Evander Kane Scheduled For Sports Hernia Surgery
Sep. 18: Kane will indeed undergo sports hernia surgery, general manager Stan Bowman told reporters today (via the Oilers’ Tony Brar).
Sep. 13: Mark Spector of Sportsnet is reporting that Edmonton Oilers forward Evander Kane will have sports hernia surgery in the next 10 days or so. Kane has been dealing with the issue since last season and played through the pain as much as he could but eventually missed significant time in the Stanley Cup Final when he dressed in just two of the Oilers’ final seven games.
Kane played reasonably well last season, given that he played through pain for most of it. However, his 24 goals and 20 assists in 77 games represented his lowest point-per-game pace in seven years. The 31-year-old added four goals and four assists in 20 playoff games, which was also a drop from his normal production.
While Kane’s offensive numbers were below his career norms, he did play a career-low 16:47 per game during the regular season which marked his lowest total since he averaged 14:00 per game during his rookie season in 2009-10 while he was a member of the Atlanta Thrashers.
Kane’s prognosis won’t be fully known until surgery has been completed. When his recovery period is clear the Oilers should be able to figure out a plan for their salary cap situation going forward. PuckPedia estimates that Edmonton has $946K in cap space for the 2024-25 season (including Kane’s $5.125MM cap hit), however, if Kane is out longer than 24 days and 10 games then Edmonton can place him on LTIR. If that is the approach they take, the Oilers would need to keep his space available for when he is ready to suit up once again which would presumably be at some point during the regular season.
Oilers Sign Mike Hoffman To PTO
The Oilers have signed forward Mike Hoffman to a professional tryout, the team said Wednesday.
Hoffman, 34, will look to get his feet back under him in Edmonton after a trying 2023-24 campaign. Entering the final season of a three-year, $13.5MM deal he signed with the Canadiens in 2021, Montreal moved him to the Sharks in August as part of the massive three-team trade that sent Erik Karlsson to the Penguins.
In San Jose, Hoffman had his worst season since establishing himself as a full-time NHLer with the Senators in the 2014-15 campaign. Making 66 appearances, his 10 goals, 13 assists, 23 points, 71 shots on goal, and 13:44 ATOI were all his lowest in a full NHL season.
Hoffman was once a prolific top-six scoring winger, hitting the 20-goal mark in six straight seasons with the Sens and Panthers from 2014-15 to 2019-20. But his production dipped once the pandemic hit, and he hasn’t recorded more than 20 goals or 40 points in a season since.
He does bring 228 goals, 487 points, and 745 games of NHL experience to Oilers camp, though. He may be a higher-upside bottom-six option on the wing than Mattias Janmark or Vasily Podkolzin, but for a team already ripe with veteran scoring wingers, Hoffman will need to prove he’s more than just a redundancy for players like UFA additions Viktor Arvidsson and Jeff Skinner in order to earn a contract.
The Oilers have $945K in projected cap space with one open roster spot, per PuckPedia. They also have depth defenseman Travis Dermott in camp on a PTO, so one tryout being successful likely precludes the other one from resulting in a deal.
Blackhawks Name Nick Foligno Captain
Blackhawks forward Nick Foligno will be the team’s next captain, per a team press release. He’s the 35th in franchise history and the first since Jonathan Toews‘ tenure in Chicago ended after the 2022-23 season.
Foligno is entering his second season with the Hawks after inking a two-year, $9MM extension last January to keep him off this summer’s free-agent market. The 36-year-old winger also served as captain of the Blue Jackets for the last six of his nine seasons in Columbus from 2015 to 2021. Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson issued the following statement:
In a very short amount of time, Nick has quickly earned the respect of his teammates and our staff. Nick’s commanding presence in the locker room has been instrumental in helping the team find its identity. He has served as a mentor to many of our young players both on and off the ice while also heading up the leadership group comprised of our veteran players, and we are beyond confident that he will flourish in the role of captain as we usher in a new era of Blackhawks hockey.
The Buffalo native was already part of Chicago’s leadership group, serving as an alternate captain last season. Set to be a UFA last offseason after signing a two-year deal with the Bruins in 2021, Boston traded his signing rights to the Blackhawks in the Taylor Hall deal. Chicago promptly signed Foligno to a one-year, $4MM extension, preventing him from joining the 2023 UFA class.
While his frequent first-line duties on a paper-thin Blackhawks forward group last year punched above his weight as he enters the final few years of his NHL career, Foligno is still an extremely serviceable middle-six forward. He made 74 appearances for Chicago last season, his most since 2018-19, and recorded 37 points (17 G, 20 A) with a -29 rating while averaging 17:46 per game. It was his best showing offensively since his days in Columbus, finishing third on the team in scoring and leading them in hits with 192.
Foligno won’t be relied upon for nearly as many minutes this season with UFA signings Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teräväinen in the mix at wing. Hall playing a full-time role after a knee injury limited him to 10 appearances last year likely bumps the new captain down to comfortable third-line duties.
The move allows presumptive future captain Connor Bedard to take a more leisurely road to the position. The Blackhawks are no stranger to awarding the captaincy to budding stars – Toews wore the ‘C’ on his chest from his second NHL season onward – but will take a different approach here. The 2023 first-overall pick will nonetheless remain Chicago’s centerpiece entering his sophomore year after his 22-goal, 61-point rookie season in 68 games, leading the Hawks in scoring and taking home the Calder Trophy.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Stars Re-Sign Thomas Harley
With their salary cap situation making it hard for a long-term deal to be an option, the Stars unsurprisingly have opted for a bridge agreement with defenseman Thomas Harley. The team announced that they’ve inked the blueliner to a two-year, $8MM contract. GM Jim Nill released the following statement:
Thomas is one of the league’s top young defensemen. His performance last season was a testament to the way that he has worked on and off the ice to become a better player. We are looking forward to his continued growth and helping anchor our blueline for many years to come.
PuckPedia reports that the deal will pay Harley $3.5MM this season and $4.5MM in 2025-26. The latter number will represent his qualifying offer and he will also be arbitration-eligible at that time.
Harley’s performance last season was certainly worthy of the praise from his GM. The 23-year-old only has one full NHL season under his belt – 2023-24 – but it was a very strong one which saw him record 15 goals and 32 assists in 79 games while averaging just over 21 minutes a night. Harley was quieter offensively in the playoffs (four assists in 19 appearances) but still logged heavy minutes, averaging nearly 24 minutes per contest, second only to Miro Heiskanen. His goal total put him in a tie for eighth-most among all NHL rearguards.
While the 2019 first-round pick (18th overall) had a more limited track record compared to some more established young blueliners, Harley’s play last season could realistically have put a long-term agreement past $7MM per season on a max-term deal. But to give him that would have necessitated some cost-cutting now, something that Dallas as a win-now team wouldn’t have been looking to do.
This is the second notable contract of the day for the Stars’ back end with Esa Lindell inking a five-year extension earlier today. In getting these deals done, Dallas now has their top five defensemen signed through at least the 2025-26 season which will give them a bit of stability on that front.
With the move, the Stars now have their full team signed for the upcoming season. PuckPedia projects them to only have $694K in cap space but that’s with a full-sized roster. If Dallas is willing to carry fewer the maximum number of players and opts to continue the daily shuffling of waiver-exempt players (as they did frequently with Logan Stankoven last season, for example), then they should put themselves in a position to comfortably bank some in-season cap room, barring a rash of injuries, of course.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Canucks’ Alexander Edler Announces Retirement
The Vancouver Canucks have announced that they’ll sign defenseman Alexander Edler to a one-day contract on October 11th, allowing him to retire in the city he spent 15 seasons in. Edler is a veteran of 1,030 NHL games, spending all but 105 of those in a Canucks jersey.
Edler holds a case as the draft day steal of 2004, originally going in the third round but since totaling the seventh-most NHL games of anyone in the class. He earned a top-pair role in Vancouver as a rookie in 2007, immediately flashing reliable two-way play and modest scoring. He’d become known for his consistency, emerging as one of Vancouver’s most utilized defenders through the bulk of the Sedin era and routinely challenging the 35-point mark. Edler’s career year came in the 2011-12 season, when he tallied 11 goals, 38 assists, and 49 points in 82 games – career-highs in all four stats, and the only time that Edler played in a full season. His 409 points in 925 games with Vancouver both rank as all-time highs among Canucks defenders.
Edler continued playing over 20 minutes a night through his final season in Vancouver in 2021. But the addition of superstar Quinn Hughes challenged Edler’s role, leading him to sign with the Los Angeles Kings, where he’d close his career on a pair of one-year contracts. His scoring took a hit in his final years – falling from a per-game average of 0.44 points in Vancouver (409 points in 925 games) to just 0.29 in Los Angeles (30 points in 105 games). He was one of only a few 2004 draft picks still playing in the NHL last season, joining Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin, Blake Wheeler, and Alex Goligoski.
The Canucks will honor their longtime top-defender with a pre-game ceremony during their October 11th matchup against the Philadelphia Flyers.
Stars, Esa Lindell Agree To Five-Year Extension
The Stars have signed defenseman Esa Lindell to a five-year contract extension worth $26.25MM, the team announced Tuesday. It will kick in next season and keep him in Texas through the 2029-30 season.
That works out to a $5.25MM cap hit, a slight decrease in average annual pay from the six-year, $34.8MM extension with a $5.8MM cap hit he signed in 2019 to keep him off the RFA market. He’s entering the final season of that deal. His extension carries a no-trade clause from 2025-26 through 2027-28 and a 20-team no-trade list in the 2028-29 and 2029-30 campaigns. The full breakdown is as follows, per PuckPedia:
2025-26: $4MM base salary, $2.5MM signing bonus
2026-27: $4MM base salary, $2.5MM signing bonus
2027-28: $4.25MM base salary, $1MM signing bonus
2028-29: $4MM base salary
2029-30: $4MM base salary
With restricted free agent Thomas Harley still unsigned with one day to go until training camp, it’s not the contract news Stars fans were expecting regarding a top-four defender. But it is a critical piece of business to keep Lindell, one of the league’s premier stay-at-home defensemen for the better part of the last decade, in Dallas past this season.
Despite being 6’3″ and 220 lbs, Lindell isn’t a bruiser by any stretch. In fact, he’s viewed as one of the more gentlemanly players in the league, finishing in the top 25 in Lady Byng Trophy voting in each of the past three years.
His shutdown game is one of awareness and strong skating ability to maintain positioning while defending the rush or back-checking. He was deployed heavily in defensive situations last year at even strength, logging 62.5% of his in-zone starts in his own end, and still managed to control 53.7% of expected goals.
The 30-year-old Finn consistently has below-average shot-attempt shares, but he serves as a prime example of why CF% is rarely an end-all-be-all to determine how well a player controls possession. He may bleed low-danger chances but rarely lets high-danger chances reach the Dallas net.
Lindell isn’t a non-factor offensively, either. He’s logged more than 20 points in each of the past three years, posting five goals and 21 assists for 26 points in 82 games last season. He’s extremely durable, too, having not missed a regular-season game since the 2021-22 campaign.
His ice time has been bumped down to more conservative levels ever since Peter DeBoer took over behind the bench for Rick Bowness in the 2022 offseason, though. After a half-decade of consistently seeing north of 22 minutes per game, Lindell’s averaged 20:12 over the past two seasons.
Lindell will be again tasked with anchoring Dallas’ second pairing this season, although there will be a bit of a competition for who ends up as his right-shot partner. UFA signings Mathew Dumba and Ilya Lyubushkin are expected to contend for the role, replacing 2024 trade-deadline rental Chris Tanev.
The Stars now have $37.5MM in projected cap space for the 2025-26 season, per PuckPedia, assuming an upper limit of $92MM. That figure only accounts for 10 players, though, with most of their forward group (and star goaltender Jake Oettinger) slated for RFA or UFA status next summer.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
ESPN’s Kevin Weekes was first to report the signing.
Sabres Sign Peyton Krebs To Two-Year Deal
The Sabres have signed restricted free agent center Peyton Krebs to a two-year, $2.9MM contract, the team announced Tuesday.
Krebs, 23, was Buffalo’s only late-summer RFA holdout but will be in training camp when it opens Wednesday if the contract is registered without incident. His deal will keep him with the Sabres through 2025-26 and cost $1.45MM against the salary cap.
The 17th overall pick of the Golden Knights in the 2019 draft, Krebs appeared in just 13 NHL games with Vegas before being traded to Buffalo in November 2021 as part of the Jack Eichel blockbuster. Early on, it looked like Krebs wouldn’t have any issues developing into a core top-nine piece for the Sabres. He immediately stepped into a full-time role as a middle-six winger, recording 22 points (7 G, 15 A) in 48 games after the trade, averaging 14:45 per game. His 0.46 points per game finished ninth on the team.
After the breakout, Buffalo moved Krebs to his natural center position for the last two seasons. With the shift came a steady decrease in offense. Last season was especially difficult for Krebs, who scored just four goals in 80 games and added 13 assists for 17 points. His 0.21 points per game were his worst since becoming a Sabre, and he received his lowest usage at 12:30 per game.
Krebs isn’t skilled in the dot, winning 44.5% of his 1,352 career draws. However, he has had positive relative shot attempt impacts at even strength since being shifted to center, and his 47.8% share of expected goals is fine for a rebuilding team.
After the Sabres’ bevy of free-agent signings and trade additions geared toward overhauling their bottom-six forward group this summer, there isn’t a clear fit for Krebs in the lineup at first glance. He doesn’t have the offensive track record to break into the top nine on a team desperate to end its 13-season playoff drought. Therefore, he’ll have to knock one of Nicolas Aubé-Kubel, Sam Lafferty, or Beck Malenstyn – Buffalo’s projected fourth line – to the press box.
The easiest candidate for him to unseat will be Lafferty, who projects to open the season as the Sabres’ fourth-line center but is also historically subpar in the dot. Aubé-Kubel and Malenstyn made up two-thirds of an extremely effective fourth line for the Capitals last season and likely won’t be separated. But even pushing Lafferty to the role of 13th forward will be challenging for Krebs. Sabres general manager Kevyn Adams made a significant financial commitment to Lafferty in free agency, inking him to a two-year, $4MM deal in July.
Buffalo has $7MM in projected cap space with a full roster of 13 forwards, seven defensemen, and three goaltenders after signing Krebs, per PuckPedia. The Calgary native will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights when his contract expires after the 2025-26 season.
Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet was first to report the terms of Krebs’ deal.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Red Wings Sign Lucas Raymond To Eight-Year Extension
One major domino has fallen for the Detroit Red Wings as the team announced an eight-year, $64.6MM extension for forward Lucas Raymond. The deal will pay Raymond an AAV of $8.075MM over the life of the contract and he will don the winged wheel until the 2031-32 NHL season. TSN’s Pierre LeBrun later reported that there are no signing bonuses within the contract and Raymond will be granted a no-trade clause for the last four years.
It ends a summer of uncertainty for Raymond as the Red Wings waited until just three days before training camp to lock up one of their most promising forwards. Detroit still needs to sign restricted free agent defenseman Moritz Seider to a deal before the start of the year and will now have just under $8.75MM available in cap space to do so.
The Red Wings selected Raymond with the fourth overall pick of the 2020 NHL Draft in the second year of general manager Steve Yzerman‘s tenure. He spent that year and the next with the SHL’s Frolunda HC scoring 10 goals and 28 points in 67 games from 2019-2021.
Raymond joined the Red Wings without ever having played a game for their AHL affiliate in Grand Rapids making his NHL in the 2021-22 season. Raymond skated in all 82 games for Detroit scoring 23 goals and 57 points finishing fourth in Calder Trophy voting behind Michael Bunting, Trevor Zegras, and Seider. He quickly became the most effective forward on the team behind Tyler Bertuzzi and Dylan Larkin after finishing third in scoring, third in shot attempts, and third in CorsiFor%. 
He took a small step backward in his sophomore campaign as he only put up 17 goals and 45 points in 74 contests. Nearly every aspect of Raymond’s game depressed after his rookie season from the eye test to more advanced statistics. Most of the blame could be that Raymond totaled 96 games from 2019-2021 and was now called upon to play 164 against the world’s best hockey talent.
Raymond showed off his full potential in the 2023-24 season by scoring 31 goals and 72 points in 82 games leading the team in the latter category. He finished 21st in goal-scoring in the Eastern Conference and 24th in points. His 19.0% shooting percentage dramatically eclipsed his career average of 12.6% and his takeaways almost doubled his giveaways.
He has not shown much defensive prowess up to this point but the Red Wings should receive good value on this deal if he can reach a point-per-game level. He is second in scoring amongst all players selected in the 2020 NHL Draft behind Tim Stutzle of the Ottawa Senators and he does not appear close to losing that position.
Raymond will be entering his age 30 season at the end of this contract which positions him well to land another pay day in the future. The Red Wings are looking to return to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since the 2015-16 season and the team hopes that Raymond will be a major piece in their renaissance.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Ilya Sorokin Had Back Surgery, Not Expected To Miss Time
Star Islanders netminder Ilya Sorokin underwent back surgery this offseason, head coach Patrick Roy told reporters Monday (via Stefen Rosner of NHL.com and The Hockey News). General manager Lou Lamoriello said Friday that Sorokin sustained an undisclosed injury this summer but had already returned to the ice and was expected to be a full participant shortly after training camp began.
A significant offseason procedure likely isn’t the way either side wanted to preface the eight-year, $66MM extension he signed last summer. But if a back injury was plaguing him last season, it offers an explanation for his more down-to-earth .908 SV% and 3.01 GAA that ended up losing him the starters’ crease to Semyon Varlamov in playoff action. Sorokin did start in Game 3 of the First Round against the Hurricanes, but he allowed three goals on 14 shots before getting the yank from Roy.
Despite those struggles, there’s little question that Sorokin remains a top-10 netminder in the NHL entering this season. He still finished eighth in Vezina Trophy voting last season and built up quite the acclaim in the two years prior, posting a .924 SV% and 2.37 GAA with 13 shutouts in 114 appearances across the 2021-22 and 2022-23 campaigns. He was the no-contest runner-up to Linus Ullmark in Vezina voting in 2023.
But if Sorokin’s recovery stretches into the regular season for whatever reason, the Isles still have a spectacular backup plan with Varlamov. Due to Sorokin’s brilliance, the 36-year-old Russian has been limited to fewer than 30 starts in each of the past three seasons, but he’s still been well above average. He had a .918 SV%, 2.60 GAA, and three shutouts in 28 appearances last season.
Sorokin, 29, was a third-round pick of the Isles back in 2014. He has a .919 SV% in 192 regular-season NHL games since arriving in North America in 2020.
Penguins Sign Sidney Crosby To Two-Year Extension
The Penguins have signed captain Sidney Crosby to a two-year, $17.4MM contract extension, the team announced. It carries a cap hit of $8.7MM.
Crosby’s deal will be paid out mostly in signing bonuses, per PuckPedia. He’ll earn $780K in base salary with a $9MM signing bonus in 2025-26 and a $1.09MM base salary with a $6.53MM signing bonus in 2026-27. As suspected, his contract includes a full no-move clause.
In an instant, a giant cloud that would have loomed over Pittsburgh’s training camp later this week dissipated. The two-year pact ends an unexpected extension saga that began two months ago after reports that Crosby and the Pens were finalizing a deal went unfulfilled.
Some anxiety returned when Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet said on the “32 Thoughts” podcast earlier this month that Crosby was still weighing multiple extension offers from the Penguins but had yet to put pen to paper because he wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to “handle” missing the playoffs on a retooling club while still performing at an elite level. The 37-year-old told Friedman last week that he was “pretty optimistic” an extension would be done before training camp.
The two-year length shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It allows the Penguins more salary cap flexibility in the future should the aging curve finally come for Crosby, as alluded to by Friedman on Friday, and it also gives him another opportunity to move on from Pittsburgh in 2027 should the Penguins’ record not return to a meaningfully competitive level.
Entering his 20th season, Crosby is still the heart and soul of hockey in Pittsburgh. The 2005 first-overall pick finished ninth in both Hart and Selke Trophy voting last season after leading the Penguins in goals (42), assists (52), points (94), and shots on goal (278).
“There are no words to properly describe what Sidney Crosby means to the game of hockey, the city of Pittsburgh and the Penguins organization,” said general manager Kyle Dubas. “Sidney is the greatest player of his generation and one of the greatest players in the history of the game. His actions today show why he is one of hockey’s greatest winners and leaders. Sid is making a tremendous personal sacrifice in an effort to help the Penguins win, both now and in the future, as he has done for his entire career.”
Crosby could have become an unrestricted free agent for the first time next summer without an extension. The three-time Stanley Cup champion is entering the final season of the 12-year, $104.4MM mega-deal with an $8.7MM cap hit he signed in 2012. The first deal he signed following the expiry of his entry-level contract, a five-year, $43.5MM pact that covered from 2008-09 to 2012-13, also had an $8.7MM AAV.
He is still playing at a superstar level, yet this is a much more cost-effective contract for Pittsburgh than his previous ones. That first extension cost 15.34% of the cap when it went into effect in 2008, while today’s deal takes up just 9.89% of the salary cap at its start. That’s not to say his previous deals weren’t bargains, though – The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn estimates Crosby has left roughly $43MM on the table throughout his career by taking deals lower than market value.
Assuming a $92MM salary cap for 2025-26, the Pens have $23.3MM in projected cap space for next season with seven open roster spots, per PuckPedia. They only have one notable pending RFA, fresh trade pickup Cody Glass. But there’s a decent slate of pending UFAs on Pittsburgh’s books, headlined by defenseman Marcus Pettersson. Those extension talks are expected to shift into high gear with Crosby’s deal becoming official.
Crosby sits 21st in league history in goals (592), 14th in assists (1,004), 10th in points (1,596), and eighth in points per game (1.25) among players with at least 500 appearances. The latter is the most telling stat, with concussions costing ‘Sid The Kid’ a good chunk of his prime in the early 2010s. He was rightfully named among the 100 greatest players in NHL history during the league’s centennial celebration in 2017.
The Penguins have missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons, their first time outside the playoff picture since Crosby’s rookie season in 2006. Both sides hope Crosby’s discount deal helps them return to form.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.