Five Key Stories: 1/27/25 – 2/2/25

While the trade deadline is still more than a month away, there was still a flurry of activity around the NHL including Brandon Saad walking away from more than $5MM from St. Louis to sign for much less with Vegas.  While that move was newsworthy in itself, it wasn’t enough to land a spot in this week’s key stories.

Flyers/Flames Swap: The first notable trade of the week came from the Flyers and Flames.  Center Morgan Frost and winger Joel Farabee had been in trade speculation for quite a while and the two were dealt together to Calgary for wingers Andrei Kuzmenko and Jakob Pelletier, Calgary’s 2025 second-round pick, and the Flames’ 2028 seventh-rounder.  The Flames had long been seeking a longer-term piece down the middle and get that in Frost who has two years of team control remaining.  Farabee, meanwhile, has struggled this year and has a $5MM cap charge through 2027-28 and Calgary is picking up the full freight of the contract while hoping they can get him going again.  Clearing that contract appears to be the impetus for the move as Kuzmenko is on an expiring contract and is struggling mightily while Pelletier cleared waivers earlier in the season but was playing well before the swap.  The move gives them much more flexibility on the salary cap that they’ll look to put to use this summer.

Salary Cap News: For the past few weeks, there was plenty of speculation that the NHL and NHLPA would like to release salary cap projections for a year or two ahead of schedule.  They wound up doing one better, announcing that the 2025-26 cap will be $95.5MM while projecting that the Upper Limits for 2026-27 and 2027-28 will be approximately $104MM and $113.5MM, respectively, subject to minor revisions.  That results in roughly a 9% increase per season to the cap.  Meanwhile, the spending minimums will also go up, moving to $70.6MM in 2025-26, $76.9MM in 2026-27, and $83.9MM in 2027-28 (again, subject to any minor revisions).  The CBA is set to expire after the 2025-26 campaign so the fact these numbers are coming out early could be construed as a positive sign while teams will now be able to better project their spending flexibility for the next three years.

Canucks Make Moves: With the rift between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller being too much to overcome, Vancouver finally found a suitable trade, sending Miller along with defensemen Erik Brannstrom and Jackson Dorrington to the Rangers for center Filip Chytil, blueliner Victor Mancini, and a protected 2025 first-round pick.  Miller returns to the team that he started his career with and gives New York three veteran centers signed through at least the 2028-29 campaign, joining Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck.  For Vancouver, they get some long-term cap flexibility with Chytil only being signed through 2026-27 while also opening up some extra spending room for this year.  That, coupled with the draft pick, played a role in deal number two.

That move came only a few hours after the Miller one as Vancouver flipped the draft pick along with defenseman Vincent Desharnais and wingers Danton Heinen and Melvin Fernstrom to Pittsburgh for blueliner Marcus Pettersson and winger Drew O’Connor.  Pettersson is a strong upgrade on Vancouver’s back end while O’Connor is an improvement in their bottom six up front.  However, both players are pending unrestricted free agents although it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Canucks take a run at extending them according to Thomas Drance of The Athletic (subscription link).  Pittsburgh does well to pick up a first-round pick for two expiring contracts though it involves taking on $4.25MM in contracts for next season with Desharnais and Heinen both having an extra year on their deals.  Meanwhile, for the time being at least, the Canucks have even more long-term cap flexibility at their disposal.

One Signed, One To Go? The Capitals entered the week with their bargain goalie tandem heading for unrestricted free agency in July.  They ended it with Logan Thompson signed for the long haul as the team signed him to a six-year, $35.1MM extension that will carry a $5.85MM cap charge and a partial no-trade clause.  The 27-year-old has been stellar this season with a 2.15 GAA and a .924 SV% in 29 games so far and is on quite a bargain deal at the moment as his cap charge is the lowest in the entire league, below the minimum salary.  Meanwhile, Charlie Lindgren remains unsigned but that might not be the case for long following a report that the two sides are working on an extension that would drive his price up to between $3.5MM and $4MM.  Washington’s goalie tandem costs less than $2MM this season but that will be changing soon enough.

Stars Add Two Veterans: Following a long-term injury to defenseman Miro Heiskanen and season-ending surgery for blueliner Nils Lundkvist, the Stars decided to make a splash of their own on the trade market.  Following a series of transactions that locked them into using LTIR, they acquired center Mikael Granlund and rearguard Cody Ceci from San Jose for their 2025 first-round pick and Winnipeg’s 2025 fourth-round selection (which would elevate to Dallas’ third-rounder if they make the Stanley Cup Final.  Granlund was San Jose’s top point-getter this season and while he won’t be a top-liner with the Stars, he’ll deepen their center group with Tyler Seguin (hip) expected to be out until the playoffs.  Meanwhile, Ceci is a minute-eating second-pairing player who should help take off some pressure until Heiskanen returns.  San Jose takes arguably its most prominent rentals and packages them together but in doing so, they land another first-round pick as their extended rebuild continues.  Considering they signed Granlund as a short-term reclamation project in 2023 and took on Ceci as a cap dump from Edmonton, getting a first-rounder is a solid piece of business for the Sharks.

Photo courtesy of Imagn Images.