Is the off-season upon us right now or still many months away? We won’t know until the NHL confirms whether it will resume the 2019-20 season. If that happens, we’ll see a summer post-season, and free agency won’t arrive until the fall. If the COVID-19 risk continues to prove too great, however, and this season gets cancelled, free agency should arrive at or close to its traditional summer date of July 1.
So how does the 2019 class look? Not overly sexy compared to the summer of John Tavares followed by the summer of Artemi Panarin, especially when a few of the top 2020 UFAs, most notably Nicklas Backstrom and Chris Kreider, have re-upped with their teams before going to market.