There was a lot of movement and signings made the day before free agency so let's get to it.

There was a lot of movement and signings made the day before free agency so let's get to it.

The big news of the day was that the rumoured sign-and-trade between Toronto and Vegas involving Mitch Marner came to fruition. Going back to Toronto is Nicolas Roy with Marner then signing an eight-year contract with a $12M AAV cap hit. Brennan has the breakdown here.

I want to take the time to write up some thoughts on this because it is a seismic change in the fantasy hockey landscape. Not only for Marner, but for Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Tomas Hertl, and Mark Stone (among others). I will have full thoughts on this in Thursday's Ramblings.

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Dobber wrote his thoughts on Vladimir Tarasenko being traded to Minnesota. Maybe he has a rebound year, but he's going to be 34 years old in December and is going to a team with Mats Zuccarello, Matt Boldy, and Kirill Kaprizov. If he doesn't take the fourth wing spot in the top-6, he has no fantasy value, and relying on a 34-year-old to lock down one specific position for an entire season is unreasonable.

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Matias Maccelli was traded by Utah to Toronto. Brennan offered his thoughts on the deal here.

Personally, I think Maccelli has all the tools necessary to be one of the top playmakers in the league. He had the same 5-on-5 assist rate from 2022-2024 as Robert Thomas and was higher than Jesper Bratt and Kevin Fiala. Then he had one down year and now he's gone. With Mitch Marner moving on to Vegas, there is a need for a genuine playmaker in Toronto's top-6 forward mix and Maccelli can be exactly that. It all depends where he lines up, but this is a player who could have a big bounceback year playing with the likes of Auston Matthews or William Nylander.  

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Florida made their signings as both Aaron Ekblad and Brad Marchand signed extensions with the team. The former for eight years at $6.1M, which is a steep discount, and the latter for six years at over $5M AAV. While the AAV for Ekblad is great, Marchand getting a six-year deal at 37 years old is kind of funny. It's just a matter of when he becomes the newest resident of Robidas Island.

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Speaking of islands, the New York Islanders extended Alex Romanov for five years with an AAV of $6.25M. Romanov turns 26 years old in January and has had three straight seasons of at least 20 points and 300 combined hits and blocks. Do I hear four straight seasons?

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Another defenceman is staying put as Ivan Provorov signs the latest Darnell Nurse special by getting a seven-year deal at $8.5M a season. I mean, whatever.

Provorov has settled into being a 30-point guy who doesn't shoot or hit much. In any kind of salary cap fantasy league, this extension gets him shuttled to the waiver wire with great haste.

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Sam Malinski signed a one-year extension with Colorado worth $1.4M. His fantasy value is going to be sparse despite the team he plays for just because there are so many defencemen ahead of him on the depth chart, but this walks him right to free agency so anyone rebuilding their dynasty teams might want to check in now. His current owner might not want to deal with the raise combined with his bottom-pair status.

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Today is the last day on the 2024-25 NHL calendar, or the first day of the 2025-26 NHL calendar. However we look at it, free agent frenzy starts later today, and it's one of the biggest days of the season. As we always do, the crew here at Dobber Hockey will have the fantasy impact of the big free agent signings as they happen. Though given all the movement and signings yesterday, maybe it's a slow day.

Before today's action kicks off, I want to give some thoughts on recent signings teams made of their own free agents, whether restricted or unrestricted. Player data from Evolving Hockey or Frozen Tools unless otherwise indicated. Contract data from PuckPedia.

Matthew Knies (W – Toronto Maple Leafs)

Toronto took the potential of an offer sheet off the table by signing Knies to a six-year extension with an AAV of $7.75M. The soon-to-be 23-year-old winger is coming off a breakout season with 29 goals, 29 assists, and 182 shots.

Knies has all the hallmarks of the bruising, scoring winger that the Leafs haven't really had in the last decade. He is still approaching his prime, so things will only get better, but for now, it's worth pointing out that his 5-on-5 production rates declined a fair bit over the last two seasons when he didn't have Mitch Marner on the ice (from Natural Stat Trick):  

To put those drops into perspective, it's like going from William Nylander-like production to Jake Neighbours-like production. That is all on a 60-minute rate, and with Marner gone Knies is assured top line/top PP minutes for the whole season, so a drop in efficiency could be partially mitigated by another jump in ice time. It is just worth keeping in mind that with Marner gone, Knies needs Auston Matthews to stay healthy to keep his fantasy value rising. 

Morgan Geekie (W – Boston Bruins)

Great for Morgan Geekie going from a bottom-6 forward to a six-year deal with a $5.5M AAV. He has worked himself from a borderline NHLer to a regular who should be set for life.

With that said, it should be extremely concerning that he shot 22% last season considering his three-year average was 10.7% and he shot 13.1% in his first year with the Bruins. Shooting just 15%, which would still have easily been a career-high mark, is the difference between a 23-goal season and a 33-goal season. 

The good news is the additional ice time. Through his first 20 games last season, Geekie skated around 14:09 per game. From that point onward, he averaged just under 18 minutes a game. Going from depth forward to top line/top PP option (especially after Brad Marchand was traded) will help offset that incoming shooting percentage decline.

Given his role and line mates, Geekie should be seen as a 20-goal, 50-point, triple-digit-hits option. The question is if he can consistently be more than that as he was last year. That is still very much up in the air.

Claude Giroux (C – Ottawa Senators)

One thing that usually declines for forwards as they age is shooting percentage. While Giroux is a guy who had a lot of low-percentage seasons, he did average 13.4% from 2020-2023 between Philadelphia, Florida, and Ottawa. However, he shot 11.5% in 2023-24 and was down to 10.9% in 2024-25. Add that with a declining role and dropping shot rate, and Giroux's fantasy profile is really on the downswing here.

That downswing has been pronounced over the last couple of years beyond just shooting percentage. All of Giroux's rates of goals, assists, shots, shot attempts (iCF), and expected goals have declined each of the past two years:

Maybe Giroux has one last impactful fantasy season in him; one year where the shooting percentage spikes again, Ottawa's 5-on-5 scoring improves, and he maintains his ice time rates. He will be cheap enough in fantasy drafts to find out, but for a guy that turns 38 years old in January, it seems like a longshot.

Jack Quinn (W – Buffalo Sabres)

JJ Peterka is gone from the team, so there is a chance for Quinn to really establish himself as a top-6 scoring winger this season. With his Achilles injury costing him most of the 2023-24 season, and then having a poor 2024-25 season, it's easy to forget that Quinn was very, very productive to start his career. In fact, of all forwards to play at least 100 games between 2022-2024, here are the two players who compare to Quinn by rate of goals, assists, and shots at 5-on-5:

Beyond just the production, the offensive play-driving numbers were good (borderline first-line rate). There were defensive issues, but the same could be said about many Sabres forwards in that time, and many young players in general.

That all fell apart in 2024-25. The production cratered and the play-driving numbers with it. What saved his season, to a degree, was the power play, as he managed 13 power-play points in 74 games (he had nine power-play points in 102 games across the prior two seasons). With a spot open on the top PP unit thanks to the Peterka trade, Quinn may get some more PP time. The question is whether they keep using Jason Zucker in that role or turn it over to Quinn.

Here again, in case you missed it last week, Dobber’s thoughts on Quinn:

One of my tenets of analysis is that if a player shows well over multiple seasons as Quinn did, and then has a bad year, I'm more inclined to believe the multi-year sample is representative of the player rather than the downturn. Quinn signed a two-year bridge deal, so he'll have two years to prove he's the player he was up until the 2024-25 season. I think he is.

Joel Hofer (G – St. Louis Blues)

Things change fast in nearly any goaltending situation. In the last couple years alone, we saw Darcy Kuemper go from awful in Washington to Vezina-calibre in Los Angeles in the span of months, we saw Joey Daccord go from career minor-leaguer to Seattle's starter, we had a potential three-goalie situation in Minnesota turn into Filip Gustavsson having a fringe top-5 fantasy season, and Boston having one of the best goaltending tandems in recent memory to poor team goaltending in 2024-25. What is true today could be very different from what's true in six months. Goalies are voodoo.

With all that said, it's notable that St. Louis's Jordan Binnington has seen his starts decline each of the past two seasons, if marginally, going from 60 in 2022-23 to 54 this past season. A big part of that is the emergence of Hofer, who was fine in limited action in 2022-23, very good in his 27 starts in 2023-24, and solid again across 28 starts in 2024-25. While he hasn't been able to grab the reigns as a starter, Binnington's start totals have been clawed back and Hofer's have been increasing.

As of today, July 1^st, I would still pencil in Binnington for at least 50, if not 55 starts. He will be the starter in St. Louis when the regular season rolls around. However, if Hofer can be closer to what he was in 2023-24 than he was in 2024-25, it might claw even more starts from Binnington and maybe brings this situation closer to a 1A/1B situation. The downside is that Hofer's new contract is only for two years, and Binnington has two years left himself. Unless the latter collapses, the former won't be a regular starter anytime soon. That doesn't mean his fantasy value isn't increasing, though.

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