Every year, it’s the same thing. At least that’s what one of these articles means for us. We’ve gotten pretty used to evaluating certain important events with an annual article that uses the same evaluation techniques as the year(s) prior. I’m not sure if some of you noticed, but we here at Evolving Hockey don’t really like change. In fact, we kind of hate it. That’s why we’ve vowed to never change anything. We get plenty of change from the NHL already, and each time we do one of these exercises, everything is so different, why would we change anything on our end? That’s called comfort, folks.
2025 NHL Free Agency is here, and so are we. As some of you may know, we provide both Contract Projections and Player/GAR Projections on the site, and every June 30th (or sometime around now) before we hit Market Opening, we like to squash these models together (new technical term) in a very Moneyball way and look at the results. We’re doing the same thing here, but if you’d like some more explanation about the inner workings of all these said things, please reference the below links for more info!
References
- Free Agency Reviews: 2022 / 2023 / 2024
- Contract Projections
- WAR Writeup
As an additional note, we made a few updates to our contract projection model, specifically revolving around the data we’re using now. To put it simply, all the contract data we’re using after July 10, 2024 is being tracked by us manually, everything before that is still from CapFriendly’s old warehouse. If you’d like more info about that as well, please reference the Update article here!
The Environment
We’re back to our annual tradition of monitoring the cost of theoretical goals for defensemen. As a reminder, these “goals” are in the form of one goal above replacement in our GAR model. Please see our 2022 preview for how these values are calculated. It looks like we may have hit a (possibly temporary) peak in the ’23-24 season – the cost of a goal for defensemen has leveled off, but they’re still pricey. What we said last year still more or less applies here; given the uncertainty in our current environment and the salary cap’s rise, I’m waiting another year (or maybe just a few months) before we write that article that I promised last year.
As we discussed in our contract projections update article (linked above), the current free agent market is entering a period of unprecedented volatility. Not only are we entering an offseason with the biggest jump in the salary cap in over 20 years (and a projected rise in the following two years), we’re entering an environment where more high value players are signing higher value contracts before free agency. I was initially interested in the number of contracts signed before July 1st this year when I investigated this, as it felt like more players had signed contracts early this summer, but the number of contracts signed in May & June this year is low, historically. What’s changed, however, is the average cap hit of the contracts signed before free agency.
In 2025, the average contract signed in the two months preceding free agency has jumped almost $550k compared to last year and risen $930k from the consistent trendline of 2007-2019. The COVID-19 pandemic clearly had an impact on the market here, which appears to have lasted into 2022; an uncertain schedule, season stoppages, and impacts on player performance resulted in patient teams during the summer. Once the pandemic subsided, however, rumors of a looming salary cap increase started to permeate, and teams jumped on their decisions quickly. This year alone we’ve seen Noah Dobson, Sam Bennett, Matthew Knies, J.J. Peterka, and Brock Nelson all sign deals north of $7.5M. Even accounting for the increase in salary cap, I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.
I’m going on about this because, of course, I’m worried about our contract projection model because it is my child and I don’t want to see it get hurt. In all seriousness, I can confidently say that I have never been so uncertain about what will happen in a summer. And that’s even assuming a normal free agency class, not one that, well, is what we have right now (maybe if some of those players hadn’t signed already we’d have a little more to go on here). Teams have a ton of money (even those pressed up against the cap get an extra 7.5M to play with), the available UFAs really are lacking, and fans want MOVES. I say: play ball.
Best Value: UFAs
Ok, so about those UFAs, eh? Take a look! This is our fourth year doing this exercise, and I’m confident this is the worst group of UFAs I’ve seen during this time. Some of this has to do with the early signings I just talked about, but the main reason for this weak crop is just that: they’re weak. Last summer, based on the players we identified as extension-eligible, it seemed like some may opt to pursue the open market, but in reality, we’re left with Marner and Ehlers as the marquee UFAs who chose this path, and not much else. There is always value, however, and that’s what we’re looking at here (even if you don’t want to look at it because it doesn’t even contain the aforementioned marquee). Using this evaluation method, it’s hard to find high-dollar players who make the cut due to the nature of uncertainty in projected player values (our GAR projections). Usually, we get a Reinhart or Nichushkin, but this year our best bet is Gavrikov. Honestly, you could do a lot worse as a team looking to add a solid defenseman to your top-6.
Andrei Kuzmenko is a name I haven’t heard much about in the weeks leading up to free agency. He was traded twice during the 24-25 season but still finished with a respectable 6.9 xGAR (137th out of 537 forwards). His fantastic 26-year-old rookie season was very much driven by a ridiculous 26.7% shooting percentage, but it should be that noted he shot 16.3% over the last two seasons… I’d reckon he can still very much score goals. Our most likely contract projection for Kuzmenko is 4 x $5.64M which might seem a little steep given the trades last year, but he has shown significant offensive upside in the past while putting up solid defensive results for a forward known for their offense. He might be a perfect candidate for a team looking to make a “responsible splash” in an otherwise unimpressive free agent market.
Ahh, Jeff Skinner. What a guy. He had a rough go of it in Edmonton last year (and, frankly, in his last year with Buffalo), but there is potentially some value here in our opinion. Yes, he is aging – and his defensive game is atrocious (at least per our models) – but he still projects to be a somewhat serviceable 34-year-old forward overall per our GAR Projections. Skinner’s even strength offense is still quite solid – all of his value’s come from EVO throughout his career. Be warned, though, he’s had below replacement EVD xGAR in all 15 seasons he’s played (except one), and he’s far from a powerplay specialist, even though he’s had ample opportunities; his career 10.1 PPO xGAR is rather unimpressive given he’s spent 2660 minutes on the powerplay.
With that said, I’d like to note that Skinner is 2nd in total value added in our penalty goals model among all skaters since ‘07-08 – behind only the infamous Dustin Brown. His penalty drawing abilities have fallen off as he’s gotten older, but they might still exist if you look hard enough. Given that we only project Skinner to make $2.34M for one year with a new team, someone looking to work him into their team’s forward depth should be interested.
By no means a household name, Pius Suter has quietly become one of the better defensive depth forwards in the league with an ability to score: 25 goals with a terrible Vancouver team is actually impressive. And that’s coming from us. While our projected 4 x $5M might seem a little steep, his extremely consistent RAPM numbers (weighing more towards defense) separate him from the rest of an uninspiring class. Moving between Chicago, Detroit, and Vancouver over five seasons hasn’t led to a ton of exposure (and/or experience), but he’s likely the best value depth center on the market.
Best Value: RFAs
The RFAs bring us hope, as they always do. Or at least Evan Bouchard does. Few players have become as divisive as Bouchard in recent years. Left off the 4 Nations roster for Canada back in February and relegated to an honorable mention slot in the recently projected Canadian Olympic roster by NHL writers, few players in recent years have looked so good at Evolving Hockey and looked so mediocre at [points at everyone else]. And this isn’t just a defenseman-shooting-percentage thing either – he’s a Model Monster. Over the last three season, he ranks in 5th in our xGAR all-strengths rate component while maintaining positive numbers in all components in our xGAR model. Recent news may indicate the Oilers are close to a deal here but especially given the difficulty in finding valuable top-pairing defensemen, this is the kind of player any team should lock up for full-term.
Dylan Samberg may have flown under the radar for anyone outside of Winnipeg (at least in my estimation), but it kind of makes sense considering he is turning into one of the better defensive defensemen in the league by our models. From a rates standpoint, his 0.273 xEVD/60 is 9th over the past 3 seasons among defensemen (minimum 1500 EV TOI, 229 players). On top of that, he put up some solid EVO results per our xGAR model last season (mostly driven by his impact on shot rates for). His point totals do not indicate it at all, but Winnipeg signing him to our most likely projection – 4 x $4.5M – would be a fantastic contract for the Jets based on our GAR, xGAR, and RAPM models. I highly recommend they do this as quickly as possible.
And now we come to one of the most rumored RFA trade targets of the past several months: Marco Rossi. If the Wild are floating his name to sway contract negotiations in their favor, fine, whatever. But if they actually want to trade him?? Big bummer (and I say this as a former die-hard Wild fan). Marco Rossi is a very interesting player that is likely being undervalued due to his size (an obsession with big players seems to be coming back again). He also had a very serious case of COVID and only played a total of 21 games from 2021-2023. Rossi has been put in all kinds of different roles and placed with all types of different teammates during his tenure with the Wild – most famously during the first round of the 24-25 playoffs when they put 5′ 9″ Marco Rossi on the fourth line with 6′ 5″ Justin Brazeau & 6′ 2″ Yakov Trenin.
I have to admit, we both watch the Wild a lot and we both really like Rossi’s game… so, unlike all the other summaries, we’re not biased at all. However, I think our models support our position! That said, the Wild are probably gonna bridge him, put him in a less than ideal scenario for the next two years because he’s small, and then trade him for nothing. I’m just gonna post last year’s chart because I think it’s closer to the player he is than what the NHL views him as. Not biased at all.
Worst Value: All Contracts
And now, we move on to our last group. The players that fanbases in three years will despise, that GMs may be unknowingly fired over, and one or two that might make Evolving Hockey look bad. A few of these are perennial names among the stats community (Ceci, Rutta, Johnson), some have the widest disparity between their box score metrics and on-ice metrics we’ve ever seen (Granlund), and others just have an insanely high contract projection that is kind of breaking this evaluation (Marner). This is the group that every team should think very hard about, maybe even take a couple days after July 1st and see if another team doesn’t just sign them so they don’t have to. Or: make that move, give us that content, let us see just what a 8.5% cap increase in an extremely volatile market looks like. That might actually be more fun.
Wrapping Up
It’s going to be an exciting summer, regardless of how you define that word. With the continued increase in salary cap and recently announced contract structure changes, I feel we’re in for several more years of uncertainty and unpredictability. For most this makes for great entertainment and endless speculation, but for my poor child, the Evolving Hockey contract projection model, I fear for its life. Or… things might just be completely fine and we’ve been worried and anxious for no reason. Either way, I hope everyone enjoys the summer. We’ll be back at the end of it to evaluate everything. I hope.