As we approach the one-month mark of the 2024-25 season, we saw some activity pick up around the NHL with a couple of trades and a notable contract extension. Those are among the topics recapped in our key stories.
Scorers On The Shelf: Three teams lost key offensive contributors to injuries over the past few days. Edmonton will be without star center Connor McDavid for two to three weeks with an ankle injury. The defending Western Conference champs have been slow out of the gate against this season and missing a high-end scorer won’t help on that front. Meanwhile, Colorado will miss Ross Colton for six to eight weeks due to a broken foot. Not known as a key goal-getter (he only has reached 20 goals once before), Colton was off to a strong start on that front, leading the Avs with eight tallies before the injury. Lastly, offense has been hard to come by for the Islanders this season and it will be harder now with Mathew Barzal landing on LTIR with an upper-body injury. The forward is expected to miss four to six weeks.
Liljegren To Sharks: With Timothy Liljegren barely playing this season and Toronto needing to open up some cap space, it was only a matter of time before he was on the move. That swap came this week with the Maple Leafs moving him to San Jose in exchange for a 2025 third-round pick, a 2026 sixth-rounder, and defenseman Matt Benning (who they’re already looking to flip elsewhere). Liljegren was a first-round pick by Toronto in 2017 but spent a lot of his time with the team in a third-pairing role. Still just 25, it’s a low-cost pickup for the Sharks who will get to see how he fares in a new environment with potentially a bigger role as they look to reshape their back end in their rebuild.
Five For McCabe: The Liljegren trade wasn’t the only move Toronto made with their back end. The Maple Leafs also signed defenseman Jake McCabe to a five-year extension worth $23.5MM. However, thanks to some deferred money in the second and third years of the deal, the cap hit will check in at $4.51MM instead of the $4.7MM face value per season. The 31-year-old is a veteran of 12 NHL seasons and is in his third season with Toronto after being acquired in 2022 from Chicago with the Blackhawks paying down half of his $4MM contract. McCabe has emerged as a key cog in Toronto’s top four defensively and this price tag for someone in that role is a fair one while giving him some long-term stability as he’ll be 36 when this deal ends.
Utah Adds A Blueliner: With Utah HC missing both John Marino and Sean Durzi due to long-term injuries, they wanted to add some help on the back end. They did just that, acquiring Olli Maatta from Detroit in exchange for a 2025 third-round pick (from the Rangers, previously acquired). The 30-year-old has nearly 700 career games of NHL experience under his belt and while he’s not known for his offensive skill-set, he’s capable of logging some minutes in a shutdown role and will be asked to do just that to try to help stabilize things. Maatta is in the final year of his contract, one that carries a $3MM cap charge with Utah picking up the full cost of that, giving the Red Wings some extra cap flexibility for potential in-season trade activity.
Toropchenko Gets A Raise: Rather than wait to see what contract might await him in restricted free agency, Blues winger Alexey Toropchenko opted to sign early, inking a one-year, $1.7MM extension. The deal gives the 25-year-old a $450K raise while also walking him directly to unrestricted free agency in 2026. Toropchenko has reached the double-digit goal mark in the last two seasons and averaged more than two hits per game last season. For a useful bottom-six contributor, this is certainly a reasonable price for St. Louis, especially since Toropchenko would have had arbitration eligibility this summer.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.