with Pittsburgh seemed like one of the best bargains of the summer.

Why they haven’t: A disappointing season in Pittsburgh seems to have dampened any enthusiasm for Ehrhoff’s services. He missed a big chunk of the season because of injuries and wasn’t especially productive when he did play. With a surprisingly cool market and better blue-line options available, there’s been almost no buzz around Ehrhoff’s status.

What comes next: Like many players on this list, Ehrhoff will likely have to settle for a short-term deal and a pay cut. That’s fair — he just turned 33, so teams are right to be nervous about whether last season was a fluke or the start of a decline. But keep an eye on him; in the right situation, he could be one of those late-summer bargains that ends up making GMs wonder why they didn’t make a phone call.

9. Brad Boyes

2014-15 numbers: 78 GP, 14 G, 24 A, 38 pts; $2.625M cap hit

Why teams should sign him: Boyes has had a weird career path, bouncing around the league early on, briefly looking like a star in St. Louis, and then resuming his NHL-wide tour in recent years. But wherever he’s been, he’s almost always chipped in offensively. Not a ton — his days as a 40-goal scorer are long gone — but he’s scored 35 goals over the past two seasons, and plenty of teams could use that kind of scoring from their third line.

Why they haven’t: The Panthers clearly didn’t like what they saw, buying Boyes out despite those goals. He’s not a guy who really impresses you when he isn’t scoring, and it’s possible he doesn’t do that often enough these days to be worth a roster spot over a younger, cheaper option.

What comes next: There’s been speculation that Boyes may have to wait for a training camp tryout invite, which wouldn’t be unprecedented; that’s how he wound up in Florida two years ago. Still, it would be surprising if not one team could find space for a potential 20-goal scorer on the roster between now and then.

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Making sense of Vladimir Tarasenko's monster contract

There’s always one. Every summer, as we all get settled into the NHL offseason doldrums, there’s always one young superstar who drops a mid-summer contract bomb on our sleepy little hockey hamlet.

Last year it was P.K. Subban. This year, it’s Vladimir Tarasenko. The Blues winger just signed a massive extension, one that largely redefines the market for young players.

What does it all mean? Let’s figure it out.

What happened?

The St. Louis Blues announced the signing of Vladimir Tarasenko to an eight-year, $60 million contract. The deal carries a cap hit of $7.5 million, making Tarasenko the Blues’ highest-paid player in terms of average annual value.

The deal comes on the heels of a breakout season in which he scored 37 goals and recorded 73 points in 77 games, good for tenth in overall league scoring. He had been a restricted free agent, meaning he was free to sign an offer sheet with any team. Instead, the Blues locked him up for eight years, which is the maximum allowable contract length under the current CBA.

Is $60 million a lot? It sounds like a lot.

It’s a lot. The annual cap hit will be among the top 20 in the league, and makes Tarasenko the seventh-highest-paid winger in the game.

More importantly, the deal is almost unprecedented, in that it’s only Tarasenko’s second NHL contract. After just three seasons in the league, he was still years away from reaching unrestricted free agency. Similar deals to players like Phil Kessel or Corey Perry came with UFA status looming, giving the players leverage to demand a big deal or walk away and hit the open market. Players in Tarasenko’s situation have typically had to settle for signing a bridge deal before going long-term; we’ve never seen a player this young get this much money.

Sorry, what’s a bridge deal?

This is a question that’s often asked by hockey fans who are relatively new to following contract negotiations; these days, it’s also one asked by smirking player agents, feigning confusion while getting ready to shake a GM upside down and collect all the money that falls out.

When the NHL entered the salary cap era, the players agreed to accept restrictive rules around entry-level contracts that basically guaranteed that teams would get to keep young players for the first three years of their career at a very cheap price point, typically under $1 million annually. In return, the players got earlier access to unrestricted free agency, which meant they could hit their big payday as soon as seven years into their NHL career.

That left at least a four-year gap between the entry-level deal and UFA status, during which players could become restricted free agents and qualify for arbitration rights. For all intents and purposes, the player was still under team control, meaning he had to negotiate his second (and sometimes third and fourth) pro contract without having much leverage beyond being willing to sit out.

Enter the concept of the “bridge deal,” which is pretty much what it sounds like: a meet-in-the-middle contract that would take a player from ELC to UFA, giving him a nice raise on his entry-level salary while still dangling the carrot of a bigger payday down the road. The deals came to be viewed as a sort of “prove it” contract — you want to hit the jackpot, kid? Show us what you’ve got.

That sounds reasonable. Why shouldn’t players like Tarasenko have to prove their worth?

Bridge deals have been falling out of favor in recent years, with good young players often skipping the “prove it” phase and going straight to hitting the jackpot. The deals aren’t extinct — Evgeny Kuznetsov signed one just a few days ago — but they’re no longer a mandatory step toward a future big payday.

That’s been a frustrating development for lots of hockey people, especially those in front offices around the league who can no longer rely on below-market deals for young stars to keep their caps manageable. But there are good arguments against bridge deals. For one, they can backfire on the team that signs them; that’s essentially what happened to the Habs with Subban, who signed a “prove it” deal and then went out and proved it so decisively that he became the league’s highest-paid defenseman.

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Free agency winners and losers

Welcome to the second week of July. Or, as hockey fans call it, a black hole of summer boredom from which no interesting news can escape.

Well, that’s not quite true — there are still lots of free agents out there, and we’re still waiting on that Patrick Sharp trade, so something has to happen over the coming days and weeks. But for the most part, the NHL offseason starts off full of sound and fury during the week of the draft and continues right through the first few days of July, and then slams on the brakes for the next two months or so. It’s a situation you Americans might relate to; by July 5, the fireworks are over.

So while the free-agency market isn’t done, it’s cooled off enough that we can start handing out some report cards. According to long-standing hockey bylaws, all free-agency summaries must be presented in a winner/loser format.¹ So let’s take a look back at the first few days since the market opened to see who came out ahead and who’s having a rough start to the summer.

Winners: Andrej Sekera and Michael Frolik. That Sekera and Frolik signed two of the biggest UFA deals in terms of overall money pretty much says all you need to know about this year’s market — i.e., it wasn’t very good. Both are solid players; neither would be considered a star.² But when there’s not much available, teams pay for what they can get, and that’s what the Oilers and Flames did here. Edmonton has needed a top-pairing defenseman forever, and while Sekera may or may not actually be that, he’s as close as it was going to get this year, and that’s why he’ll make $33 million over the next six years. And a good young Flames team that was looking for some veteran help up front figured Frolik was worth $21.5 million over five years.

Those are big deals, although that doesn’t necessarily make them bad deals. Both Alberta teams had a need to address and cap room to spare, and, like most wintery Canadian markets, both probably have to pay a premium to get players to sign. Nobody is looking at either deal as any kind of a bargain, but they’re unlikely to turn out to be disasters — which, as we’ll get to in a bit, turned out to be a bit of a theme.

Loser: Cody Franson. Franson hasn’t signed yet, so we’ll write this one in pencil instead of ink. But history tells us that his odds of cashing in big aren’t good — after the first day or two, the free-agent landscape tends to shift rapidly from a seller’s market to a buyer’s one. Franson went into July 1 as one of the top defensemen available, and he was rumored to be in high demand and looking at a monster payday. But while fellow defensemen like Sekera and Mike Green having already signed big contracts, Franson is still waiting to get a deal done.

He should still get a decent deal somewhere — he’s probably the best player left on the market, and a few teams still have money available. But after spending the last few seasons in Toronto³ getting nickeled-and-dimed (by a franchise that threw crazy money at just about everyone else), he was probably counting down the days until he could hit a home run as a UFA. There’s still a chance it could happen, but it’s fading quickly.

Winner: Washington Capitals. Remember, we’re going by free agency only here, so the Caps don’t even get credit for acquiring T.J. Oshie via trade. Oshie is somewhat overrated — yes, sure, the shootout against Russia was super-cool, but he’s only scored 20 goals once in his career — but still came cheap enough that it was a great deal for Washington.

But again, that was a trade, so we won’t factor it in here. What moves the Capitals into the win column is signing Justin Williams to a two-year, $6.5 million deal. That’s a perfectly reasonable cap hit, and the short term means there’s not much risk involved. And the synergy is almost impossibly perfect, with the guy nicknamed “Mr. Game 7” joining the team with a history of collapsing in Game 7. This would be like the Oilers signing a guy nicknamed “Mr. Still in the Playoff Hunt in November,” or the Canadiens signing a guy nicknamed “Mr. Pregame Ceremony of an Appropriate Length.”

It wasn’t a perfect week for the Caps — let’s remember that they lost Green to the Red Wings and Joel Ward to the Sharks. But getting Williams on a deal like this makes so much sense that it’s more than enough to move them into positive territory.

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Making sense of the Phil Kessel trade

If the last few days of NHL transactions have reminded us of anything, it’s this: There’s a huge difference between the trade you choose to make and the one you need to make.

After a round of failed contract talks with Dougie Hamilton and a growing sense that he wanted out, the Boston Bruins felt like they needed to trade him. With a cap crunch and the threat, real or perceived, of an offer sheet looming, the Blackhawks felt like they needed to trade Brandon Saad. In both cases, the return was underwhelming and widely panned. That’s what happens when it’s a trade you need to make — you end up taking what you can get when you can get it, even if that means you’re selling at a discount.

On the surface, the Maple Leafs didn’t need to trade Phil Kessel. The 27-year-old sniper has seven years left on his contract, so he wasn’t hitting the open market anytime soon. At an $8 million cap hit, he certainly wasn’t cheap, but he also wasn’t especially overpaid based on his production. And he was easily the team’s best player, and among the very best in the league when it comes to what he does best; only Alexander Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, and Corey Perry have scored more goals over the last five years, and Kessel managed that while dragging Tyler Bozak around the ice as his center.

Now, the Leafs did need to trade someone — president Brendan Shanahan had said as much in April, acknowledging that “for whatever reason, the mix doesn’t work” — and after yet another disastrous season, nobody on the roster deserved to be untouchable. If the right offer came along, anyone was available. But if there was one guy among the team’s core that you’d be happy to keep, you’d think Kessel would be that guy. The Maple Leafs could certainly choose to trade him, but they didn’t need to.

Or did they? Yesterday, the Maple Leafs sent Kessel to the Penguins in a trade that would make sense only if it were one they thought they needed to make. The full deal has Toronto sending Kessel to Pittsburgh along with a second-round pick, Tyler Biggs, and Tim Erixon. In exchange, they get prospects Kasperi Kapanen and Scott Harrington, forward Nick Spaling, a first, and a third.

That’s a mouthful, but we can trim it down for evaluation purposes. Biggs and Erixon are minor pieces that were presumably included primarily to free up contract spots, and Spaling is a mildly useful player who’s mostly a salary dump. It’s not unfair to think of this trade as boiling down to Kessel for Kapanen, Harrington, and a first.

That’s not an awful return, but it’s not the sort of package that typically makes a team move its top player. Kapanen is a good prospect, a skilled winger who was the Penguins’ top pick in 2014 and still hasn’t turned 19. He projects as a top-six guy, maybe even a future first-liner if everything breaks just right. Harrington is a 22-year-old defenseman who could still top out as a solid second-pairing guy. Both have value; neither is a sure thing. As for the first-rounder, it’s actually a conditional pick that can’t fall into the lottery, and could revert down to a second-rounder if the Penguins miss the playoffs in each of the next two years.

Then there’s the not-so-small matter of salary retention. The Leafs will eat $1.2 million of Kessel’s salary and cap hit for all seven years left on his deal. Shanahan has (correctly) refused to put a timeline on the Maple Leafs’ rebuild, but it’s safe to say that it’s not “eight years or more.” At some point when the plan calls for them to be contending for a championship, the Leafs will still be sitting with $1.2 million in dead cap space on the books from this deal. That hurts.

So if that’s the best Toronto could do for Kessel, why trade him at all? Why not focus on moving out other players and hold on to the guy you can pencil in for 30 goals and 80 points most years? And in fact, the Leafs had spent the last few weeks assuring everyone that they were perfectly prepared to do just that. If the market wasn’t there, why not wait it out?

Today, the answer seems clear: They were bluffing. They were always going to move Kessel this summer. They didn’t think they had a choice.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Free agency preview

NHL unrestricted free agency is awful. Let’s just put that out there to start. In the salary-cap era, good players rarely make it to the market, and the ones that do get ridiculous deals that almost always end up being viewed as mistakes. Meanwhile, miscellaneous depth guys somehow transform into stars for one day, get paid accordingly, and then go right back to being what they’ve always been. It’s a mess.

We’ve been doing this for a decade now, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. At some point, smart teams are going to start sitting out July 1 entirely and wait around for prices to come down and bargains to emerge. But the lure of getting a player for nothing — and the ability to ignore the fact that a cap-crippling contract is certainly not “nothing” — almost always seems to prove too powerful.

So here’s your free-agency preview: Your favorite team won’t do anything. You’ll complain. Then your favorite team will do something. You’ll feel vaguely uneasy about it. Months later, you’ll realize they made a horrible mistake, and you’ll vow never to get suckered in by July 1 ever again. You will break this vow.

This year could be even worse than usual, because there’s a distinct lack of talent available. Remember last year, when free agency featured reasonably big names like Ryan Miller, Paul Stastny, and Thomas Vanek? Good times. (Well, except for the teams that signed those guys.) This year’s list pales in comparison, with very few players who could be considered stars, or potential stars, or even former stars.

But teams have cap space and impatient GMs, so somebody is going to get paid. Here are 10 players to watch as the action unfolds today.

Mike Green

Former team: Washington Capitals

2014-15 salary: $6.25 million ($6.08 million cap hit)

He’d be great for: A team looking for a veteran blueliner and power-play quarterback. Green is the biggest name available among defensemen, and maybe the biggest at any position. He can eat minutes, and he’s a big right-handed shot in a league where that’s rare. And he has a résumé; he’s the only defenseman this century to score more than 30 goals in a season, and he’s twice been the runner-up for the Norris Trophy.

As long as you can ignore: Those big seasons were a long time ago. Green hasn’t been a star since 2010, and last year he spent most of the season playing on the Capitals’ third pairing. He’s not awful defensively, but it’s not a strength, and he’ll turn 30 in the season’s first week. If you sign him for anything close to last year’s money, you’re basically paying for the past instead of the present. Someone will.

Justin Williams

Former team: Los Angeles Kings

2014-15 salary: $3.05 million ($3.65 million cap hit)

He’d be great for: A contender with its eye on the Stanley Cup. Williams would be a good fit just about anywhere — he’s always been an excellent possession player, so stats guys get little hearts in their eyes when they talk about him — but he’d be especially attractive to a team that considered itself a Cup favorite. That’s because of his track record in crunch time; he has a history of coming up big in Game 7s, and he won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP in 2014. If you believe in “clutch,” Williams is your guy.

As long as you can ignore: For one, the Game 7 stuff is based on a grand total of seven career games, so all standard disclaimers about small sample size apply. More importantly, Williams will be 34 on opening night and has been a 40-point player in each of the last two seasons. That’s still worth paying for, but any team that goes longer than three years will probably regret it down the line.

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What five of the smartest moves of the 2014 offseason can teach us about 2015

We’re now officially a few days into the 2015 offseason, which means we’re also just a year or so away from knowing how badly everyone screwed it up.

After all, that’s the way NHL offseasons usually go. There’s lots of excitement as the moves are being made, with plenty of blind optimism countered by an occasional unexplained sense of dread. And then, after enough time has passed, the benefit of hindsight kicks in and we realize that most of what happened was a mistake.

Take last year. We saw a busy summer of trades, signings, re-signings, and others deals, and as with most years, the majority of the big moves didn’t work out. Some seemed fine at the time, but turned out to be busts. Some were widely panned by everyone from the beginning, and everyone turned out to be right. And some moves worked out reasonably well, but for various reasons didn’t quite provide the contender-making boost that teams were hoping for — we can file the acquisition of big names like Jason Spezza, Paul Stastny, Ryan Miller, and Jarome Iginla into that category.

But there are always a few exceptions, and some of last year’s moves did work out — brilliantly in some cases. So today, let’s put on our 20/20 hindsight glasses and take a look at five of the best transactions of the 2014 offseason to see what we can learn from them heading into this summer.

1. The Islanders Bolster the Blue Line

The move: OK, we’re cheating a bit here, since we’re actually looking at two moves, but they were similar enough in timing and intent that we’ll lump them together.

Coming off a brutal 2013-14 season, the Islanders were reasonably well stocked with offensive talent, but needed big help in goal and on the blue line. They addressed the former by trading for the rights to Jaroslav Halak and then signing him before free agency, which is a move that we could also include on this list if you’re willing to count May as the offseason.

That still left the defense, and as the summer wore on it looked like GM Garth Snow had struck out. Then, less than a week before opening night, the rumor mill churned to life with reports that the Isles had acquired a defenseman. It was Boston’s Johnny Boychuk. No, wait, scratch that, it was Chicago’s Nick Leddy. Eventually, the source of the confusion became clear: The Islanders had actually landed both guys on the same day. The moves addressed a need, the price was reasonable, and the Isles went on to post their first 100-point season in more than 30 years.

The lesson: In addition to the timing and the position, both trades had another factor in common: They involved teams that would have liked to have kept the players, but were forced to make tough choices because of looming salary-cap crunches. It’s not hard to see how that lesson could apply to this coming offseason, as several teams will once again be tight against a cap that could come in lower than projected. That includes both the Bruins and Blackhawks yet again, but they’re far from the only ones.

With the cap not rising much this year, teams may be under more pressure than ever to cut contracts, and they probably won’t be able to wait until October to do it. As the Islanders showed, some available cap room, a few inexpensive assets to dangle, and a little bit of patience can add up to a nice little bargain or two.

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The 2015 offseason guide

The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup four days ago, but you could be forgiven if you’ve already forgotten about that. Based on their reports from Wednesday’s media event, even the Chicago players are a little fuzzy on the details at this point.

As for the rest of us, we’re just doing what hockey fans do: forgetting all about the just-concluded playoffs and immediately moving into offseason mode. And that’s probably a good thing, since the NHL doesn’t exactly give us much of a breather. The offseason has already arrived, with buyout and arbitration windows opening up and just more than one week until the entry draft. Here’s a look at everything you need to know to get you through the next few days and weeks.

The Draft

The entry draft happens next Friday and Saturday at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Florida, and unlike recent years there won’t be much suspense over the top picks. The first round will open with the official coronation of Connor McDavid as the league’s Next Big Thing, not to mention the latest savior of the Edmonton Oilers. After that, the Sabres will pick Jack Eichel, and GM Tim Murray will try really, really hard to seem happy about it.

That’s when things will get unpredictable, as the next tier of top prospects could go in any order. The Coyotes hold the third pick and could opt for defensemen Noah Hanifin or Ivan Provorov, or take one of the top forwards, like Dylan Strome or Mitch Marner. Their choice will dictate what the Maple Leafs, Hurricanes, and Devils do with the next picks, and whether any other teams want to swoop in and move up. It should lead to an interesting opening round of a draft class that’s considered reasonably strong if not top-heavy. We’ll have a full preview next week.

Of course, as has become tradition, the actual picks may be overshadowed by the wheeling and dealing that goes on down on the draft floor. Which brings us to …

The Trade Market

You remember blockbuster trades. They were those things that used to happen all the time and were amazing fun for fans to argue about, right up until every GM in the league got timid and decided the salary cap gave them plausible cover to stop doing their jobs. Ringing any bells? Vaguely?

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