The 2026 free agent draft class was looking to be a monster, but Kirill Kaprizov signed his mammoth deal a week ago, Connor McDavid signed a two-year extension a few days ago, and now the Winnipeg Jets have extended Kyle Connor for eight more years at $12-million per season, as reported by Darren Dreger. Connor is about to enter his age-29 season, his ninth full year (10th overall) with the Jets. This extension carries him from age-30 through age-37, and he is 13th in goals and 17th in points over the last four seasons.

Kaprizov signed that mega-deal and McDavid signed his team-friendly two-year extension, so those are more outliers than this Connor contract is. That sets a barometer of what to expect (if a little less) for other top free agent wingers like Alex Tuch, Adrian Kempe, and Martin Necas. Presumably, with Artemi Panarin turning 34 years old soon, his contract will look different than these other wingers.

In cap leagues, it’ll be up to managers to decide if they want to hang onto Connor. He is a great point producer with a high shot rate, but he has 89 blocks and 78 hits over his last 229 regular season games. In multi-cat leagues, he’s a drag in non-shooting peripheral categories, so whether being a fringe top-10 producer is enough to stomach what is going to be a top-10 cap hit in the league is up to the individual. It seems steep to me, but that also depends on the format and whether the rest of the roster has undervalued/underpaid options.

This is how the Jets announced the extension:

That’s not bad.

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Speaking of extensions, Dreger also reported that the Vegas Golden Knights have extended Jack Eichel for eight more years with an average annual value of $13.5-million. That takes another free agent off the board for next summer and will carry Eichel through his age-37 season. It sure seems as if he’ll retired a Golden Knight.

Like Connor, cap league participants will have a decision ahead of them on Eichel. This will make him a top-10 player by AAV next season, and he also doesn’t hit or block very much. He also plays centre, which is a very deep position, unlike Connor’s left-wing status.  

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Mattias Ekholm signed a three-year extension himself, carrying an AAV of $4M per season. That will carry him through his age-38 season. At that cap hit, if he can keep doing anything close to what he did last year – half-point per game, over two shots per game, about 1.5 blocks per game – he’s going to be a great value in multi-cat salary cap leagues. At his age, though, that’s always a big ‘if’.

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According to Heather Engel, both Zach Benson and Owen Power were skating in practice, and in the lineup with normal jerseys, on Wednesday. That seems as good an indication as any that both will be in the lineup on Thursday, with Benson on the top line alongside Josh Norris and Tage Thompson while Power skates on the second pair.

While at New Jersey’s practice, Amanda Stein said that the Devils were showing Luke Hughes on the top power play with the stars while Dougie Hamilton was slotted on the second power-play unit. It will be interesting to see how often Hughes and Hamilton switch power play units through the season.

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There is a bit more on the Blackhawks below, but reporting from Chicago’s skate on Wednesday, Ben Pope tweeted that Colton Dach had joined the top line with Connor Bedard and Andre Burakovsky while Ryan Donato was down on the third line with Jason Dickinson and Ilya Mikheyev. That sure didn’t take long.

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Nashville confirmed that Brady Martin is indeed going to be in the lineup for their game at home to Columbus on Thursday night. We will see how many games he lasts, but we can’t say he’s not being put in the best possible position to succeed right away.

Using the Frozen Tools Schedule Planner, Nashville is 1 of 11 teams with six games between today and October 19th (the end of next weekend). That is good, but they also don’t have a single game on a day with fewer than eight games, and five of their six games are on days with at least 10 games, so it’ll be hard for those in shallow leagues to fit him into lineups in the short-term.

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Ryan Strome is injured for the short term:

This is good news for Beckett Sennecke, who will be moved into the middle-6 for the first couple games of the season. It gives him a chance to show he can stay all season rather than opening the year on the fourth line, as had been initially planned. Anaheim opens their season Thursday night in Seattle.

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I just wanted to give a few thoughts on the first night of games that saw Chicago in Florida, Pittsburgh in New York, and Colorado in Los Angeles.

First, I watched the entire Chicago/Florida game, and I think two things are true about Frank Nazar: he is going to have a good surface stats season, but the underlying numbers won’t be pretty. I say that now to pre-empt the ‘but his analytics’ arguments we’re undoubtedly going to see. Chicago just doesn’t have the forward or defensive depth to keep pace with teams from the top half of the league, and it’s going to lead to a lot of games like Tuesday night where they look over-matched basically from start to finish. I have him projected for a 20-plus-goal, 50-point season with over two shots per game, and this tilt was a good start on that front. With that said, Tuesday night showed us that the growing pains the Blackhawks will go through for 2-3 more years will be numerous, and that will make their top-end players look bad on some nights.  

I watched less of Pittsburgh/New York because it coincided with the Toronto Blue Jays game (mistake on my part) but that was a game that says more about the Rangers than the Penguins. Vladislav Gavrikov is a nice addition to the blue line, but there still isn’t good depth there, and four of the team’s top-5 forwards by ice time were Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, Mika Zibanejad, and J.T. Miller. Panarin turns 34 years old in a few weeks, Trocheck and Zibanejad are 32 years old, and Miller turns 33 years old in March. The first game of the season isn’t indicative of what will happen over the next 81 games, but it’s conceivable that a team with bad defensive depth and is heavily reliant on several 32-plus-year-old forwards won’t be very good.

The big concern for Los Angeles was how Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin would fare as replacements for Gavrikov and Jordan Spence. Well, the Kings were outscored 2-0 and outshot 8-2 at 5-on-5 (per Natural Stat Trick) with that pair on the ice. In the good-news department: Brandt Clarke led the team in 5-on-5 ice time, wasn’t on the ice for a goal against, and the Kings outshot the Avalanche 7-6 in those minutes. If Ceci and Dumoulin don’t show that they can be significantly better than they were on Tuesday night, the Kings will need a true star breakout performance from Clarke this season. A positive step forward on that front, at least.  

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The Toronto Maple Leafs opened their 2025-26 season with a 5-2 win at home over Montreal. It was a tight 2-2 game halfway through the third period before a broken stick led to an odd-man rush for Toronto, and Morgan Rielly popped his first goal of the year to lift the Leafs to a 3-2 lead. Auston Matthews poked home an empty-net goal to seal the game 4-2, while William Nylander added another empty-netter with 15 seconds left.

Rielly finished the game with a goal, an assist, five shots, two blocks, and a hit. The Leafs are going to need a big year from him, and he got his fantasy managers off to a great start.

Nylander had a goal, two assists, and two PIMs in the win.

Calle Jarnkrok and Bobby McMann had the other goals for Toronto as goaltender Anthony Stolarz stopped 28 of 30 shots for his first victory of the campaign.

Oliver Kapanen scored short-handed for his first career NHL goal and Zachary Bolduc tallied his first marker in a Montreal uniform. Bolduc had three shots and two hits in 13:19 of ice time.

Sam Montembeault allowed three goals on 26 shots for the loss.

Montreal is back in action Thursday night in Detroit while Toronto is off until Saturday.

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Boston went into Washington and skated out with a 3-1 win on Wednesday night. David Pastrnak had a goal and two assists while Elias Lindholm and Morgan Geekie each had a goal and an assist. Pastrnak, Lindholm, and Pavel Zacha all figured in on a third-period power-play goal, which held up as the winner. The top line did all the damage for the Bruins, which feels like is going to be a common refrain from them this season.

Nikita Zadorov had an assist, a shot, three blocks, and three hits in a solid multi-cat night, while goalie Jeremy Swayman stopped 35 of 36 shots for the win. That is the seventh time in Swayman’s last 27 games that he’s had to make at least 35 saves.

Tom Wilson scored Washington’s lone goal while Jakob Chychrun had an assist, four shots, and a hit in the loss.

Logan Thompson allowed two goals on 20 shots for the Capitals.

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Calgary staged an incredible comeback on Wednesday night as they fell behind the Oilers 3-0 in the first half of the game. The Oilers got goals from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (PP), Andrew Mangiapane, and Leon Draisaitl (PP) to take a 3-0 lead. However, Matvei Gridin scored his first for the Flames and Connor Zary made it a 3-2 game before the end of the second period. Blake Coleman scored early in the third period to bring the Flames all the way back, and then took the two points in the eighth round of a shootout.

Gridin had the goal on five shots and a block in 15:25 of ice time, but he had 13:46 of even-strength ice time. That was more than names like Matt Coronato, Morgan Frost, and Zary, among others. A good start to his NHL career.

Dustin Wolf was very good in net for the Flames, stopping 32 of 35 shots in regular play plus seven of eight shots in the shootout.

RNH finished with a goal (PP), two assists (one PP), three shots, and two PIMs as Draisaitl posted a goal (PP), an assist (PP), six shots, and a hit.

Jake Walman was out of the lineup for this game but it doesn’t seem as if it’ll be a long-term thing.

Stuart Skinner allowed three goals on 22 shots for the loss.

Adam Klapka had an assist on the Zary goal but he was benched basically for the final 10 minutes of the third period and overtime. He took two penalties about 20 minutes apart, and one led to an Oilers goal. It is a quick way to get himself in the doghouse, so let’s keep an eye on Flames lines for their game tonight in Vancouver.

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The last game on the night also went to a shootout, and in similar fashion as the Los Angeles Kings got out to a 2-0 lead in Vegas on Wednesday night. Then Vegas scored five of the next six goals to make it a 5-3 game before a pair of late third-period goals from Los Angeles made it a 5-5 overtime context. The Kings took the extra point in the shootout.

Pavel Dorofeyev has the NHL’s first hat trick of the season, scoring an even-strength goals and then a pair of power-play tallies. He finished with five shots and a block in a great debut performance.

Jack Eichel also had a huge offensive game with a goal, three assists (two on the PP), five shots, and a hit. The Vegas power play went 2-for-6 in this game as Dorofeyev pushed Shea Theodore to the second PP unit. Pour one out for all the Theodore fantasy managers out there.

Ivan Barbashev (one goal, one assist), Mitch Marner, (two assists), and Mark Stone (two PP assists) all had multi-point nights.

Quinton Byfield had a goal, an assist, three shots, a block, two PIMs, and a hit in the loss. Andrei Kuzmenko had a PP goal, an assist, two shots, and two hits.

Jeff Malott, Trevor Moore, and Brandt Clarke all scored for the Kings as goaltender Anton Forsberg allowed five goals on 35 shots for the win.

Adin Hill allowed five goals on 26 shots and took the shootout loss.