5 Bold NHL 2024 Offseason Predictions (2024)

When the temperatures are rising and virtually everyone in the NHL is headed to the cottage, that's when you know the offseason has arrived.

We're not there just yet, we've got those pesky Conference Finals and the Stanley Cup Final still to be played, but fear not, the moves are coming.

Sure, Tampa Bay and Nashville already made a trade, but most other teams are either picking new coaches or deciding if they still want to keep their interim coach or not. Fortunately, we are here to help, not just get a head start on the offseason, but spice it up as well by being bold.

There will surely be drama this summer and if you can bank on anything it's that multiple teams will attempt to right their ships by making moves to improve their rosters. There will undoubtedly be a few teams that will believe what they've got is good enough to get them a title despite not being able to do it this season.

We're going to stick our necks out and make five predictions for the offseason that would shake everyone up and get all of us talking and, more importantly, excited to get the next season started.

Let's get nuts, shall we?

We don't know for sure that Toronto Maple Leafs star winger Mitch Marner is available for trade, but the conditions are ripe right now for the Leafs to move him with him having one year left on his contract and the Leafs perpetually being close to the cap ceiling.

We also know that any time there is a big-name player potentially on the market the Vegas Golden Knights are going to at least be kicking the tires. Vegas is another team that's forever close to the cap but doesn't let that get in the way of making any move they deem fit.

With Marner's cap hit being nearly $11 million and Vegas having more than a few players who could tickle Toronto's fancy to help balance the ledger (Shea Theodore, William Karlsson, Nicolas Roy, Ivan Barbashev, Adin Hill for instance), it's a trade that could be feasibly put together and make everyone happy.

This isn't to say that Vegas doesn't have some of their players they'd like to re-sign this summer (Jonathan Marchessault, Chandler Stephenson, William Carrier, Alec Martinez) that they'll have difficulty in doing so because of the cap, but again, when has that stopped GM Kelly McCrimmon?

Teams that host the NHL Draft always like to make a splash and since Vegas is picking late in the first round, it's hard to do that from there. Swinging a blockbuster trade is another way to bring the house down and doing it for Marner would leave everyone around the league talking for years to come.

By all accounts in Tampa, it sounds like captain Steven Stamkos will return to the Lightning.

And that's a good thing because seeing a player that's meant so much to a team and a community like him playing elsewhere later in his career always seems wrong. Like Mike Modano and Daniel Alfredsson playing for Detroit or Patrick Marleau in Toronto or Pittsburgh - it just never fit.

But if the Lightning bring Stamkos back and don't get a hometown discount in the process, for them to contend for the Stanley Cup and fill out the roster as best as they can, they'll have to make a trade to free up cap space.

The easier moves are always to send out a few guys with lower-cap hits and put things together like that, but GM Julien BriseBois may not get that luxury. For them to not only free up cap space and get an excellent return in a deal, moving two-way center Anthony Cirelli would be the best way to do so.

The Lightning would have numerous teams, particularly teams with Stanley Cup aspirations, calling non-stop to see how they could coax Cirelli away from Tampa Bay. He's locked up under contract for the next seven years with a $6.25 million cap hit. It's a little juicy, but one that's manageable for any team eager to add him. And if it's a team in the Eastern Conference it would mean exacting a price of taking away their top young players to make it happen.

This could be a difficult summer for the Lightning, as we mentioned after they re-acquired McDonagh, but a set of moves like this with Stamkos and Cirelli (or others) would change things up there substantially.

One of the major mistakes New Jersey Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald made last offseason was not acquiring a high-end goalie to lead the team. Instead, they traded Mackenzie Blackwood and ran it back with Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid and hoped they could both recreate what they did in 2022-2023.

There was buzz early last summer they were hoping to deal for Connor Hellebuyck, but when he re-signed with the Winnipeg Jets that all but ended any speculation about the Devils trading for a goalie. It turned out to be a big mistake and Fitzgerald cannot repeat it.

Nashville's Juuse Saros has a year left on his contract and they have Yaroslav Askarov ready to join the NHL. The Predators have maintained they'd love to retain Saros and they have a long history of bringing goalies along slowly while the No. 1 at the time reigned supreme. But that was when David Poile ran the show in Nashville; i's up to Barry Trotz to decide how he wants to do things.

The Devils' need for a top-flight goalie is very clear and now that they've got Sheldon Keefe on board to coach them, they can't waste another year of Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier in their prime while goaltending wrecks their efforts. Fitzgerald has been bold before (see the Timo Meier trade) and if the Devils are going to get back to the playoffs and the top of the East, adding Saros would help them do that immediately.

It feels weird to prognosticate about a player going to a team that's still currently playing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but when it comes to Patrick Kane, exceptions have to be made.

Kane had a superb comeback season with the Detroit Red Wings this year, but part of his motivation to go there was to be part of a playoff team and make a run at the Cup. Instead, Detroit was again on the outside looking in on the postseason and Kane's hopes went unfulfilled.

When Kane was shopping around for a team before this season, one team that was reportedly very interested was the Florida Panthers. The catch for them, however, was they didn't have room under the cap to make it work with Kane. Things worked out for the Panthers but their interest and success this season probably haven't gone unnoticed by Kane.

The Panthers have a pair of vital players to re-sign this summer in forward Sam Reinhart and defenseman Brandon Montour and according to CapFriendly, they'll have a little under $20 million in cap space this summer. It might sound like a lot, but if they bring back both of those players, they'll be short on space to fill out the rest of the roster.

Finding a way to entice Kane with money could be an issue again, but the Panthers have shown they can go deep in the playoffs and if Kane wants to win it again, perhaps taking a little less money to take his talents to South Beach (er, Sunrise) would make more sense.

There's a fine line between making a bold prediction and a totally reckless one and we're blurring that boundary if not totally obliterating it for this one.

Jake Guentzel will be one of the biggest free agents available come July 1 along with Steven Stamkos and Sam Reinhart. While those latter two players would seem like likely candidates to re-sign with their current teams, Guentzel for the time being seems slated to go to market which should be very lucrative for him in the end.

Guentzel will have loads of teams eager to sign him, especially Carolina who will have first crack at him until July 1 to try and get a deal done before then. But whether it's Carolina, Pittsburgh, or another suitor the team that wields the biggest hammer when it comes to money are the Chicago Blackhawks.

What Chicago has working against them is they're not likely going to be a playoff contender for another couple of years, never mind a Stanley Cup contender. But with Connor Bedard leading the way and a host of other young up-and-coming prospects, they're poised to be heavily in the conversation sooner than not.

For Guentzel at 29 years old and having won the Cup twice already with the Penguins, hopping on the Chicago gravy train before it gets rolling and getting paid extremely well to do it might be a sneaky great idea. Yes, things will be tough again this year and less so next year (at least ideally), but getting into this situation now might pay off in wins in a big way later on.