Greg WyshynskiOct 3, 2025, 07:00 AM ETCloseGreg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.Follow on X
Despite stunning summer, Panthers’ three-peat is jeopardized
There was Alex Ovechkin breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record. There were the Florida Panthers shattering the hearts of Edmonton Oilers fans for a second straight Final series to win another Stanley Cup. There were the Tkachuk brothers (Matthew and Brady) trying to smash every Canadian player in sight during the 4 Nations Face-Off.
What’s in store for 2025-26? Plenty where that came from, including the NHL’s much-anticipated return to the Winter Olympics.
If you haven’t kept up with the NHL in the past few months, don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a chance to catch up on everything that has happened — the hirings, firings, signings, trades and significant rules changes thanks to a new collective bargaining agreement. It’s all in our guide to the 2025-26 season for lapsed fans. Read up before the puck drops!
Jump ahead: Panthers’ threepeat attempt Free agency, trades What’s next for Ovi? Coaching carousel Crosby’s uncertain future
The NHL will hold a launch event at UBS Arena in Long Island, New York, that Sports Business Journal reports will be a “Super Bowl-style media day” before players and coaches leave for the Milan-Cortina Olympics.
The level of hype for this Olympic tournament couldn’t be higher. The success of the 4 Nations Face-Off last season was the perfect international hockey appetizer. Who doesn’t want to see another showdown between the U.S. and Canada after the Tkachuk-led punch-fest and the dramatic overtime championship game between the North American rivals at 4 Nations?
The 12 countries that qualified for the men’s Olympic hockey tournament each named their first six players to their rosters. Now comes the real drama, as players use the first few months of the NHL season to make their Olympic cases to their national teams.
The final 25-man rosters for the Olympics are expected to be announced in early January, leaving plenty of time for 4 Nations snubs such as Buffalo Sabres star Tage Thompson to leave an impression on Team USA GM Bill Guerin, the Minnesota Wild general manager who just made history…
The hockey world was stunned when Minnesota Wild star winger Kirill Kaprizov turned down an eight-year deal worth $128 million, which would have been the richest contract in NHL history. Some believed that meant he wanted to move on from Minnesota and test free agency next summer. On the contrary: Kaprizov wanted to stay in Minnesota and signed an even bigger contract a few weeks later.
The Wild went above and beyond their expected offer to keep Kaprizov in Minnesota. They have their franchise player secured. Now comes the hard part: building a Stanley Cup winner around him.
Check out the numbers behind Kirill Kaprizov’s record NHL deal.
Following their second straight Stanley Cup Final victory over the Oilers, the Panthers now have a chance to do something no NHL team has done since the New York Islanders’ dynasty in the 1980s: win a third consecutive Stanley Cup (and advance to four straight Finals).
The Panthers started that journey in impressive fashion this offseason by retaining all three of their big-name free agents: center Sam Bennett (eight years, $8 million average annual value), defenseman Aaron Ekblad (eight years, $6.1 million AAV) and, perhaps most surprisingly, winger Brad Marchand, the 37-year-old trade deadline prize who signed a six-year extension worth $31.5 million.
But then the Panthers hit two significant bumps in the road. Star winger Matthew Tkachuk is expected to be sidelined until at least December after offseason surgery addressed a sports hernia and torn adductor muscle. Captain Aleksander Barkov was lost on his first on-ice practice in training camp, needing surgery to repair the ACL and MCL in his right knee. He’s expected to miss the entire regular season, and his status for the playoffs is in question.
The Vegas Golden Knights are one of the favorites in the Western Conference this season after an offseason that involved one significant addition and a major subtraction to their roster.
The Golden Knights landed the biggest free agent of the offseason in Toronto Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner, who had 102 points in 81 games last season but had become a pariah because of the Leafs’ lack of playoff success. Vegas traded center Nicolas Roy to Toronto to acquire Marner ahead of free agency, getting him with a franchise record eight-year, $96 million contract. He’s expected to play with star center Jack Eichel on their top line.
But the Golden Knights’ back end took a hit when star defenseman Alex Pietrangelo announced in June that he was stepping away from “the intensity of hockey” to see if his injured hip can improve to the point where he might have “a normal quality of life.” He is expected to miss the 2025-26 season at a minimum — although Pietrangelo, 35, wouldn’t rule out a return to play this season while opting for rehab rather than surgery.
In January, the NHL and NHLPA announced the salary cap projections for the next three years, going from $95.5 million this season to $113.5 million in 2027-28. Though many expected this financial flexibility would lead to a flurry of players switching teams via free agency and trades, it turns out teams used the cap bump to retain more talent than acquire it.
Labor peace is not exactly something we’ve come to expect from the NHL and the NHLPA, so it was a welcome change to have their new collective bargaining agreement created without too much acrimony. The new CBA takes effect in September 2026, but the two sides agreed to expedite some of the changes for the 2025-26 season.
Chief among them are a change to how teams can use long-term injured reserve to create salary cap space in the regular season and the implementation of a postseason cap for the first time. If a team wants to replace the full salary amount for an injured player, that player won’t be eligible to return during the playoffs. Otherwise, teams can only use additional cap space that is less than the “prior season’s average league salary.”
As for the postseason salary cap, the new rule states that teams can ice a roster for a playoff game only if the total average contract values are within that season’s cap.
Also expedited for this season: The end of deferred payment contract structures and “double retention” trades. Double retention had become common at the trade deadline, with teams retaining part of a player’s salary and trading him to a third-party team that retained another percentage of the contract before the player was then sent to his new club.
We know it’s the end of the line for one NHL superstar: Los Angeles Kings center Anze Kopitar, who announced that 2025-25 will be his last season. On the same day Kopitar held his news conference, another legendary player said he’d yet to make up his mind: Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals.
Ovechkin, 40, will be an unrestricted free agent after this season, his 21st. He became the NHL’s leading career goal scorer last season, passing Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky (894) and finishing with 897. The Capitals captain eased concerns that he was slowing down with 44 goals in a season that saw him miss 16 games with a broken leg.
When asked recently if he has decided whether 2025-26 will be his final NHL season, he said, “I don’t know if this is going to be the last. We’ll see.”
The Anaheim Ducks hired Joel Quenneville to replace Greg Cronin, who was fired after two seasons. Quenneville hasn’t coached in the NHL since 2021, when he resigned from the Florida Panthers as part of the fallout from the Chicago Blackhawks’ sexual assault case.
An independent report from a law firm in October 2021 detailed how the Blackhawks organization failed to properly address allegations by player Kyle Beach that he was sexually assaulted by video coach Brad Aldrich during the team’s 2010 Stanley Cup run. Quenneville was the head coach at the time.
After the report, the NHL determined that Quenneville and Blackhawks executives Stan Bowman and Al MacIsaac were ineligible to seek further employment in the league until reinstated by commissioner Gary Bettman. Their bans were lifted in July 2024. Bowman was hired as general manager of the Edmonton Oilers that summer. Quenneville waited until May 2025 to latch on with the Ducks.
GM Pat Verbeek said his team spoke with dozens of individuals before hiring Quenneville. “Our findings are consistent with Joel’s account that he was not fully aware of the severity of what transpired in 2010,” Verbeek said in a statement. “It is clear that Joel deeply regrets not following up with more questions at the time, has demonstrated meaningful personal growth and accountability, and has earned the opportunity to return to coaching.”
Quenneville, 67, takes over a Ducks team with a core of young stars and veteran acquisitions such as former Rangers captain Chris Kreider, signed as a free agent. Anaheim is seeking its first playoff berth since 2018. Quenneville is 275 wins away from tying Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman for most all time for an NHL coach.
It was another offseason of veteran coaches shipping their game night suits to different locations. Besides Quenneville, the familiar faces behind new benches include:
The early favorite to win the Calder Trophy is Montreal Canadiens forward Ivan Demidov. The 19-year-old was an offensive dynamo in Russia and arrived at the end of last season with an array of dazzling moves. Other rookie forwards to watch include Jimmy Snuggerud (St. Louis Blues), Ryan Leonard (Washington Capitals), Michael Misa (San Jose Sharks) and the Oilers’ duo of Matthew Savoie and Isaac Howard — if either of them see time with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Two goalies to keep on eye on: Yaroslav Askarov of the San Jose Sharks and Jesper Wallstedt of the Wild, both of whom could become their teams’ primary goalie sooner than later.
With the Panthers getting their outdoor game, that leaves the Utah Mammoth as the only current NHL team yet to play in an outdoor game.