How will the NHL’s unusually cash-rich, talent-poor free agency change the league?

As the two sides prepare for contractual battle when free agency opens on Wednesday at noon, NHL executives and player agents are surveying the landscape and trying to get a handle on where the day will take them.

In an unprecedented offseason — with most teams flush with cash and the unrestricted free agent class as weak as it has ever been — it certainly feels like some things are about to get broken. Longstanding salary norms, for one.

Already, depth players such as Beck Malenstyn are cashing in, as the fourth-line winger who had seven goals in 11 minutes of ice time a game last season received a handsome six-year, $17.5 million deal from the Buffalo Sabres on the weekend. Elsewhere, Jack Drury, a 26-year-old depth center who was just acquired by the Nashville Predators, landed a five-year deal for $22.5 million — more term and dollars than someone with 30 career goals would have typically garnered in the NHL’s boring ol’ flat-cap environment between 2018 and 2024.

With the salary cap rising to a record high of $104 million — an 18.2 percent jump over the past two years — it has injected $512 million in new money into the system league-wide, a historic shift that is only just beginning. With that in mind, I remarked to one high-profile agent (who doesn’t represent either of the above players) that it felt like 2026 would be a great year to be an agent in the NHL.

“Better year to be an average player,” the agent shot back.

Other agents, meanwhile, lamented they didn’t have many clients going to free agency, meaning they would have to sit out what should be one of the stranger July 1s the NHL has witnessed.

On the team side, general managers are trying to ensure they don’t end up on the wrong end of this weird game of reverse musical chairs, where the losers will be left with a big bag of cap space and nothing of value to spend it on. For many, trying to find talent in free agency appears to be an undesirable backup option, which explains why the trade market has been overheated of late.

That could continue into the summer, as players signed to reasonable contracts — even if you have to squint to make them so — are suddenly the NHL’s most valuable asset class of all. Even bad deals have become far more movable in this environment, as evidenced by the Canadiens sending Brendan Gallagher (albeit at half his $6.5 million salary) home to Vancouver and the Hurricanes deciding not to buy out Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s $4.82 million AAV deal despite Kotkaniemi not playing a minute for them during the Stanley Cup run.

Anything, in this new world, can be traded — provided the other team isn’t on one of those pesky no-trade clauses. Adding real value, however, is something you’ll have to work for.

The cap escalating as fast as it has post-pandemic is only part of the story here. What’s also at work is that almost all of the NHL’s stars are locked in long term at what are now underwhelming dollars, leaving what we’ll charitably call the league’s middle class — bottom-six forwards and depth defensemen — to benefit from the roughly $400 million that’s still out there to be spent.

Most of the big names still without contracts are restricted free agents, younger players who are under team control, and as a result those negotiations could prove difficult in the months to come. Dallas’ Jason Robertson, for one, just turned down a deal worth approximately $15 million a season with the Seattle Kraken, effectively killing a sign-and-trade to Seattle.

The ever-contending Stars are one of the NHL’s few cap-strapped clubs right now and as such are likely unable to meet that kind of extreme asking price — a number that would hand Robertson, 17th in points per game the past five seasons, the second-highest AAV in the league behind the Minnesota Wild’s Kirill Kaprizov. If that is this league’s new economic topography, teams such as Dallas will need to find a way to adjust on the fly. That means shedding talent, to the delight of teams below them in the standings.

Other RFAs set to cash in include a handful of the league’s next guard of stars — Connor Bedard in Chicago, Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier in Anaheim, Adam Fantilli in Columbus and Simon Edvinsson in Detroit — but it’s not a terribly long list. What’s clear already is that all of their GMs need to be ready in case there is either an offer sheet or a prolonged holdout as the two sides try to redetermine what they’re now worth.

Especially given that worth is a moving target that will only shoot up after what’s sure to be some bad-contract carnage on Wednesday.

Even some RFAs further down the hierarchy in terms of experience and value — such as young defensemen Simon Nemec and Alexander Nikishin — are using this new world order to demand more than players of their ilk have ever received in the past. It’s forcing their GMs into tough decisions. The Devils dealt Nemec to Calgary last week for draft picks; the Hurricanes had Nikishin’s name out there in trade talks mere days after he helped them win a championship and was named to the NHL’s All-Rookie team.

It’s fair to ask what a good contract now looks like for one of the NHL’s full-blown superstars, if someone like Nemec can demand $8 million (or more) and Bowen Byram — who the Buffalo Sabres similarly offloaded to the Chicago Blackhawks last week — wants $12 million.

Is Quinn Hughes justified in becoming the league’s highest paid player ever, with an AAV north of Kaprizov’s $17 million? And if so, can the Wild possibly have two players earning that kind of money and still compete?

I’m not sure there’s a right answer at this point, not with how fast this is evolving.

Still, Minnesota’s is a better problem to have than a team such as Seattle, which is set to lose a few useful veterans to UFA and has more than $20 million still to spend on a roster that needs a lot of help to become a playoff club. If they continue to struggle to acquire a star, given many seem to have the Kraken on their NTCs, should they attempt to spend that money on lesser talent anyway, rather than sit out the frenzy? Or will that just lead to more Chandler Stephenson-like mistakes on the roster and not move the needle on the ice?

Other teams that have work to do to hit the $76.9 million salary floor include the San Jose Sharks, Pittsburgh Penguins and Anaheim Ducks, the latter of whom are set to lose three veteran right-shot defensemen (John Carlson, Jacob Trouba and Radko Gudas) with no obvious replacement incoming.

But many of the other teams with a lot of cap room right now are like Seattle in that they’re tired of losing and looking to get back to the playoffs. Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Winnipeg and Columbus, for example, can all theoretically take a big swing or two to try to move up the standings. But will they be able to find a trade partner willing to give up someone at a coveted position like a top-two center or top-pairing defenseman? Will anyone waive a no-trade to go where it’s cold, the taxes are higher and the team may miss the playoffs again? And will the acquisition cost be prohibitive in a climate where so many teams are trying to add, driving up the asking price?

There are a number of theories out there as to what all this will mean for the league going forward. One prevailing one is that more teams simply won’t spend to the cap anymore, either due to fiscal pressure from ownership to limit costs or because there’s more value in remaining flexible than spending on what little is available. (Or some combination of both.)

If that ends up being the case, expect all the activity in the trade market to continue throughout the summer — and possibly even into September. We could have more RFA holdouts asking for big money, who, like Robertson, end up on the market, and more teams that get desperate enough to fill holes by moving picks and prospects to improve their teams in the fall.

In the old world, July 1 was often an endpoint for remodeling your franchise, a day when you finished your roster off with a capstone piece or two after making trades in advance of the draft. In this rapidly evolving new one, that’s likely not going to be possible for a lot of teams, which could lead to an anxious offseason for some GMs as they try to adapt and find other ways to improve.

Our prediction is that this will make things most difficult for the retooling teams that haven’t already established their talent base, as top teams such as Carolina and Colorado aren’t going to be shedding their reasonably priced talent. We obviously don’t expect this weak free agent class to help crown any new contenders. But the trade market doesn’t seem as though it will swing the balance, either, as to date it appears to have mostly weakened middle powers, such as Ottawa (Brady Tkachuk), Anaheim (Mason McTavish, John Carlson, Olen Zellweger), Buffalo (Alex Tuch, Byram), Utah (JJ Peterka) and St. Louis (Jordan Kyrou) rather than maim the established contenders.

Some of those teams will be able to replace those players internally, with up-and-coming talent. Others will be lucky enough to pull off savvy trades to try to fill the void. But there will definitely be teams left wanting come the start of next season, as there just isn’t enough star power to go around.

That brings us back to Wednesday’s lackluster UFA class and what it all means. Here we’ll give the final word to our source at the top, the agent who predicts an incoming windfall for the “average” player.

“Never in the history of the NHL will so much money be spent on such little talent,” he said.