5 Teams That Are Still a Mess After 2025 NHL Free Agency

There are still some trades and smaller free-agent signings to be made around the NHL this summer, but the bulk of the major moves have already been made.

A lot of teams have managed to improve themselves over the past two weeks.

Others did not.

Here, we will focus on the teams that didn't and are still a mess after the initial wave of offseason moves.

Los Angeles Kings

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The Los Angeles Kings clearly had some flaws going into the offseason.

They have lost in the first round of the playoffs four years in a row to the same team (the Edmonton Oilers), have a middle-of-the-pack offense and a farm system that has not produced the way anybody hoped it would.

They changed general managers by going from Rob Blake to Ken Holland, and that has only seemed to make the problems worse.

It's not that the Kings were a huge mess at the start of the offseason. They were a very good team and still might be a good team. But even good teams can be a mess sometimes, and L.A. might qualify.

Losing Vladislav Gavrikov and trading Jordan Spence, only to replace them with Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin, is a potentially massive step backward, while they still lack the type of goal-scoring depth that can get them past Edmonton and the other top contenders in the Western Conference. Even worse, the one big strength of their team—the defense—is significantly worse on paper.

The Kings should be further along at this point, and they need to take a big step forward this season. Unfortunately, the roster on paper seems worse than the one that ended this past season. And that roster wasn't good enough.

That is not progress. That is a mess.

Detroit Red Wings

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It's not that the Detroit Red Wings are a bad team, but they're not a particularly good team. And they don't seem to be willing to make any major strides toward becoming a particularly good team.

Their playoff drought is closing in on a decade, and six of those seasons so far have been under the watchful eye of general manager Steve Yzerman.

While he has made some big moves in recent years, not all of them have panned out as hoped and the roster remains stuck in neutral.

After the season, team captain Dylan Larkin said the locker room was a little hurt that more wasn't done at the trade deadline to improve the roster, which was the first sign that some frustration might be growing with the lack of progress.

So what did Yzerman and the Red Wings do in the offseason?

Salary-dumped Vladimir Tarasenko. Re-signed Patrick Kane. Signed James van Riemsdyk. Acquired John Gibson.

Is that going to be enough to make up the gap between them and the Eastern Conference playoff teams? Or them and the serious contenders?

Not likely.

They do still have $12 million in unused salary-cap space, so there is time for a meaningful trade to improve things. But they have to actually complete one.

As of now, this is still a mess of mediocrity.

Buffalo Sabres

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Buffalo Sabres fans deserve better than the product they have been given for the past 14 years.

Multiple general managers, multiple rebuilds, a revolving door of coaches and players, all producing the same results. And it never seems to get better, and they never seem to get closer to the playoffs.

The 2024-25 season was an especially frustrating one as they again finished near the bottom of the standings, and the offseason hasn't produced much in the way of optimism.

The big move was trading JJ Peterka, a young goal-scorer who seems ready to have a breakout season, to the Utah Mammoth for defenseman Michael Kesselring and forward Josh Doan.

They also re-signed defenseman Bowen Byram to a two-year contract after months of trade rumors, giving Buffalo one of the most expensive defensive groupings in the NHL.

The problem is that the Sabres are one of the worst defensive teams in the NHL. It's not a great return on their investment at this point.

They finished 12 points out of a playoff spot and nothing done this offseason is going to get them closer to making up that gap. It's been another offseason of inactivity, despite having than $7 million in salary-cap space, resulting in a lower-tier roster that lacks offense, defense, or goaltending to compete for a playoff spot.

It's a grim situation. And the drought seems destined to reach 15 years this season.

Vancouver Canucks

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The Vancouver Canucks are far from the worst team in the league, and they do have some pretty high-end talent at spots on the roster.

They also had some unexpected good news this offseason when Brock Boeser re-signed after it looked like he was going to leave in unrestricted free agency. That was a nice little win for the roster.

But that's where the wins have stopped.

While the Canucks might not be the worst team in the NHL, they might have one of the worst overall situations in the league because they seem to be stuck in the middle with no easy path out. There is also a lot of chaos swirling around the roster.

As constructed, the NHL roster is very mediocre, especially when you get beyond the top two or three players.

The farm system is one of the worst in the league and lacks potential high-end talent.

Their best returning forward, Elias Pettersson, is coming off the worst season of his career and nobody knows if he will get back to the 100-point form he showed a couple of years ago. He still could, and nobody should bet against it, but he still has to do it.

The team's best overall player, defenseman Quinn Hughes, has two years left on his contract and nobody knows if he wants to re-sign, with president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford already planting the seeds for a potential trade by the end of the 2026-27 season if he does not sign an extension.

They wanted to keep head coach Rick Tocchet, but he ended up leaving to join the Philadelphia Flyers.

Their big outside addition was to bail a divisional rival—the Oilers—out of their salary-cap mess by not only taking on Evander Kane's contract, but not even getting a sweetener out of it from them. The Canucks had to give up the draft pick in that deal.

If that all isn't a mess, what is?

Seattle Kraken

The Seattle Kraken have not had the worst offseason in the NHL.

Freddy Gaudreau was a pretty decent addition, as was Mason Marchment. They did add some good players who could help them a little.

But signing defenseman Ryan Lindgren to a four-year $18 million contract, when two different contending teams over the past calendar year decided he wasn't good enough, continues what has been a rather directionless and haphazard roster construction.

The Kraken entered the NHL with relatively high expectations after the way the Vegas Golden Knights rewrote the expansion timeline. It was maybe unfair, but Seattle has not come close to matching what Vegas did.

At this point, they have made the playoffs once in four years, don't seem to have any set plan when it comes to building the roster and there is not any one area they particularly excel in.

Another year of mediocrity (or just being plain bad) seems to be on the horizon.