2025 Free Agency Analysis

BY: SUFYAN JAWED 

July 2nd, 2025

This article will examine the major signings that have taken place the last week or so, both new signings and extensions. A grade will be assessed based on the team fit and the contract itself. Free agency is generally a time of extremely gaudy contracts where fans are often alarmed at the cash given out. This year the extension phase seemed to be a lot more prominent the first day of free agency and there was certainly some questionable contracts given out but also some value contracts. Due to the cap ceiling going up considerably over the next few years teams seem to be more willing to shift the standard floor for contracts so some of these numbers look a lot worse than they actually are.  

Mitch Marner was one the most coveted free agents in recent memory so it's not all that surprising that Vegas sent their fairly reliable 3rd line centre in Nicolas Roy to not only avoid the dogfight that would've occurred if he went to the open market, but attaining his rights also allowed them add that extra year to the contract. 

Marner is a superstar, and is widely perceived to be one of the best wingers in the NHL. However, like the leafs team as a whole the playoff performances have been abysmal. You don't really have to dig deep to find the drop in play as his career regular season P/PG is 1.13, while his career playoffs P/PG is 0.9. Thats the biggest caveat with this deal as it remains to be seen whether the issue was Marner or just the fact he was on a consistently bad playoff team in the Leafs. Marner definitely fails to assert himself offensively in the playoffs but I suspect that will change on the Golden Knights as they have built a winning culture since they entered the league, that along with the change of scenery should give Marner plenty of motivation to translate his regular season play to the playoffs. People forget that he has won in his career, albeit in junior when he led the London Knights to the memorial cup. He also played a large part of the Canadian 4 Nations team, scoring a clutch overtime winner in the round robin. 

Isolating Marner from that playoff rhetoric, we see a pretty complete offensive profile as seen on the chart provided by @JFreshhockey. Marner's stick handling and playmaking have always been his primary assets and he has proven he can drive a line. He's also got a Selke vote every year since 2018, and was a finalist for the award in 2022-2023, largely due to the fact that he has become a reliable penalty killer, especially in recent years. 

Attributing a grade is far from difficult in this case, as Marner would be a fit on virtually any team and his AAV falls in to a similar place to other NHL superstars. 100 point players don't grow on trees and playoff hiccups aside, this is effectively a fool-proof contract for the Golden Knights.

Grade: A+