Typically, July 1 involves a blizzard of activity as free agency officially opens in the NHL. But this year, I came away wondering what exactly had just happened.

A lot of contracts had been signed, sure, but many of the players signing the most important pacts did so with teams they already played for.

Florida locked up Sam Bennett, Brad Marchand and Aaron Ekblad in late June, taking three of the biggest names off the market before they even got fitted with barcodes.

The Canucks had to wait until July 1 to re-sign Brock Boeser, but the impact was the same. In Boeser, one of the most tantalizing scorers hypothetically available suddenly wasn’t on the market anymore. They also took the chance to lock up Thatcher Demko and Conor Garland, who were set to be 2026 UFAs, the same day.

And not that many teams had a legitimate shot at Mitch Marner in the first place, but Toronto and Vegas killed any glimmer of that dream with a June 30 sign-and-trade that made the gifted winger a Golden Knight for the next eight campaigns.

So, overall, this summer was a bit of a dud.

But next summer, you have an all-world team of UFAs: Connor McDavid, Kirill Kaprizov, Jack Eichel, Kyle Connor, Artemi Panarin and Alex Ovechkin, just to name a few. Simply put, the 2026 UFA class could upend the entire NHL…

But will it?

Probably not. Because the fact of the matter is, almost all those players will re-sign with their respective teams before July 1. Heck, by the time you read this, someone could already be off the market.

The reasons for this are myriad. Most of those players already work for Stanley Cup contenders. Ovechkin, the oldest of the bunch, has played his entire NHL career for the Washington Capitals. And with ‘Ovi’ having won a championship while also becoming the all-time goal-scoring king, he has no real reason to leave. I would assume the only other jersey Ovechkin would ever wear belongs to Dynamo Moscow in the KHL, should he fancy a post-NHL swan song.

There’s another reason we may not see as much movement in the future as we have in the past, however: the rising salary cap. Simply put, teams won’t be as squeezed as they have been in the past. The pandemic forced a lot of teams to make difficult roster decisions when the cap went flat – just ask the Toronto Maple Leafs.

But now, we have forecasts from the NHL for the next three seasons, and they are very rosy. We’re talking a cap of $95.5 million for this year, jumping up to $113.5 million by 2027-28. The lower limit for that season is projected at $83.9 million, which is $400,000 higher than the cap was in 2023-24. Gordie Howe couldn’t give you that much elbow room.

This is all very exciting if you’re a fan of the Edmonton Oilers, where McDavid is king and Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard are already locked up. But it is not so exciting for teams bereft of superstars.

If this is the new normal, then we may be entering an era in which free agency is kinda dead.

What this would mean is that teams who currently don’t have a winning roster will have to draft and develop like never before. Sure, you can trade your way to a Marner or a Mikko Rantanen, but players of that caliber tend to have a major say over where they can be dealt.

So, what we are left with is a ground-up approach, where scouting and player development will be key. When every team can spend enough to keep its top-end talent, the real winners will be those franchises getting the most out of the assets they already have while putting themselves in a position to add those final pieces of the puzzle by having futures other teams crave.

And once you have that foundation, you’d better make sure the supports are there – because players can still demand a trade if the path to glory isn’t clear.

GMs will be able retain players like never before in the cap era, but they still must build an environment in which players want to play. That will distinguish the winners from the losers.

This article appeared in our 2025 Meet the New Guys issue. The cover story for this issue features the newest Vegas Golden Knight, Mitch Marner, as he looks to shine in the desert. We also include features on new Jets forward Jonathan Toews, Canadiens D-man Noah Dobson and more. In addition, we take a look at the top 'new guys' from each NHL division.

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