The salary cap jumped from $95.5 million to $104 million, the biggest single-year leap in a decade, and every team walked into July 1 with money to burn. The problem: there was almost nothing to burn it on. The 2026 unrestricted free agent class was thin at the top, so the real money never reached the open market at all - it went to extensions, as teams paid franchise prices to keep their own. What was left was a scramble for veterans and depth, and the smartest teams treated it exactly that way.
Here's who won the week, who overpaid, and why the Los Angeles Kings' quiet shopping list tells the story of the whole market.
The Biggest Contracts of the Summer Weren't Signings at All
The two richest deals of the period never touched free agency. Chicago handed 24-year-old defenceman Bowen Byram a six-year extension at $12.5 million a year - the largest AAV of the offseason - locking a top-pair blueliner into the core of its rebuild. New Jersey did the same with franchise centre Nico Hischier, five years at $11.7 million. In a summer where the open market offered mostly role players, the teams with real talent to protect spent their cap space protecting it. That is the lesson of a rising cap and a thin class: the premium is on keeping stars, not chasing them.
Who Actually Spent - and on What
With the marquee names off the board, the open market became a contest of veterans, term risk and fit. Three teams stood out. San Jose, the league's fastest-rising young team, kept spending to build a defence and a supporting cast around generational centre Macklin Celebrini - adding physical defenceman Jacob Trouba (four years, $8.25M) and 6-foot-5 winger Mason Marchment (five years, $7M). Toronto, reeling from its collapse and turning the page to the McKenna era, rebuilt a crease gutted by the Joseph Woll trade, signing two-time Vezina winner Sergei Bobrovsky (three years, $7M) plus depth scorer Jack Roslovic and defenceman Darren Raddysh. And Vegas simply kept what it had, re-signing top-four defenceman Rasmus Andersson to seven years at $8.5 million, below his projected market value.
| Player | Pos | Team | Terms | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bowen Byram | D | Chicago | 6 yr / $12.5M | Extension |
| Nico Hischier | C | New Jersey | 5 yr / $11.7M | Extension |
| Rasmus Andersson | D | Vegas | 7 yr / $8.5M | Re-sign |
| Darren Raddysh | D | Toronto | 8 yr / $8.5M | UFA |
| Jacob Trouba | D | San Jose | 4 yr / $8.25M | UFA |
| Sergei Bobrovsky | G | Toronto | 3 yr / $7.0M | UFA |
| Mason Marchment | LW | San Jose | 5 yr / $7.0M | UFA |
| Boone Jenner | C | Washington | 4 yr / $5.75M | UFA |
| Viktor Arvidsson | RW | Detroit | 2 yr / $5.0M | UFA |
| Oliver Bjorkstrand | RW | NY Rangers | 1 yr / $4.5M | UFA |
| Stuart Skinner | G | Winnipeg | 2 yr / $3.75M | UFA |
| Jaden Schwartz | LW | Colorado | 3 yr / $3.25M | UFA |
Eight Veterans, Eleven Million Dollars, and the Hole Nobody Filled
No team's July told the market's story better than Los Angeles. GM Ken Holland walked in with roughly $11 million in space and, instead of a single splash, came out with eight low-risk veterans on value deals: Mats Zuccarello (one year, $1M plus bonuses), Erik Haula (two years, $3.6M), a Scott Laughton extension (three years, $3.5M), Corey Perry back for another run, plus Erik Gustafsson, Scott Perunovich and Lane Pederson. Every one of them is a sensible, defensible contract. Together they make the Kings older, deeper and a little more experienced.
They also don't fix the thing that has cost Los Angeles five straight first-round exits. With Anze Kopitar retiring, the Kings needed a top-six centre, and they left free agency without one - Zuccarello, a 38-year-old winger, was the closest thing to a difference-maker they added. This is the strategy of a team hedging: buying floor, not ceiling, and hoping the internal group takes the step the veterans can't take for them. In a soft market, it's a reasonable bet. It is not a bet that wins a playoff round.
Grading Every Team That Mattered
The scale, as always: A won the week, B came out ahead, C is a wash, D lost it. In a thin market, the winners were the teams that found value and the ones that kept their own - not the ones who spent the most.
Best Value · Winnipeg & Colorado
Stuart Skinner on backup money and Jaden Schwartz at a hometown discount. In a thin market, the teams that won were the ones that paid depth prices for real players.
Biggest Ambition · San Jose
Trouba and Marchment on top of a Celebrini core. The Sharks are done rebuilding quietly - they're spending like a team that thinks its window is opening.
Most Term Risk · Toronto & Vegas
Bobrovsky at 38 on three years, Andersson to 36 on seven. Both fill needs now; both could ache later. The price of doing business in a shallow market.
Treading Water · Los Angeles
Eight sensible signings, and still no answer at centre with Kopitar gone. The Kings are deeper and older - but no closer to winning the round they can never win.
When There's Nothing to Buy, the Smart Money Keeps What It Has
The $104 million cap was supposed to unleash a spending frenzy. Instead it exposed how little was actually available. The two biggest contracts of the summer - Byram and Hischier - were extensions, teams paying to keep the stars they already had rather than bid on the ones they didn't. That's not a coincidence; it's the market telling you where the value was.
The open-market winners understood it. Winnipeg and Colorado paid depth money for useful players. San Jose spent big, but spent it building around a generational talent rather than papering over a flaw. And the cautionary tale was the team that did everything reasonably and still stood still: Los Angeles added eight veterans, subtracted a franchise centre to retirement, and enters next season exactly where it's been for a decade - good enough for the playoffs, not good enough to survive them.
The stars stayed home this summer. The teams that won free agency were the ones that already had something worth keeping.