The Hockey PDOcast - Takeaways and Reactions From Day 1 of Free Agency Part 1

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Dimitri Filipovic is joined by John Matisz and Sean Shapiro to break down all of the notable signings from the start of the free agent period. In Part 1 they discuss the Canadiens, Blues, Golden Knights, Maple Leafs, Panthers, and Kings. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filippovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name's Dmitra Filippovich. And joining me is my good buddy, John Mattis. John, what's going on in? Oh, a lot. It's July 1st. It's 626 Eastern time. We've got a lot to unpack here. We do. And you know it's a landmark event on the NHL calendar when the three-man band is back together, still don't have an official name for the shows, but we do them every trade deadline, every July 1st, and we're going to do it again because it's incredibly fun and a great way to capture all of our thoughts on what just transpire. It's also joining us, the third member of the group, our good pal, Sean Shapiro.

Sean, what's going on, buddy? I'm just thinking about which Canadian or American player we're going to do a sign of Finnish nationality today, because every single time we do a show, we tend to find a way to connect something like that and get someone a new passport. So I'm curious who's getting a new passport by the end of this show today. So it's always fun. Yeah, we'll see where it goes. Someone's going to wind up being the big winner or loser,

depending on your perspective from today's show. Last time, or a couple shows ago, it was the newspaper industry as a whole. Last time it was Jake Wallman. We always drag someone in out of left field. So we'll see. We've got about 100 minutes or so here coming up to figure out who that's going to be.

So the plan for today or tonight is we're going to sort through the first day of the free agent frenzy. Now anyone following knows most of the big business in the league got conducted the day prior, with a lot of guys extending or staying with their current teams, but we're going to loop that all into the conversation and break that all down today. I thought it would be more fun to,

rather than the typical winners or losers type of format that you're going to see everywhere else, we're going to do most interesting teams instead that caught our eyes. And that can be based on what they did, what they didn't, if they kind of sat out the action, good or bad reasons. As long as we're going to take turns pitching each other, as long as you've got good rationale for it, that checks out in my books.

And I think that just generally provides more sort of nuance or detailed and fun conversation because the NHL offseason is hardly ever as simple as winners and losers were black and white. So we're going to break that all down over the next two hours. Mattis, you've been writing about today's action over at the score. I'm going to give you the floor here as our first overall pick for most interesting team through this period, whether it's since the draft or just this offseason in general or what they did today specifically. Yeah, I'm going to go a little hipsster here and leave a more obvious one to Sean because I know he's chomping at the bit for a certain Western Conference team.

But let's talk about the St. Louis Blues. So again, not the sexiest market, not the sexiest team, but like they pull off this Bullduke Mayu trade today. And Doug Armstrong was just glowing about Mayu and saying basically he said like he's penciled into our top four, like forget that he's played eight in NHL games. We love this kid. We were going to draft him back in 2021, but he decided to say he didn't want to be picked. And then obviously Montreal picked him, as we all know, a pretty controversial few days for Mayu.

So like that trade in general, super interesting as far as, you know, St. Louis having a surplus of wingers, Montreal having a surplus of defensemen, most notably right-handed defensemen. And they get together and figure out a deal. on the surface, I like this a lot for Montreal, but when I start to sort of get the wheels turning for St. Louis and where they're headed, I'm super intrigued by them and sort of their, I feel like they're pushing their ceiling up with every move that they make lately.

Like, I was looking at their roster, and I mean, so you obviously have the Robert Thomas, Jordan Cairoo combination that's been around for a while, but now you've got Snuggerud, Neighbors, Hallway, Torpchenko, all those guys are up front. you've got Broberg who is obviously somewhat recent Mayu on the back end. Hoffer and Net, he just resigned.

All those guys are in their 20s. I would say every single one of them has some sort of untapped potential. Like even Thomas and Kairu, they haven't reached their peak. And like Torbchenko went off in the playoffs. Holloway's got a lot more juice. And then you've got Dalliborke-Divorski coming.

And I love what the Blues did in the first round of the draft. Justin Carbino. You know, we all like to talk about steals of the draft and, you know, the trendy picks. But, like, that was one where they didn't overthink it. They went for upside. They went for a potential, you know, 30, 40 goal score at that, I believe, 14th, no, 19th. And so you put all that together.

And I just start looking around and go, like, considering where their players are at and their timeline as NHLers, there's a lot of room for each individual guy to grow. And then obviously the group will grow together. So, yeah, the Mayu, Bullduke trade was, is, it's. top of mind for me, even though it feels like it happened, you know, 20 hours ago. See, this is why this format is the best, because you just completely went out of left field, in my opinion, particularly because of the framing of it in terms of the blues perspective of that deal, because I hear I was thinking you're going to come in,

wearing your HAB's jersey as our Ely Engel's stand in on the show and talking them up after your previous appearances. And I think that trade is a great place for us to start, because I had a lot of notes on it, certainly, mostly from the HAB's perspective. just because I love Sack Boldukes game. I talked about him a lot down the stretch last year. He scores 19 goals as a rookie, but 13 of them were in the final 24 games post-4 nations. And I mean,

he's got one hell of a release, right? Like they were executing that low triangle kind of set play on the paro play with Robert Thomas, teeing him up and he was just finishing seemingly every time while he was on that heater down the stretch. And it really was imperative, I think, for the HABs. You know, they went out and got Noah Dobson

to fill a big hole moving forward on the top four in the blue line, but finding someone who's this talented to kind of play alongside and potentially even keep growing with Ivan Deminov as he enters his first year in the NHL, just giving him a chance to succeed at the very least and be an optimized version of himself as a playmaker. And I feel like these two skill sets with these guys really mesh well together and can work in tandem. I saw enough from kind of Alex Newhook in that spot down the stretch out of necessity

where I feel like that certainly is not the long-term answer for that specific spot in the lineup. And so I love this quite a bit. I mean, the thing I like about Bullduke beyond just the shot is he's got this like, whether you want to call it swag or edge to his game, I think, that is really appealing to go along with the shooting talent, of course. Now it wound up sort of biting him in the playoffs, I thought, because he took a couple of pretty undisciplined penalties,

one kind of working his way back to the bench again, you know, away from the puck that really cost the blues. But he's a 22-year-old who was experiencing the NHL postseason for the first time. So I'm not going to really hold that against them. I still think it's a net positive. And this type of player, I feel like, is so appealing or valuable, right? You can make the case that I use a right shot defender. We know how difficult that prototype of player or position is hard to find. But a player this young who's already scored at this level and can hang at 515 is, I think, a massive coup for the HAB. So I really like that from their perspective. I get it from the Blues perspective. You mentioned a lot of the

reasons why you look at that defensive depth chart and beyond broberg and i guess um tyler tucker pretty much everyone is in their early to mid 30s and making a bunch of money and so this gives them more youth there and kind of they're dealing from a position of strength because of all those forwards that you mentioned but the habs could easily justify this right not only do i think it makes their team significantly better this year and moving forward but they had such a logjam on the blue line with Gouley, Dobson, Hudson, and Kerry even over the next two years, signed, and then Reinbacher, after some more HL seasoning coming as well, they could really justify it.

You got any thoughts on this trade or either of these two teams, Sean? Yeah, I was expecting a little bit more of the, as we said, the more of the Matt is flag waving for how the, we're going to see the first cup since 93. I'm getting, I know John's a realist, so I know, I know, I know we're not going that far, but I like the move for the Montreal perspective. Like you kind of, I like, I like when you go and you look at the way things are coming together there.

And obviously being in Detroit and seeing them multiple times and seeing the other teams, they're kind of in that race yet, right? Like there's those teams, depending on what year we're talking about, the Detroit, Montreal, Ottawa, all those teams that have past glory, well, not Ottawa,

but teams that have had past glory trying to get back there and expectation. And I think Montreal's is one that has kind of, have gone from quietly building the right way to now you start to see a lot of the foundational pieces that become building blocks. And to Montreal, I think it's a little bit of a lesson in how the patients can pay off the right way. And you can also maintain entertainment value at the same time. I think that's one of my bigger, like I look at other rebuilding teams.

I hope teams look at the things the way Montreal did, where you don't necessarily have to be good right away. but you at least have to do something to be intriguing. And you have to like, for example, I think San Jose is, obviously they're not close at all to where they need to be. But San Jose is at least intriguing to me. I watch the Sharks play because of seeing how that young core comes together. Some of the other players, the style of play, they come in.

So I just hope that Montreal gets some level of success from this. So more teams look at the patience but entertainment at the same time. And then you can make moves like this with the Boldic deal, bringing in to kind of bolster it without selling selling the farm to do it. Yeah, I think it's a great bet for the habs. And I really think a team, like even I was thinking about this, the devils, for example, because they have so many defenders as a surplus,

a kind of blueprint for this would have been something like a Seamus Casey, this type of deal. And I would have loved that for them as well. I think it makes a ton of sense. It's interesting Mattis because, you know, there's a lot of noise heading into today that the habs were hot on Jordan Kairu and we're trying to work with the blues. to acquire him before his no move clause kicked in.

Obviously, that didn't wind up happening. But shortly thereafter, we got them acquiring a different exciting blues forward. I mean, listen, I've loved Jordan Kairu for a long time. And I think he would have been a great get. I didn't totally understand the logic of that sort of imposed time, deadline, though, because on the one hand, it's like you're acquiring a player before he has the right to say no to play for you. And then he's got six more years on his deal.

so even if you acquire them, you're kind of working under the logic that he would have said no if he had the option with his NMC and then so you're acquiring them anyways and you certainly can find a way to make work at that point, but I thought that was a bit strange

and so they went this route instead and I like that for them quite a bit. Any other notes on either of these two teams or do you want to go to Shapiro's first most interesting team? Let's go to Sean. Yeah, let's go to, let's go to the big one. Let's go out, let's go out to Vegas and look at,

the just between you talk about intrigue and storylines and we were messaging back and forth just before you ever make the deal for marner it's the petrangelo comments and update comes out from the team and think um demetri as you as we were kind of messaging the three of us back and forth i mean that's a and you can be you can say what you want about how Vegas uses lTIR how any NHL teams uses LTIAR, but at first glance, you're talking about a, it's pretty scary. It's, and it's sad at the same time, like, when you're talking about a 35-year-old talking about just trying to get his body to a normal, like, living level. And that's just one of the things that stuck out for me.

And, I mean, I read it like, I covered, before I covered hockey, I covered high school football in Texas. And I always, there was always the, when I, there would always end up being like every single high school football team in Texas I covered, always had like an offensive coordinator, an offensive coordinator, but like a running backs coach or like a wide receivers coach who had like played four years of college and tried in the NFL and like I'd be, I'd go and talk to this guy and you'd meet him and you'd be like, oh man, like you're walking around like you're 80 years old and they were like 26 because they were like a

NFL, they were like a college running back or whatever. And that's the image I always think about what kind of damage is done to athletes' bodies. And that's kind of the image that came to mind for me of Petrangelo of what he's dealing with from the day to day. And then so you can have your opinion one way or the other on the LTIR. I've always been, as I think I've said on this show with you guys before, I'm of the, it's by the book, it's by the rules. So get better at doing it yourself if you're upset about it.

And then we get to the other trade. And this is the great question of, where are the Leafs actually worried about the tampering? Were they not? Who knows? But Vegas obviously lands Marner gets the eight-year deal signed. And from a, I was telling Demetri before we went live, I'm fascinated just from a play perspective on this because I think Marner and Eichel have two very similar elements

to the game I love to watch. Marner is, I mean, first off, Eichel is a center that often cuts down the left there, creates some space, some pockets. You see some switches. You see a bunch of the sources. a bunch of the switching and opening gaps for others. And Marner does a lot of that, obviously,

more of a natural winger coming down the right side. And so from a Vegas perspective for a team that we think of that just hits and hammers and everything like that, I'm fascinated by, I compared it to chess before, where it's like I'm fascinated to see how you get two guys who move a little bit differently than everyone else and how they start to manipulate the space. And now it's just not the one line.

It could be, or they could play together, or if it's the two lines, I'm really fascinated to watch how that plays just from a hockey, nerdy perspective because I think it's two really interesting skill sets with a team that you think of all the time of being this team that hammers people. Yeah, I love that because I can't wait to watch how it plays out. I think they've got a lot of options. I talked about this with Drans on the Sunday show a little bit, but just to expand on it and to your point, like on the one hand, I think there's a

bit of an overlap from a skill set perspective in terms of both guys being generally on puck creators and, you know, carrying it and transitioning it themselves and then attacking from there. But I do wonder whether this is going to open the doors for a little bit because I feel like out of necessity because of the way they constructed their personnel group, he had to be on Puck so much and generally had to play the role of the distributor. And he's clearly got much more shooting talent than he's typically shown, I think, throughout his NHL career in terms of the actual goal scored and the results there. And so if this creates some more opportunities for him to kind of be more unbothered in terms of getting lost in coverage, playing off the puck, getting into shooting pockets, and then

benefiting from from marner's playmaking i think that's really interesting i think it just generally gives them a second legit playmaker and pace pusher mattis and so it affords bruce cassidy the opportunity to maybe even play him with hurdle who's obviously not as you know dominant and on puck carrier but is so good at at getting into open space and hovering around the net and so i think there could be a lot of chemistry there and then marner's stick work and steals and all that is going to allow vegas to play the way they want to when they're at their best which is that counter attack game and sort of benefiting off of a lot of those loose pucks. So I think he's going to look great in Vegas. And regardless of how they use them, it makes a ton of sense. And clearly was the right

move, especially when you get them at 12 million over those eight years after the sign and trade, right? Because in this new cap world, that's going to be by like year three or four is going to be essentially the equivalent of a nine million dollar AV based on what we're used to. And so it allows you to do so much more moving forward in terms of improving your team. What were you thoughts on the way that all unfolded Madison, kind of the fit of Mariner in Vegas and what that's going to look like and whether you got any other interesting anecdotes from everything that unfolded. Well, I would just say my mind now goes to Jack Eichl and what his extension looks like

and how much more he's making than Marner. I presume he's going to make more. I suppose it's possible that they come around the same number. But it is a little ironic, right? All this talk of Marner, you know, going for a two-year deal, a four-year deal. and then like he gets to sort of the negotiation of the sign and trade and reportedly is just like, I don't want to do this again. Like let's just do eight years.

I want to settle down, all that kind of stuff. So it's just funny how things work out in that way. But I mean, it's an end of an era in Toronto. This is, he was there for nine seasons, you know, putting aside the playoff struggles and losses and all the drama around that, especially him being such a punching bag. I mean, I think he's like fifth all time in leaf scoring in this historic franchise. he grew up in the area. He obviously took up a ton of the cap and they're now starting to kind of strategically fill in the holes with

that leftover money, which is in itself really interesting in terms of how they're going to look. But from Vegas's perspective, like I don't know. To me, I don't know about you guys, but I see Stone and Eichel sort of as a package at this point in Mark Stone's career and the lack of wheels that he has and just being able to work with a guy like Ikel where you can, you know, hit sort of a running train down the middle lane and get to work. Marner seems to make sense with hurdle,

and then you give Carlson, like the full shutdown duties on the third line. I think they're going to miss Nick Roy, though. Like, you know, obviously they're overjoyed to have Marner, but he was a luxury and also Petro-Angelo, as much as, like, you know, people start looking at the numbers of him going on LTIR and start the imagination,

imagination starts going. I mean, this is a, you know, potential future Hall of Famer, a real stalwart, if you will, on the back end. And obviously Vegas is still fine on the blue line, but you're, you're losing your top right-handed guy. So that's also a change in terms of the way that Vegas is going to look come training camp. No, it's massive. I mean, he was the only guy on the team that played over 22 minutes a night last year, right? Like, that's, I'm totally with you in terms of always trying to find the new shiny toy and then kind of fit it in within this cap world. We just kind of view the numbers generally in terms of the salaries as disposable when it comes to this. And you're like, all right, well, we just cleared 8.8 million, but sort of at what cost

in terms of actually filling those minutes, they go get Jeremy Lowe's on. It will help in more of a bottom pairing role, certainly. But I imagine it'll mean much more Shay Theodore than we've typically seen, which could be a good thing, although obviously he's struggled somewhat in terms of in health and staying on the ice and has been banged up throughout his career. So they're going to rely on him quite a bit. I think they'll be able to make it work. But yeah, that's sort of a bit of an underrated loss. And I completely echo what Shapiro said out the top there about what, like, how harrowing that that statement was in terms of just trying to sort of from a human element perspective,

rationalize at all. What were you going to say, Sean? The other thing that's interesting for me about this deal. And we'll talk about, there's another eight-year deal that I want to talk about later with another Eastern Conference team. But I'm just, I'm curious, too, of the. did we like mattis talked about uh marner only one i not wanted to do this again i just i wonder how many so many players looked at potentially doing what came into mind for hey let's do an eight year deal since we won't be able to do an eight year deal the next time around just with the cba part of it and um and obviously just to tease it's when we talk about carolina i'm curious to have that

conversation about eight years and the rush to do that. And so I'm kind of, there's a bit, I'd be curious on the truth serum on that one is, did you really, if you're a marner, is that eighth year really that important? Or is it, was it more so of this is the, we can, we can get an eight year because, hey, we got to do a little bit of appeasement to, to cool off the Toronto, uh, tampering tampering. Tampering case. I, I, I, I, I, I, I would love the truth serum of that. Was it because I think Marner will happily take the eight years either way, but is it something where the trade was something Marner wanted the eight years?

So he pushed for, hey, let's get a sign and trade done. Or is it the other way around where the teams were like, let's make this look a little more kosher on the top? I would love the full-blown truth serum on that. And I got my tinfoil hat on right now for that one. Yeah. If you're going to go short term on three or four years, as was initially, suspected. That's obviously the having your cake and eating it too in terms of getting paid now,

but also maximizing your earning power, getting back into the market when the cap goes up and you're still at an age where you're justifiably going to warrant a long-term deal. If you're going to sign for seven years long-term, though, at this point, you've got to get that eighth year to make the money whole. You know, my last note on Vegas here is in doing so and kind of in concert with you mentioned trading Nick Waar using him as a mechanism for this to get that eighth year in to sign and trade. They also trade Nick, Nick Haig, instead of paying him as an RFA, and they get Sizzins and Lowe's on back and the biggest development there.

When you're going to have this top-heavy build, the way Vegas has, is you're going to have to be efficient in terms of the rest of the contracts and just getting Nashville and Barry Trots to pay for half of Sizzins to accommodate it and have him step in as the fourth-line center replacing Nick Waugh is interesting. The Preds, you look at their cap sheet, and they've got Douchade, Taurus, Sizzins, and Ekholm now in the books for north of 10 million. this coming season, which is quite grisly. Vegas was also able to get Riley Smith and Sondack for $4 million total,

which I think helps a lot of this. And we'll kind of shift our attention. They've been rumored to be sniffing around Bowen Byron. Their pursuit of Rasmus Anderson as well has been reported. And he makes a lot of sense not only in terms of filling the hole left by Petrangelo, but also with the AVs that you could make that much more palatable. And so I'm curious to see if anything develops there. I don't think Vegas is done by any means.

They taught us that regardless of how up against the cap or how limited they may seem in terms of flexibility, they're going to find a way to field the best possible lineup. John, do you want to quickly touch on the Leafs here before we go to break as well? Because when you're talking about Martner, I think, you know, you alluded to it a little bit in terms of trying to cobble together aggregate value to replace what you're missing with him in this trade. And I think they did a really good job of that, like acknowledging that when you lose a player of Marner's caliber, it's going to be next to impossible to replace a one for one

because of what a unique skill set it is, right, in terms of his playmaking off the wing, but also the defensive utility as well. And so in doing so, the essentially, for less than 19 million wind up, bring it back to Bears, who takes the hometown discount. They get Matthew Nyes for six years at a phenomenal rate, taking them off the market and preventing any offer sheet concerns. And then they get Nick Wah in this trade at just three million. And then they get Nick Waugh in this trade of just three million, and they get Matias Machelli, a PDO cast favorite, kind of taken on his salary from Utah for what I thought was a great bet. And so they add those guys, you're not going to be able to, none of them are going to be Mitch Barter, certainly, but especially

with, with Waugh and Machelli in particular, I do think you replace some percentage of that playmaking. And Machelli especially could be penciled into a role next to Matthews and Nyes potentially. And I think that would be very intriguing. So you got any notes on Toronto and kind of how they approached this once it was clear and the writing was on the wall that Martiner wasn't going to be back? I mean, it kind of reminds me of,

and I'm half joking, but the scene in Moneyball where they're trying to recreate Giambi and the aggregate, like, you know, we need to replace whatever, 190 runs or whatever the number is. I feel like the Leafs are not quite doing that,

but like they're sort of doing that. Because Machelli, I mean, this is a creative playmaker that could potentially play with Austin Mazz. Matthews and Matthew Nyes. There's Nick Waugh. Okay, he's probably if he performs to the standards that we think that he will perform to, he's going to be like an overqualified third line center.

And then you've got a second line center in Chon DeVarres that at 4.4, I mean, if he scores 40 goals, or sorry, 30 goals, he scored 38 this year. Let's say he goes down to 30. I mean, that's huge value, one of the best contracts in the league. and then you you toss in a couple of other pieces that they've added around the edges and you start kind of convincing yourself okay and they're not done yet but like what they've done so far is it's pretty attractive pretty like I think I think I would call it like fascinating in terms of this team for so long has been handcuffed by these massive contracts and they still

have two in Matthews and Neelander but like to get two others away from the cap sheet Marner's gone. Tavares is not a big number anymore. All of a sudden you can move around the chess pieces. And like, you know, the third line, which was such a problem in the playoffs, can now be something like Nick Waugh with Macelli and Domi or something. Or Nick Waugh with Bobby McMahon and Domi. Like it starts to look a lot better on paper.

And yeah, we'll see what happens with the rest of the off season because I really don't think they're done. And I think even Brad Tree Living said today. that they're still looking for a top six player up front. But they're set in net. Their blue line's pretty good. I'd love for it to have a little more puck moving ability beyond Morgan Riley. But the forward group is fascinating at the very least. Yeah, Machelli is especially fascinating, right?

Because at $3.425 million for just the one year, it's a bet I love. Like, ultimately, the acquisition cost is if he doesn't pan out and get to 51 points, you're giving away a 20-29 pick. and that's pretty, pretty palatable, certainly. He fell out of Utah's rotation last year, finished with just 18 points, but he's 25, and what he did the two previous years,

was certainly enough to attract my attention and inspire confidence that he'll bounce back. I think he was 30 second and primary assists on a permanent basis two years ago, and he was just, you watched that tape, and he was just serving it up on a silver platter for Lawson Kraus, and now all of a sudden, if he does get to play up the lineup with Matthews and Nyes,

and create the all Arizona line. I think that would be a really interesting outcome here. And I do think the Leafs approach this in a pretty pragmatic and financially responsible manner. You look at their cap sheet and they've got about $5 million in cap space left, but that could pretty easily jump up to around nine to accommodate that top six need that you were mentioning because Camps $2.4 million and then Yarn Crook's 2.1. Once their signing bonus has been paid, their actual salary is quite low. I think Yaron Crook in particular makes the league.

minimum this coming season. And so those are pretty movable or interchangeable pieces that allow you to swing bigger if they so choose to in the next days, weeks, months, whatever they, whatever it is. So I like that quite a bit. All right, guys, let's take our first break here. And then when we come back, we will jump right back in there. We got so much more to talk about today. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O.cast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network. All right. We're back here on the HockeyPedocast. We're doing our most interesting teams coming out of day one of this summer's free agency. I believe it's my turn.

We're going back and forth here pitching each other. Now somehow I think people probably tuned in and we're like, all right, we're going to get a Panthers conversation right off the top because they've dominated so much

of the mainstream headlines and in typical PDOCass fashion, both you hipsters decide to start us off against the grain picks. I know that certainly the Marner one is a very trendy topic, but nonetheless, I'm going to make the Panthers

my first selection. They bring back the entire band together. similar to our three-man band here. They bring back their three-man band of UFAs in Bennett, Eckblad, and Marshand. Now, I feel like any contender is going to take on extra risk down the line, just committing financially to players in the back half of their 30s for everything they've contributed to their organization's success.

And I guess in this case, in Marchand's case, early 40s at that. But I feel like where the Panthers differ from your typical Stanley Cup champion is, is they've managed to essentially retain the full extent of their core and everyone that played a big role last year and position themselves as a favor of it all over again. This coming season, typically we see this sort of talent drain when a team is this good where their players get a payday elsewhere because they monetize their contributions to a cup winner

and they just priced themselves out of their current spot. And they were able to make it work by going long on these guys, by structuring the deals the way they did. And I think there's a lot of interesting talking points here. Let's start with the Ekblad one because we were messaging about this. And, you know, when it was reported that he was signing for 6.1 times 8, I think it was portrayed as him taking this massive hometown discount relative to what he could have gotten elsewhere. And technically, the $6.1 million A.AV is, right? Because especially you look at his defense market and the dearth of talent available, especially on the right side, he probably would have gone in the eights, I think, if he had signed elsewhere.

and so he on paper it's less i do think though this the deal he signs is such an unbelievable no-brainer for him personally and i find that to be the most sort of fascinating part of this it's a 48.8 million dollar total value thanks to that eight-year bump uh which really you know if you had taken a seven year comparable elsewhere that's like in the seven seven-ish million dollar range right off the hop uh the structuring of it and i want to talk about this with you guys 7.9 million in each of the first three seasons. So front-loaded, that's nothing new. Typically, we see that with UFAs like this.

But nearly 41 million of it paid out in signing bonuses. Bill Zito did it again, as he's done with every guy who walked up to UFA. He structured it so that the base salary is $1 million each season, and the rest of it is paid out in signing bonuses. And the reason why that matters is because this is going to be a relic of the past CBA, right? It's been reported or I guess rumored that the next one that kicks in in 26-27, is going to limit these types of deals so that a certain amount has to be paid out in base

and teams won't be able to do this. And the Panthers, I think, have taken a full advantage of it to leverage it and keep these guys and make the contract. They sign much more interesting to them, right? A lot of the focus is going to be given to the tax benefits and the sunshine and the palm trees and all that stuff. But I feel like the way they've leveraged their financial might here during this run is just as important because you look at other teams in similar spots, whether it's the

National Predators, who I mentioned earlier, and they theoretically had that same edge. Yeah, we just saw them give Vegas's sixth offenseman last season 5.5 million over a medium term. Seattle similarly gave 28-year-old Ryan Lingren, who really has the body of like a 52-year-old at this point because of how much wear and Terry's undergone blocking all these shots. They gave him 4.5 million over four years. And so, I mean, that cracking Puckpupedia page is a modern tragedy at this point with with all the contracts they've signed, but that's maybe a topic for another day.

But back to Ekbad here. I feel like this is a really interesting one because my opinion of it almost seems to run contrary, I think the general public perception of it, where it's certainly a good deal for the predators, but based on the player he is at this point and all the sort of little edges baked into it, I feel like it was such a good deal for him,

and it wound up working out for both sides. And I think, too, like the other thing about the Ekblad deal and this applies to all three of them. I think so often this time of year we it becomes the get paid go what's the number, everything like that. But I think sometimes and we don't take a minute to appreciate some of the everyone, there's the human side of this and I don't think we take a second to stop and realize what type of human story the Panthers are potentially chasing here. Right. Like I think when you when you look at for Act Blatt, I know, Marchand was only wasn't part of the one before that. But when you're a player and you're an athlete,

right, the potential, we're talking about if the Panthers win with what they've done, I have a hard time believing they don't win one of the next three Stanley Cups. I don't know if they'll three Pete, no idea if they'll do that. But like, I have a hard time believing if you were to tell me the Panthers aren't going to win another cup in the next three years, I would have a hard time believing you. And just from an athlete and human perspective, isn't that which you want to be part of, right? Whether you talk about the tax benefit, how the deal is structured, no matter what you, no other team could go to Aaron Eckblad and Bennett and Brad Marchand and be like, how would you like to be part of maybe one of the last NHL dynasties, right? Like just realistically with how

things are going and the cap hit and everything. Like our last dynasty was Chicago. And before that, you got to go, you got to go back even further. And so I think that's something too where it's one of those historical things that I think it's nice to pause and think about in the moment where their past success and then selling what they can do in the future, no team could handle that. And I think that's why people, you play to win a Stanley Cup, but you play also to do,

to be part of that type of thing. And I think that storyline sometimes gets lost when people like, oh, Echblad took this much money when he could have gotten this year. Well, no other team could he have gone to and been like, hey, we can go do something and be in the annals of NHL history where people will remember these Florida Panthers. Like these are the types of things that I think sometimes get underplayed,

when we look with in the age of just looking through cap sheets and puckpedia and everything like that. All those are great tools. We forget kind of this human side that really draws these players here. Yeah, there's so many layers to this where if you're one of these players, like, and let me just go back to kind of what the mutual was saying about how they structure their deals and how they leverage their advantages. I mean, I can literally picture, I've no knowledge that this happened.

I'm just picturing that it happening. Bill Zito gets hired within, you know, the first year or so he sits down with Vinnie Viola and he's like, hey, owner of the Florida Panthers, we've got weather on our side, we've got this tax advantage on our side. Let's give one more advantage to ourselves by throwing a bunch of signing bonus money at these players. And that will just, it's almost like each of those advantages multiply on each other. So you have that as your base. And then obviously you have, you know, a good coach, great group, you go to win one cup, you win a second cup. You've got Sam Bennett, who seems pretty sold on this whole thing

and he commits first and then you go down the line and once you get to Marshan and Ekblad they're going, I don't want to be the guy that leaves. I don't like it's not like they're offering me nothing. And oh, you want to stretch this out to the end of my career? Like Ekblatt, I can stay here my whole career where I got drafted. I don't have to, as Greg Wysinski has said many times over over the years,

like I don't have to pack my crap and leave. Like, well, NHL players just don't want to leave where they got drafted or where they got traded or whatever, it's a hassle. So you mix that all into one stew, and it's really not surprising to me whatsoever. I think Marchand might be the only one that I'm going, he had this opportunity to go pretty much anywhere he wanted.

He was going to get more money. He was probably going to get, you know, maybe even an extra year, which seems crazy given the contract he got. But I don't know. Like, I think you hit the nail on the head there, Sean, in terms of like the human element of it, where Eklat's still going to make a ton of money with this.

A lot of it's going to be up front. he gets to go try to be part of a dynasty and it's just sitting there right in front of him. He doesn't have to go to a new city and chase it with a whole new group of people and whatever the case may be. It's right in front of them. Yeah, I think in these types of deals,

there's a lot of, and players value this certainty versus the uncertainty of UFA and going somewhere else where you don't know what it's going to be, but it's probably not going to be as fun. And in a lot of these deals, and EGBADS similar to this, like they gave him a full no move clause

in the first six years and then a 16 team no trade clause in year seven. They essentially did the same with Sam Bennett. And it's not only the idea of finishing your career with the only team you've played for, but I think what Sean said, and it can't be overstated, not just coming back to a Stanley Cup winning team, but for a guy who's been there all three of those runs, a chance to be part of like an all-time historic group.

And I think he was also very smart to acknowledge in his presser, getting to keep playing next to the player who's probably most uniquely qualified to make his life easier on the ice in Gus Forsling. And that's one of those perks as well. And the biggest edge for them here beyond the contract structuring is being a good team, the teams want to stay on compared to some of the other teams in similar tax benefit situations that don't have that same selling point. I mean, for Marchand, his deal is going to be, I think he's going to be turning 43 by the

time it expires. So it's certainly a different extreme. And I do believe if you hit the market, I don't know about the term, but a team like Utah I think was preparing to give him a very, very rich upfront A.V to add him to their mix. On the last note on the signing bonus front, by my calculation, I was looking at up on Pockpedia, the Panthers are paying out about $76 million this summer in signing bonuses to put that into perspective. The Sabres after signing Ryan McLeod and Alex Lyon are like at $77 million in annual salary. that's going to be paid out throughout the entire season

compared to the one that's being paid out on July 1st. And maybe that's a good segue into talking about the, what's next for the Panthers in terms of building out this team, right? Because it seems pretty clear they're going to trade. The only guy from this core that's not going to be back seems like it's going to be Evan Rodriguez because of his contract where he makes $3 million against the cap for the next two years. But after paying his signing bonus, his base salary this coming season is the league minimum.

775K and that'll be appealing to a lot of teams since everyone has cap space but GMs love to go to their owners and be like we're actually not going to be paying this guy in terms of actual cash very much and he's going to be a very useful contributor and we've seen the market for these guys under contract that our roster players are going to be coveted with everyone looking to add and not enough talent available on the market and then I think boquist as well at 1.5 times two those guys are going to be gone they're going to need to the Emaki Samiskevich as an RFA they're going to need to probably go I mean they're going to have to go bridge on him at this point because of how little cap space they have left and that's the one regrettable part of this in my opinion because he was such a obvious guy you go along on to keep the AV down and then he plays a top six role next year produces a ton and it immediately looks like a steal and so he's going to earn himself a lot of future money based on his production this season I think but they're going to bring back everyone right they also brought back Thomas Nosek to be the fourth line center they got Teresov to be the backup from Columbus.

They're bringing in 38-year-old Jeff Petrie in the honorary OEL, Nate Schmidt spot, and both guys, I think, certainly had more left in their career and were younger at that point. But they wound up sort of rejuvenating themselves and getting nice paydays from their one season in Florida. And so we'll see if Petrie's able to contribute anything there. But yeah, they're in a pretty good spot to keep this going. Not only with bringing all these guys back, but Bob's $10 million contract expires this. summer. If he comes back, it'll certainly be at a lower number. The cap will be going up to 104. And so they're going to theoretically going to be able to keep adding regardless of what

happens this season. So it's a pretty good spot to be in. Either you guys got anything else on Florida or do you want to go to Mattis's next team? Yeah, just the one thing you just mentioned, the OEL, Nate Schmidt spot that now goes to Jeff Petrie. That's a spot too where if Jeff Petrie is not filling that role well enough in season, you in Florida will probably find a way to add somebody in season to do it. And I also, you kind of look at like this kind of self-fulfilling machine on things, too, for the Panthers, where we talk about story stuff. And I go back to this other part, too.

Like, John, when you talk to players, how many players are going to look at the Nate Schmidt experience, the VTek-Vanecheck experience of we got the cup first? Like, just like, all seriousness. Like when you're talking about a, I know it's, I know a lot of glowing poetry can be written about, oh, they gave the cup to the backup goalie before this guy and that guy. But that goes a long way for the player who thinks like, hey, I'm really a $1.5, $2 million player, whoever that may be next summer. But I'll sign for $800, $7.75, whatever it is.

I think that stuff goes to. The Panthers have just, it's kind of this winning is the best, like, antidote to everything. But the Panthers have done such a good job stacking all these other things on top for whatever the next move needs to be. just kind of keeps becoming self-fulfilling. And that's why if you're Eckblad or any of these three guys, you're like, why would you want to leave? It's just, it's, it really is. It does feel like we are in that spot to me.

As I said, I don't know if they'll win next year, but I have a hard time believing they won't win another one in the next three years. Yeah, shout out Nate Schmidt, one of the true good guys in the sport and gets five assists in the cup final to really hike up that stock on his way out. Let's talk about the LA Kings guys, specifically, Yes, yes. Ken Holland's spree.

He kind of pulled a bit of a Barry Trots today in terms of spending pretty irresponsibly. Now, the first thing I'll say, I'll give them two compliments first. I don't mind the Corey Perry acquisition, $2 million one year. You're bringing him over from the dark side. You're the former Oilers GM. He's the now former Oilers player.

Okay, cool. And obviously, Perry just... If you're the Kings, I mean, losing in the Stanley Cup final is a much better fate than losing in Routers. want to Edmonton. There you go. It just makes too much sense. We'll see if this game falls off eventually. I mean, the guy's 40. Armia comes in, you know, 2.5, two years, fine, whatever. Like, that's cool. But then it starts to get a little dicey. I mean, Cody C. Four years, $4.5 million per. Brian Dumlin, three years, four million per. And this is on top of acquiring Joel Edmondson

last summer, three years, $3.85. I mean, those are some big dudes. but I don't quite know what the rationale is. And, you know, you look at what they did previously to sort of clear room for these guys, really, is they were unable to sign Gavikov. He's gone. He's in New York. They traded Jordan Spence to Ottawa. He's gone. And then now their top six is, you know, Mikey Anderson, Drew Dowdy.

And I'm just kind of making up these pairings. But Dumolin and C.C., Edmondson and Clark. Like, I like half of that blue line. And what I come back to with this is like the Cody Cici and Brian Dumlin acquisitions, like those two parts of your roster, you can fix them at the deadliner in season. Like you don't have to blow your brains out on July 1 if this is in fact such a bad UFO class. Like this was not the moment to go all in on Cody Cici. Like if he's a pending UFA and you need a fifth or sixth defenseman and it's,

mid-February you call up that his GM and say hey i'll trade you whatever and if you want to retain salary for me that's great i'll throw in another asset like i don't mind these the acquisition of of cc and dumelin like in sort of the narrow tunnel of like that last piece for a contender to beef up your blue line as maybe a five-six guy but for them to be your big splashes in the summer and to attach term to those deals because they were obviously highly sought after It just leaves me scratching my head. Like, I just felt like Holland really overstretched himself. And just because you have caps based on July 1 doesn't mean you have to spend it.

Like that's kind of, that's where I end up. Well, a couple notes on that. So to Dumlin's credit, I thought he looked much better in New Jersey after I felt like he was done based on what I'd seen from the past couple of years. In particular, in round one against Carolina. I mean, they had to lean on him to such an egregious degree. You played like 29 and a half minutes per game in that series and was playing with Jonathan. and Kovicevich when he came over at the deadline and they had a bunch of injuries and I thought he looked much better than he had previously. But I'm with you like committing 8.5 million to those guys

very reminiscent to what we saw from Jim Nell last summer where he made the great mistake of looking at this opening on his blue line and being like well the answer is Ilya Lubushkin and Matt Dumbah and then quickly coming to regret it and those two guys in combination with Edmins as you said and the amount of money they make and then I'd add a 36 year old Drew Doughty who I'm going to I'm willing to give him a bit of leeway here because he was coming back from such a serious injury. But he, especially in that series against Edmondton, looked much slower and worse with the puck. And that would be alarming moving forward at that age. And combining it with losing Gavakov to New York, trading spends for what I described generously as like 25 cents on a dollar based on his contract and what I think about his skill set.

And now having this blue line on a team that has clearly been lacking a certain level of either offensive upside. juice and that being there undoing the past couple years and then for a second consecutive off season under two different GMs going in this opposite direction and kind of doubling and tripling down and not really addressing those concerns that's a massive problem and I love i love cc like by all accounts an absolute gem of a guy the reason why he stuck around and been valued by teams for the most part beyond being a right shot defenseman he is certainly whether he's meant to or not provided me with a bunch of joy over the years watching him play and shoot the puck wildly.

Yet he's coming off a Western Conference final where the Oilers just mercilessly targeted him. He was on the ice for seven of their 13 5-on-5 goals scored in that series. And now you look ahead and this King's team is viewing all this as like, well, we're going to have to get through Edmonton in our division probably in round one again.

And that's going to be your answer. So that's a pretty tough pill to swallow, I think. What do you think about that, Sean? Yeah, it's, first, the, the, the Corey Perry joke is a good one of getting pat, at least losing in the cup final would be, takes you much further than what you've had. The other thing about these moves and just from the Ken Holland perspective is so Ken Holland's going to be 70 this year, he took this job, it's kind of acting. He's already in the Hockey Hall of Fame, right? He's got the resume intact. I think he was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2021 or whatever year it was. he's acting like a guy who is he really going to be the GM of this team

when he's 75 years old? Probably not. So a lot of these moves are, a lot of these moves seem to be, okay, this is what might be best to season by season. And then we deal with these problems the next year.

And I think it's a good, it's probably going to be a good cautionary tale for some other team. I think the Kings are going to be good cautionary till next summer for some teams, because I think there's a lot of teams that probably took a little bit of heat today for some inactivity that are going to be happy with themselves about it.

Like, obviously in Detroit, I'm hearing all of the Detroit fans are up in arms because Izerman didn't do it, really didn't really do anything today. And I get where that's coming from. And I've been someone who's not been the biggest Iserman supporter, but I at least look at in today's vacuum, what type of deals were you actually going to

make here on some of these signings that were, that were, that would then, like, your $15 million in cap space is either better for that trade or for whatever that other next move is. And I think this is where the Kings kind of become that cautionary tale a little bit for next summer because they're going to be the team struggling to get rid of one of these guys next summer. One of these guys is going to fall off. We don't know which one, but one of them will. You're going to be in the same spot where, where Dallas is right now, where last year, they had Lubbushkin and Dumba.

and now they were never going to be able to afford the seven million that mcale dallas was never going to be able to afford mcale grandland at the seven million dollar that he signed with anaheim but mcale grandlin probably would have been interested in dallas in the five to six range it's something where they did have those conversations if he was if grandlin was going to go somewhere for the money it was going to be somewhere like anahe if he was going to go somewhere and he liked dallas but when it came to the stars basically caps wrapped themselves completely by not having a true answer of how they're going to open up the space. And so this is where L.A. is that team where we'll be talking next year of like, oh my God, how did they get rid of this guy or how didn't they get rid of this guy? And it's, I think they're a slightly better team. I think they are a better team. I think they can win around or run around or two this year. But it's kind of the, it's almost the Ken Holland career story, right?

And once again, me coming from a Detroit perspective of, I've made a team that will make the playoffs, but at what cost? And that's, I can't help but look at LA that way. Well, and I think ultimately the forward editions are all fine in a vacuum at the price and term, right? Like Kuzmanko, based on how useful he was playing with campaign Kopitar and what he did for their powerplay at one year, I'm fine with that. Armia, I think is very useful and that's a perfectly reasonable deal. I think even Corey Perry as well is worth the shot. The issue is that they really needed a legitimate needle mover, I think, in terms of someone who could create in an emphatic way.

And, you know, it was reported they were hoping to have a meeting in pitch, Mitch Martiner that obviously didn't happen after we went to Vegas. Nick Clegglers is still out there, although reading some of the reporting, it seems like that wasn't really an option or a very serious one. But to come out of it with this, like they have about $6 million in cap space. They're going to have to pay Alex LaFarrier after he had a really nice breakout season and scored 19 goals and 40 plus points last year. And so this is really going to be, for the most part, the team they had entered the season with.

And I'm not sure if that's going to be good enough. I think they had a chance to be more aggressive and creative and deliberate about what they did, and they ultimately settled on this. So, yeah, you're one of Ken Holland is off for a rollicking start. I mean, it felt inevitable based on his track record, and yet I'm still kind of in awe in terms of what they ultimately settled with as the final product. All right, guys, let's take another break here. We're going to switch over to part two on the podcast feed, and then we come back.

Sean will be on the clock with his next most interesting team, and we're going to keep the good times going. you're listening to the Hockey, Ocast streaming on the Sportsnet Radio Network.