Winners and Losers From the 1st Day of 2025 NHL Free Agency
Welcome to hockey summer, 2025 style.
The annual circus that is the NHL on July 1 got off to a predictably frenzied start when teams were officially eligible to pursue the latest crop of players whose contract status had switched to "unrestricted free agent" at midnight.
It's evolved into a days-long process, with the run-up to Tuesday's opening bell featuring high-profile moves that either kept impending UFAs in their current cities or sign-and-trade sequences that facilitated pre-frenzy address changes.
The B/R hockey team has been glued to the transaction ticker since the cycle began, and we emerged from the Day 1 tumult with a list of the biggest winners and losers.
Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.
Winner: Florida Panthers
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It's already been a pretty good early summer in South Florida, but it got even better for the two-time Stanley Cup champs and their fans to begin the week.
GM Bill Zito managed to come up with enough cash to entice the team's three-headed free-agency monster—forwards Sam Bennett and Brad Marchand and defenseman Aaron Ekblad—to stay put for the chase for a third straight title.
The so-called smart money expected one, two or all three players to seek greener pastures come July 1, but Bennett signed an eight-year deal worth $64 million on Friday and was followed on Monday by news that Marchand had inked a six-year, $31.5 million deal and Ekblad agreed to an eight-year, $48.8 million pact.
The Panthers have a core of seven forwards and three defensemen locked up through the end of the 2029-30 season, which means it'll be up to the other 31 teams to convince them that the first Cup three-peat since 1982 won't happen.
Winner: Vegas Golden Knights
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Like the Panthers before them, the Golden Knights are a franchise that always seems to find a way to add a big piece during free agency or at trade deadlines.
This time around, it was Mitch Marner, whom GM Kelly McCrimmon was able to get before he hit the open market by finagling a sign-and-trade deal with Toronto in which Marner agreed to an eight-year, $96 million pact before the swap was made.
Marner is coming off a career-best 102 points in his ninth season with the Maple Leafs, though it was assumed his days in the hockey-mad Ontario market were numbered when they were bounced from the playoffs in Round 2 by Florida.
The definitive W/L tag won't truly be applied until springtime, when Vegas will be looking for more than the 13-goal, 63-point pace the 28-year-old has produced through 70 career postseason games. But in the short term anyway, it's a big win.
Loser: Edmonton Oilers
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This just in: The Oilers have lost to the eventual Cup champs in four straight playoffs, including consecutive trips to the Final in which they were beaten by Florida.
So, it's got to be particularly difficult to watch those Panthers—and the Golden Knights, who won the Cup in 2023—make deals to keep and land high-impact players while the status quo in Edmonton remains, well...status quo.
GM Stan Bowman made a last-minute Monday deal to retain prolifically offensive defenseman Evan Bouchard for the next four seasons, but the former Cup-winning boss in Chicago was too tight to the salary cap to either hold on to role players Corey Perry and Connor Brown or make a trade for a reliable goaltender.
He did prompt some league-wide head scratching by signing middle-six forward Trent Frederic for eight years at $3.85 million annually, but it hardly seems the kind of move that'll convince Connor McDavid, who's entering the last year of his deal, to stick around.
Loser: Columbus Blue Jackets
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C'mon, we can admit it. It's fun to spend money. So, there's no shame on Columbus GM Don Waddell for getting caught up in the pre-free agency frenzy and laying out $59.5 million for the next seven years.
But considering the windfall is going in the direction of defenseman Ivan Provorov, there's a little concern with how Waddell is making his decisions.
The 28-year-old is a former first-round pick and he's been a respectable NHL'er for the last nine seasons, though his most productive offensive outputs are well behind him, having come in 2017-18 (41 points) and 2019-20 (36 points), respectively.
The good news for him is that his contract was due in a year when the blue-line options were few, which may have prompted Waddell to pull the trigger after it became clear that players like Ekblad and Noah Dobson weren't going to market.
Loser: Offer-Sheet Opportunists
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Nothing adds summertime intrigue like an offer sheet.
It happened last year when St. Louis GM Doug Armstrong got a pair of players—defenseman Philip Broberg and forward Dylan Holloway—to leave Edmonton because the deals he was offering didn't fit the Oilers' existing salary structure.
The draft-pick return to a team losing a player is based on his new annual average salary, with a rate of $4.58 million or more, meaning the compensation must include at least one first-round pick up to as many as four for an $11.45 million player.
And with a generational talent like Gavin McKenna up for grabs at next year's draft, the likelihood of a team making a run at a big-ticket RFA—and possibly losing a McKenna lottery ticket—had been hugely diminished, even before potential targets Bouchard and Noah Dobson came off the market with new deals.
Winner: Vancouver Canucks
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Lest any fan of the team forget, the Canucks were Pacific Division champions in 2023-24 and a goal away from beating Edmonton and advancing to the Western Conference Final before imploding and missing the playoffs last season.
But there's talent aplenty on the roster and a new coach in Adam Foote, so optimism was pent up pending GM Patrik Allvin's performance in free agency.
Well, if Day 1 is indicative, he's off to a good start.
Vancouver held on to three players who'll be key toward its return to divisional relevance, locking up goalie Thatcher Demko on an extension through 2028-29, extending winger Conor Garland for six more years at $6 million per, and agreeing to a seven-year, $50.75 million deal that'll keep Brock Boeser in town through 2031-32.
Boeser was almost universally expected to leave after not signing an extension last summer or in the weeks since the end of the 2024-25 regular season.
Loser: Los Angeles Kings
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Where some fanbases are thrilled with a major pickup or perhaps a small handful of key acquisitions, new Los Angeles GM Ken Holland had a different approach.
The Kings reeled in five UFAs on Tuesday, though none are of the ilk that ought to make Will Ferrell and Co. expect a ticker-tape parade anytime soon.
A day after shelling out $4.3 million to keep Andrei Kuzmenko in silver and black after he'd arrived from Philadelphia at the trade deadline, Holland grabbed wingers Joel Armia and Corey Perry, goalie Anton Forsberg, and defensemen Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin on deals that combine for 12 years and $41.5 million.
Ceci, at 31, is the baby of Tuesday's group, which ranges to Perry, who turned 40 during Edmonton's recent playoff run and was a teammate of Ceci's with the Oilers in 2023-24. Holland signed both players during his time in northern Alberta, but it's hard to foresee this Day 1 haul translating to much beyond quantity.
Winner: New York Rangers
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It was a difficult year at Madison Square Garden, with the Rangers tumbling from a Presidents' Trophy in 2023-24 to a playoff miss in 2024-25.
So, making a splash (or at least a tangible ripple or two) on Day 1 was pretty much a necessity for GM Chris Drury to retake the offseason narrative.
He did so with two deals on Tuesday, initially grabbing free-agent defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov from Los Angeles and agreeing to a seven-year, $49 million deal that'll presumably firm up a first blue-line pairing with puck-mover Adam Fox after Fox's previous partner, Ryan Lindgren, was dealt to Colorado at the trade deadline.
Drury's second Tuesday move came after the team was unable to agree on a contract with restricted free-agent defenseman K'Andre Miller, opening the door for a trade to Carolina that brought in quite a haul, getting a conditional first-round pick, a second-round pick and prospect Scott Morrow.
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