In honor of free agency opening this week we are going to spend a little time looking at past signings. The focus is going to be a bit more historical, just to provide some context, though we will likely return to the player movement in a future article. Players who sign free agent deals over the summer are often buzzy names around draft day. They have been top-of-mind for folks, analysis is done to figure out their new positions, and at the end of the day we just spend more time talking about them. What do we know about players who move over the summer though? What can we expect from a player's first year? Today we are going to look back to last summer to try answering some of those questions.

Specifically, we are looking at point paces from players who signed free agent deals in the summer of 2025, their production in their 2024-25 season and then their production for their new teams in 2025-26. To put this together I pulled two Big Board Reports for those two different seasons, filtered for a list of free agent signings, and then compared the two samples. I filtered the sample to make it a little more relevant, essentially putting a 20-point pace minimum requirement which removed minors/swing player signings and depth skaters with fewer than 20 points, and in both samples a player needed to have played 20 games. Overall, we were left with a group of 40 skaters. For each skater I am looking at their point production, but also their deployment, so overall time on ice, and percent of the team's power play.

Right off the bat, of the 40 players who fit our criteria only eight saw an increase of more than five points and only five saw an increase of 10+ points. On the flip side, a full 20 players saw a decrease of more than five points, and 16 a decrease of more than 10 points. That means if anything like that percentage holds this year, if you are a free agent who played more than 20 games in 25-26 and have a 20-point pace or higher, there is a 40 percent chance you will drop by 10 points or more in 26-27 and only a 12 percent chance you will increase by 10 or more points.

It is worth breaking down the positive group a little (since there are so few of them) to see if we can learn anything. We are talking about Justin Brazeau, Christian Dvorak, Connor Brown, Philipp Kurashev, and Corey Perry. Justin Brazeau didn't see much change. He saw a little bit more ice time overall and about the same power-play deployment. The thing that was different was a crazy run of 12 points in his first 11 games. He settled into a 34-point pace for the rest of the season which, while still an improvement on his 24-25 season, is a lot less interesting. Christian Dvorak and Connor Brown are pretty clear cut. They saw increases of more than three minutes of overall time on ice, got to play those minutes with big names and jumped up about 30 percent of the team's power-play time. These are the guys that you are really hoping you are catching when grabbing a free agent on draft day. It is a sort of similar story with Perry, though he is boosted by a very unsustainable run to start his season as well. Kurashev did technically increase his time on ice a little bit, and did technically increase his point pace, but he shows up mostly because of how absolutely terrible he was in 24-25.

If we flip over to the players who dropped five points or more, we again are looking at 20 players. We won't go through them all, but some of the names include Tony DeAngelo, Jonathan Drouin, Matt Grzelcyk, Gustav Nyquist, and Andrew Mangiapane. One thing is very consistent with this group: lost ice time, as just one player managed to actually increase their time on ice. So, 19 of the 20 players saw losses of between about one minute to four and a half minutes. These are sizable losses for players who were mostly playing less than 17 minutes a night to begin with (though some of the D in the group had more time on ice). It is sort of a similar story on the power play: 11 players didn't see a change larger than 3 percent, but only one player actually saw an increase of over 10 percent (looking at you, James Van Riemsdyk). That leaves eight players who saw a pretty sizable loss (over 12 percent) of power-play time. In a lot of cases this was moving from the top power-play role on one team to the second unit on the new team. As should be no surprise, shot rates from this group also cratered. Only two players saw an increase in shot rate (and those increases were miniscule).

It seems clear that when a free agent is signed the biggest thing we need to know is where they are going to play. It is significantly more likely that those players are going to lose deployment, and for the ones that aren't there isn't always a way to tell prior. Christian Dvorak ended up playing with a resurgent Trevor Zegras and a rotation of wingers that sometimes included Travis Konency. During the preseason we certainly didn't know that A: Zegras would be worth playing with, and B: Dvorak would get time with Konecny. It is a similar story for Brown. Most of his value came in the 4th quarter when he got elevated to the top line and top power play with Jack Hughes. Who called that on draft day? For most of these players then it is less about drafting them and more about watching to see which get the opportunity.

What about the big names though? They move too. The 2025 off season didn't see too many of them move. The most productive players from 2024-25 to sign were Nikolaj Ehlers, Jonathan Drouin, and Mikael Granlund. Drouin and Granlund came with some significant warning signs. Drouin hadn't ever really produced outside of time with Nathan MacKinnon and was moving to a team without MacKinnon. Granlund seemed to have caught lightning in a bottle for a couple of years in San Jose after five season of reasonable, if unexciting, numbers and was moving to a crowded Anaheim team. Both fell off. Ganlund just a little, and Drouin massively. That leaves Ehlers as our biggest name who moved.

Ehlers essentially maintained his point pace by essentially maintaining everything else across the board. He saw a bit of an increase in time on ice but it isn't like Carolina is known for leaning on one or two guys so the ceiling there was always going to be capped. He did see over 60 percent of the power play for the second straight year after nine years of managers begging for him to get more opportunity. That was probably the biggest area of concern on a new team, given he only had one season of actual top power-play usage. Add to that essentially the same shot rates and shooting percentage, and he was able to repeat his strong 2024-25 season in Carolina.

Take away? Context clearly matters. For a big-name player there is some hope that their context will stay the same enough to maintain production, but for everyone else chances are things will be worse. They are still names to watch though as clearly a couple will see their fortunes improve and have the potential to break out.

That is all for this week.

Do your part to support organizations working to make hockey for everyone.

Professional Women's Hockey League

Hockey is For Everyone

Black Girl Hockey Club

Athletes for Hope