{"id":757215,"date":"2026-06-24T12:58:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T12:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757215\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T12:58:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T12:58:25","slug":"5-teams-that-need-to-spend-in-2026-nhl-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757215\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Teams That Need to Spend in 2026 NHL Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under general manager Mike Grier, the Sharks have spent the past four seasons rebuilding their roster. They made significant improvements in 2025-26, finishing only four points out of a wild-card berth in the Western Conference.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sharks have a roster loaded with young talent like forwards Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, and Michael Misa, defenseman Sam Dickinson, and goaltender Yaroslav Askarov. However, they must add some experienced depth to improve their chances of clinching a playoff spot next spring.<\/p>\n

Grier is expected to focus on bolstering his defense corps<\/a>. Veterans blueliners such as Mario Ferraro, Nick Leddy, John Klingberg, and Vincent Desharnais are UFA-eligible and not expected to return. That leaves the 34-year-old Dmitri Orlov as their only rearguard with significant NHL experience.<\/p>\n

With a projected $40.6 million in cap space for 2026-27<\/a>, the Sharks have 17 active roster players under contract. That gives Grier plenty of room to add one or two veteran defensemen if he chooses to go the UFA route.<\/p>\n

Grier already made one addition to his defense corps by acquiring<\/a> Michael Kesselring from the Buffalo Sabres. Options in the UFA market<\/a> could include Rasmus Andersson, Jacob Trouba, Ryan Shea, Logan Stanley, or Andrew Peeke.<\/p>\n

The offer sheet route isn’t available to the Sharks because they lack sufficient compensatory draft picks<\/a> for any signings below $11.939 million. It’s unlikely that Grier will attempt to go the extreme high-end route.<\/p>\n

Stats and standings via NHL.com<\/a>. Salary cap and lineup info via PuckPedia<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under general manager Mike Grier, the Sharks have spent the past four seasons rebuilding their roster. They made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-757215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}