The NHL salary cap just jumped to $104 million for 2026-27, an $8.5 million increase that makes it the biggest single-season leap since 2007-08 — and I cannot believe what is about to happen to the next four days of my life. Bad front offices are going to spend money with the confidence of people who have never read a spreadsheet. Good teams already locked up their real needs in February. Everyone else is going to hold a press conference.

I’ve spent enough time studying how institutions allocate resources to recognize this grift on sight. The cap jump didn’t create options. It created the illusion of options, which is where bad franchises go to die. The teams that actually get better on July 1 are the ones who knew what they needed in February. The ones that get destroyed signed the flashy name to fill the press conference, then spent five years paying for it. So here are the five NHL free agency 2026 moves that will actually matter when this is all over.

Move 5 is quiet and it’s supposed to be. Rasmus Andersson, 29, is the best right-shot defenseman on the open market, and Vegas reportedly has a handshake deal around $8.5M AAV. If that closes Tuesday, the Golden Knights just quietly removed the best blue-line option from every team that needed blue-line help. That’s how real contenders operate. They don’t win free agency. They eliminate everyone else’s option.

Move 4 is the quiet one that Carolina just executed before the market even opened. The Hurricanes acquired John Carlson’s negotiating rights from Anaheim on Saturday. Carlson is 36, a two-time All-Star who put up 14 goals and 46 assists in 71 games this past season, and Carolina just locked down a veteran offensive defenseman before he touched the open market. Elliotte Friedman had most people thinking Tampa was the destination. Carolina didn’t care what Friedman thought. That’s how real contenders operate: they don’t let the prediction market shape their decisions. They just make the move.

Move 3 is the one everyone is going to spend the most time arguing about on the internet: Jason Robertson, 26, RFA with arbitration rights, and Dallas and his camp are $1.5-2M apart per year. The Stars are at $12-12.5M. Robertson wants $14M, which is what his agent Andy Scott got for Draisaitl in Edmonton. Reports have Dallas shopping his rights with multiple teams poking around. Whoever acquires those rights and locks Robertson long-term wins this negotiation and probably the next three seasons of their Western Conference bracket. The price will be severe. It will probably be worth it.

Move 2 is the one that actually changes the offseason. If you get Connor Hellebuyck, you won before it started. He’s 33, he just won Olympic gold with Team USA, he has a Vezina, and his contract runs at $8.5M AAV with five years remaining. At that cap hit. With a full no-movement clause, which means he dictates where he goes, and per Pierre LeBrun, he’s told the Jets he’d be open to a trade. Florida has had “a number of conversations” with Winnipeg per LeBrun, though LeBrun also said he has “a hard time coming up with a package that Florida could entice Winnipeg with.” Buffalo talked to the Jets at the draft. The Hurricanes, Leafs, and Devils are all circling. The Hellebuyck trade, when Winnipeg eventually executes it, ends the need to even glance at the UFA goalie market. He’s the only move on this list that changes a franchise’s ceiling for half a decade. Teams that get him don’t have to think about goaltending until 2031. Teams that don’t are about to think about it constantly.

Move 1 is Sergei Bobrovsky, and it is not a signal. It is a catastrophe waiting for a team to volunteer.

Bobrovsky is 37 years old. He will be 38 before next season begins. He just posted a .877 save percentage, his worst professional season, and ranked 97th out of 98 qualified goalies in goals saved above average at minus-23.4. He was, in measurable statistical terms, almost the worst starting goalie in the league last year. He is seeking a contract worth approximately $42 million over six or seven years. A 37-year-old goalie, coming off the worst statistical year of his career, wants a deal that runs to his age-43 or age-44 season. That is insane. That is genuinely, unambiguously insane, and some GM is going to do it anyway because that’s what GMs do when you give them a pile of cap space and a press conference to fill. The ask alone should disqualify every executive who takes the meeting seriously. It won’t, because these people get paid to sit in rooms and nod, and nobody ever got fired for taking a meeting with a former Vezina winner, even a former Vezina winner who just posted a save percentage that would embarrass a backup on a bad team. The job title is General Manager, not “person who reads the underlying numbers and says hell no.” The Panthers, who already paid him $70 million over seven years on his last contract, are reportedly “not close” to meeting his ask.

At the trade deadline this past season, Florida tried to move Bobrovsky to Carolina and asked for a first-round pick. Carolina GM Eric Tulsky declined. Per LeBrun: “Eric Tulsky was vindicated in the end.” Vindicated is doing a lot of work in that sentence, considering Carolina’s goaltending last spring powered a Stanley Cup run nobody was watching. Tulsky looked at a declining 37-year-old seeking generational money and said no thank you, and his team went to the Cup Final. The Maple Leafs reportedly have Bobrovsky “high” on their list. Of course they do.

I say this as someone who has watched what a real salary cap fight looks like: there is no functional difference between a team that signs Bobrovsky to $42 million over seven years in 2026 and a team that simply decides to be bad until 2033. The outcomes are identical. The press conference is better for the first one.

There’s one more name that’s going to generate a lot of noise this week: Alex Ovechkin, who hasn’t signed his extension yet. Pierre LeBrun made clear where that stands going into July 1.

https://twitter.com/PierreVLeBrun/status/2069843346147721331

Chicago has $43 million in projected cap space, roughly 41% of the total ceiling. They are the most dangerous team at this open, which is another way of saying they are going to do something really stupid on Tuesday and feel great about it. They will spend every dollar. Most of it will be gone by Wednesday. None of it will matter, because that’s what happens when a rebuilding team mistakes cap room for a plan. The Blackhawks aren’t one Bobrovsky signing away from anything except a worse cap situation and a longer rebuild. Spend the $43 million. Go ahead. See what happens. The NHL’s $104 million era is here, and most of the teams with money to burn are going to prove exactly what they’ve always been: organizations that are very good at announcing things and very bad at everything else. The signal is Hellebuyck. The noise is everything else, and the noise always wins the week.