Panthers Sign John Leonard To PTO
After inking Matt Luff to a tryout last week, the Panthers aren’t done dipping their toes into the PTO market. They’ve also signed forward John Leonard to a tryout, per their training camp roster released Tuesday.
Leonard, 26, already has a contract for 2024-25 with Florida’s AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers. He’ll remain in the organization even if he doesn’t land an NHL deal from his PTO.
Leonard’s PTO allows the Panthers to get some early looks at him in training camp instead of waiting until after the AHL’s regular season starts to decide whether to rip up his minor-league pact for a two-way NHL deal. He’d settled on joining the Florida organization early in free agency, inking his deal with the Checkers on July 2 instead of holding out hope for a two-way offer from a different NHL team.
A sixth-round pick of the Sharks in 2018, Leonard has bounced around frequently in his brief professional career. He turned pro with San Jose in 2020 following his junior season at UMass, settling into a full-time NHL role in his first professional season.
Leonard didn’t earn any Calder Trophy consideration, but he was a serviceable depth winger for the Sharks, posting 13 points in 44 games with a -7 rating. He failed to lock down a full-time roster spot with the Sharks the following year, though, spending most of 2021-22 with the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda.
Since then, he’s suited up with a different NHL organization every year. He split 2022-23 between the Predators and AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals before spending 2023-24 with the Coyotes and AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners. He’s logged just 26 NHL appearances total since his 44-game rookie season.
The likelihood of him landing a two-way deal with Florida is high, given they have four open contract slots and he’s seen NHL ice in each of the past four seasons. He’s been a serviceable top-six presence in the minors, posting 110 points in 177 career AHL contests. He also has six goals and 17 points in 70 NHL games.
Maple Leafs Sign Jon Gillies To PTO
Free agent goaltender Jon Gillies will look to land a contract during Maple Leafs training camp on a professional tryout, the team announced Tuesday.
Gillies, 30, has 35 games of NHL experience in parts of four seasons with the Flames, Blues, Devils, and Blue Jackets. He hasn’t appeared in a game at the top level since 2022-23, when he posted a 1-1-0 record, .864 SV%, and a 4.57 GAA in two starts and one relief appearance for Columbus.
A Calgary third-round pick back in 2012, Gillies took last season off after evidently not receiving any NHL or AHL offers. He landed with the Coyotes on a two-way deal in the summer of 2022, posting a subpar .878 SV% in 15 games for their AHL affiliate in Tucson before being traded to the Blue Jackets around the trade deadline.
A fringe No. 3 netminder at best, Gillies owns an 8-16-3 record, 3.39 GAA, and .891 SV% in his NHL minutes. He’s fared significantly better in the AHL, where he has a 2.94 GAA, .904 SV%, nine shutouts, and a 78-71-32 record in 184 appearances across eight professional seasons.
If he lands a contract with Toronto, it’ll either be a two-way deal or an AHL contract with their affiliate, the Toronto Marlies. At highest, he would slot fifth on their goaltending depth chart behind Joseph Woll, veteran NHLers Anthony Stolarz and Matt Murray, and AHL All-Star Dennis Hildeby.
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.
Hurricanes Sign Sam Gagner, Rocco Grimaldi To PTOs
Sep. 17: The Hurricanes listed Gagner on their training camp roster today, confirming the PTO. They’re also adding veteran depth forward Rocco Grimaldi on a tryout. Grimaldi, 31, has 67 points in 203 career NHL games but hasn’t played at the top level since seeing brief action with Nashville in 2021-22. He spent last season with the AHL’s Chicago Wolves, once again the Hurricanes’ affiliate, after spending last year as an independent club, leading them with 36 goals and 73 points in 72 games.
Sep. 10: The Carolina Hurricanes are expected to sign veteran forward Sam Gagner to a professional try-out, per PuckPedia. Gagner is a veteran of 17 NHL seasons, making his debut with the Edmonton Oilers in 2007 after going sixth overall in the 2007 NHL Draft. He’s gone on to play for seven different NHL clubs throughout his career and will have a chance to add an eighth on this PTO.
Gagner made his NHL debut at 18 – ultimately earning 13 goals and 49 points as a rookie while filling a consistent second-line role. He proceeded to fill that role and match that production through the next 11 seasons, persisting through tours around the Pacific and Metropolitan Divisions. He was a reliable glue piece for lineups in flux and continued to find NHL relevancy even after his production started to dip. However, injuries have proven fickle throughout his later years, with the 2021-22 campaign standing as Gagner’s only full season since 2016-17. He’s most recently coming off a double-hip surgery in March of 2023 – a deal that ended his 2022-23 season early, though he did manage to appear in 29 games and score 10 points last season.
Gagner is far from his days of a guaranteed lineup spot due to both health and performance. But he brings the experience of a 1,000-game pro who’s played through two decades of NHL hockey. He’s scored 27 points across his last 82 career games, though that stretches back to the 2021-22 season. Still, it’s not unreasonable to think Gagner could manage one more respectable season before facing retirement. He’ll look to begin proving that at Carolina’s training camp if he indeed signs a try-out deal.
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.
Red Wings Sign Jonatan Berggren
The Red Wings have signed restricted free agent winger Jonatan Berggren to a one-year deal worth $825K, per a team announcement.
It’s a fair pact for a player looking to return to a regular NHL role in 2024-25. After recording 15 goals and 28 points in 67 games during his rookie campaign in 2022-23, the 24-year-old Berggren spent most of last season with the Wings’ AHL affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins. He was limited to 12 NHL appearances in various call-ups throughout the year, still managing a pair of goals and six points while averaging 10:52 per game.
Detroit general manager Steve Yzerman hoped to save Berggren’s deal until after they came to terms with a pair of household-name RFAs in Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider, but it wasn’t to be. David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reported earlier this month that having Berggren signed by the time training camp begins was a must for the Wings, giving him a full-length runway to reclaim a roster spot over the coming weeks.
Raymond and Seider remain without deals and will officially be training camp holdouts if they don’t sign by Wednesday morning. After signing Berggren, the Red Wings have $16.82MM in cap space to accommodate the RFA duo, per PuckPedia.
Despite the demotion, Berggren was electric in Grand Rapids. The 2018 second-rounder led the Griffins in scoring with 56 points (24 G, 32 A) in 53 games and added 10 points in nine playoff contests.
Even upon Raymond’s return, Berggren has a decent shot at claiming a top-nine role in Detroit this season with Robby Fabbri, David Perron, and Daniel Sprong out of the picture. If he holds out into the regular season, Berggren could even serve as a top-six placeholder for his countryman.
Berggren is no longer waiver-exempt, so the Red Wings would likely lose him to another club if they attempt to send him back to Grand Rapids again. He’ll have arbitration rights if he reaches restricted free agency next summer.
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.
Devils Sign Andy Welinski To PTO
The Devils have signed defenseman Andy Welinski to a professional tryout, general manager Tom Fitzgerald announced Monday. The team also confirmed that former Sharks forward Kevin Labanc will be in camp, as initially reported Sunday by Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now.
Welinski, 31, hasn’t seen NHL ice since he was a part of the Ducks organization in the 2020-21 season. The Anaheim 2011 third-round pick has 46 games of NHL experience – all in Orange County – with a goal, five assists, six points, and a -2 rating while averaging 15:46 per game.
The organizational depth defender has been an AHL fixture in recent years. After a PTO with the Blues last year proved unsuccessful, Welinski settled for an AHL contract with the Iowa Wild. He posted 10 points in 27 games with the Minnesota affiliate before being sent to the Panthers organization at the minor-league trade deadline. He went without a point in eight appearances for the Charlotte Checkers.
Welinski looks to earn his first NHL contract in camp with the Devils since inking a two-way pact with the Rangers for 2022-23. The native of Duluth, Minnesota, is still a capable veteran puck-mover at the AHL level and would benefit New Jersey’s affiliate, the Utica Comets, especially early on in the season. They’ll likely be without a regular for the first few weeks of the campaign with Luke Hughes out with a shoulder injury, creating a ripple effect that will have one of the Comets’ top names on the NHL roster as a reserve on opening night.
In parts of nine AHL seasons, Welinski has 42 goals, 110 assists, 152 points, 119 PIMs, and a -17 rating in 319 appearances.
Canucks Sign Dylan Ferguson To PTO Deal
The Canucks have been looking for some goaltending insurance with Thatcher Demko‘s lingering injury. They’ve found an extra netminder for training camp as the team announced (Twitter link) that they’ve signed Dylan Ferguson to a PTO agreement.
The 25-year-old spent last season in the KHL after being non-tendered last summer. He played in 23 games with Dinamo Minsk, posting a 9-9-0 record along with a 2.51 GAA and a .904 SV%, putting him 30th and 46th respectively in those categories.
Ferguson has three career NHL appearances under his belt, one with Vegas in their inaugural season and two with Ottawa in the 2022-23 campaign. In between those outings, he has spent parts of four seasons in the minors but played only sparingly due to injuries, getting into just 29 games overall where he put up a 2.56 GAA and a .915 SV%.
As things stand, Arturs Silovs is set to serve as the starter in Demko’s absence with free agent signing Jiri Patera – formerly Ferguson’s teammate in Vegas – operating as the backup. That could give Ferguson a chance to battle for minutes with Nikita Tolopilo and Ty Young who are both on their entry-level deals. While it seems unlikely that Ferguson would get an NHL deal at this time, if he does, he can be controlled through the 2025-26 season.