We’re at a very interesting juncture of the off-season with the 2025 NHL Entry Draft now behind us and NHL Free Agency coming up.
Free agency begins on Tuesday at noon ET with the NHL salary cap increasing $7.5 million to $95.5 million next season. That’s the largest season-to-season jump since the salary cap was implemented in 2005, giving teams more money to spend to upgrade their rosters. In tangible terms, that’s at least two decent players worth of cap room being added to the table.
For the Buffalo Sabres, General Manager Kevin Adams made two trades leading up to and during the draft, both of which were of the cap clearing variety, moving out JJ Peterka and Connor Clifton, while adding three players who are all on much lower contracts.
The next day or two will basically prove whether the fans’ growing suspicion that owner Terry Pegula is going to attempt to pinch pennies, or indeed he’s going to back Adams and spend to the cap or as close as possible to try and finally break the schneid of failing to make the playoffs.
Per Puckpedia, the Sabres have 18/23 players signed and still have about $20.84M in cap space. Also, Monday 5p ET is the deadline for the Sabres to extend qualifying offers to their RFAs – Bowen Byram, Ryan McLeod, Jacob Bernard-Docker, Conor Timmins, Devon Levi, Tyson Kozak, Ryan Johnson, Tyler Tullio, Alexander Kisakov, & Bennett MacArthur.