As exhibition play begins this weekend — the Bruins host the Capitals at the Garden for a 5 p.m. puck drop Sunday — Florida’s chance at a threepeat dominates the NHL story lines heading into 2025-26.
The Panthers are so loaded and confident, and the season so long, it appears of little consequence that team unicorn Matthew Tkachuk won’t play for at least a couple of months while he recuperates from offseason surgery. He grinded through the postseason, coping with the pain and limitations of a torn adductor and sports hernia.
Nothing’s a gimme in the Original 32, but it’s hard to envision anyone denying the Panthers another 16 playoff wins next spring. The Islanders, by the way, won 19 series and amassed 72 playoff victories before the Oilers, with a 23-year-old Wayne Gretzky, dethroned them in 1984.
No one in the East got so much better in the summer to think the Panthers will be denied a fourth consecutive trip to the Final — last done by the Isles dynasty — which will leave it to the Oil, Vegas, or Dallas to emerge from the West, slingshot and rock in hand. Granted, it’s a chalk bet, but I’m sticking with the Panthers. Just too good, too deep.
Some of the other top story lines as the season of short days, long nights, and the occasional overtime, begins anew:
▪ Big-name forwards within months of unrestricted free agency.
At this hour, Connor McDavid (Oilers), Artemi Panarin (Rangers), and Kirill Kaprizov (Wild) all are on the verge of entering the new season on expiring contracts that average just over $11 million apiece. History says it’s likely all three will sign, potentially before the regular season begins, and remain in place.
Man, what a spectacle July 1, 2026, would be if they instead opted to hit the open UFA market. The salary cap, set for $95.5 million this season, is projected to rise to $104 million next season. Any club willing to sign one of those three players to a max deal (capped at 20 percent) would be lavishing him with a $20-million-a-year payout. The cap system, remember, began 20 years ago, each club’s entire payroll capped then at $39 million.
Rumors the last two weeks — not confirmed by either side — have had the dynamic Kaprizov turning down $16 million a year for eight seasons, beginning next October. The high-water mark today is Leon Draisaitl’s $14 million, a deal that begins next month after being signed a year ago by the Oilers’ deadly striker.
With the cap going up in big chunks, and the new CBA in place through 2029-30, the bet here is that McDavid and Kaprizov, each 28, sign max deals with their current clubs. Panarin, coining $11.6 million this year, will be age 34 on Oct. 30 and therefore won’t see max money. But no bean suppers for the slick Russian who arrived in Chicago 10 years ago, hired as an undrafted free agent. His career earnings by the end of this season will be just pennies short of $100 million.
▪ Olympus awaits.
The league will shut down for three weeks in February as NHLers return en masse to the Games for the first time in 12 years.
The Bruins are expected to be well represented, with the USA’s Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman not expected back until it’s over over there in Italy. David Pastrnak figures to play for Czechia, and the non-brothers Lindholm (Hampus and Elias) both likely will wear Sweden’s three crowns.
In all, upward of 180 NHLers will feature in the best-on-best tourney. Those on the bubble to make rosters — perhaps as many as 100 more? — will begin the NHL season with extra motivation, hoping they earn invites to the Five Rings prior to rosters being finalized at the end of December. On some of the weaker NHL teams, players will have a more realistic chance of playing in the Games than being on one of the 16 teams that will enter the Cup dance in April.
▪ Will Mitch Marner bring the magic with him to Vegas?
Part two of that question: how does that shift in roster balance play out for the Maple Leafs, 58 years after their most recent Cup parade?
After nine years of producing high-end offense with Toronto (741 points/657 games), Marner chased the money west and hit the jackpot (eight years, $12 million AAV) in Vegas in a sign-and-trade deal. He was designated Jack Eichel’s right winger before the ink dried, and could be the factor that helps the Golden Knights get by the Oilers in the West and into their third Cup Final since opening shop along the Strip in the fall of 2017.
Marner was part of a Fab Four forward-heavy Leafs roster that long included Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and John Tavares. Matthew Knies joins that remaining core group, albeit at a number ($7.5 million) comfortably below Marner’s AAV. The Leafs wanted to keep Marner in town, but GM Brad Treliving now has a little bit of financial elbow room to improvise.
▪ Have the Canadiens fully recovered?
Here in the Hub of Hockey, we once defined each season around Bruins-Canadiens matchups. They were the season within the season. Not to worry, kids, your doddering faithful puck chronicler will let it go with just that tiny stick tap toward nostalgia. I won’t even bring up the Jonathan-Bouchard battle royale, OK?
Les Glorieux finally made it back to the playoffs last season after three DNQs, then bowed out to the Caps in five games. Ex-Boston University blue liner Lane Hutson (6-60–66) was awarded the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year and the Habs, though challenged to score, finally began to show a tiny bit of that old CH swagger.
Can they build on it? Their big offseason move, a swap-and-sign with the Islanders for franchise defenseman Noah Dobson, was right on target. He has the skill to produce consistently in the range of 50-60 points. Along with Hutson, the push from the back could be strong enough to mask over the forward group’s struggle for goals. We rarely see the Canadiens here anymore. It’s a better league, and season, when they’re in the mix.
With the Capitals in town Sunday, Marco Sturm will make his debut behind the Bruins bench, new guidance after the combined efforts of Jim Montgomery and Joe Sacco failed to steer the Black and Gold away from missing the postseason for the first time since 2016. The Bruins are one of nine NHL clubs entering the season with a new bench boss.
Sturm’s greatest challenge going in will be to wring more goals out of a forward group that needs quickly to find a legit top six scoring identity, and also to mine something more (see: goals/assists) than dependable, stiff checking out of the bottom six.
Elsewhere:
Anaheim: Joel Quenneville, 67, is back four years after resigning in Florida for his part in the mishandling of the Kyle Beach sexual assault case in Chicago. Quenneville won three Stanley Cups in his long tour with the Blackhawks. Old by NHL coaching standards, can Coach Q finally shake the Ducks from the doldrums of seven straight DNQs?
Chicago: Jeff Blashill knows patience. His Red Wings logged six consecutive DNQs before he was canned. After three seasons as one of Jon Cooper’s assistants for Tampa Bay, he inherits a Blackhawks squad that has logged five consecutive DNQs. More roster parts needed, many more.
Dallas: After a late, surprising decision to send Pete DeBoer packing, general manager Jim Nill hired Glen Gulutzan for a second kick at the can. Gulutzan, hired first in Dallas at age 40, had little success there in two seasons (2011-13). He spent the last seven seasons as an assistant in Edmonton.
New York Rangers: The Bay State’s Mike Sullivan is the new guy, succeeding the Bay State’s Peter Laviolette. Rumored to be the highest paid coach in league history, Sullivan has been handed a Blueshirts roster in transition, with the recent offloading of Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba. The tone will change on Broadway, though not dramatically. No-nonsense J.T. Miller was named new captain as camp opened.
Philadelphia: Ex-Flyer (and Bruin) Rick Tocchet takes charge after his three seasons in Vancouver, two that didn’t end with a playoff seed. Tocc’s a talker, and an energizer, and that should be a relief to the stick-carrying rank and file after three seasons of the hardboiled John Tortorella.
Pittsburgh: Dan Muse, long ago a Stonehill forward who graduated from Canton High, joins Sturm and Adam Foote (Vancouver) as the only new hires not previously to have been an NHL bench boss. Unlike Sturm and Foote, he never played in it either, but brings a load of coaching experience to the new gig, including five years as a Yale assistant and five seasons as an NHL assistant (Nashville and Rangers).
Seattle: Lane Lambert takes over the Kraken after 2½ unremarkable seasons behind the Islanders bench. He’s the expansion franchise’s third coach since it opened for business in the fall of ‘21, succeeding Dave Hakstol and Dan Bylsma. Kraken fans are beginning to wonder when some of the Golden Knights’ expansion pixie dust lands on their shoulders.
Vancouver: As a Canucks assistant, Foote spent the last three seasons on Tocchet’s staff, and it was somewhat of a surprise when he was offered the top job. A punishing, old-school defenseman, “Footer” logged over 1,110 regular-season games and twice won the Cup with the Avalanche, including the one with Ray Bourque’s name on it in 2001. He’ll have former Boston University Terrier Scott Young, of the Clinton Youngs, as one of his assistants. Foote and Young spent three seasons together in their playing days with the Quebec Nordiques. Allez, Nords!
When there’s a hurricane brewing in our part of the world, ex-Bruins forward Ken Linseman usually is on the run, his eye fixed not on the eye or rage of the storm but rather where its winds will deliver ideal surfing conditions.
Linseman, 67, quickly packed up at home in Hampton, N.H., last month and drove some 13 hours straight through to the Nova Scotia coast, where he was gifted ideal Atlantic churn by Hurricane Erin.
“Just crossed the border into Canada,” Linseman wrote via email on Aug. 20, his destination that day Wine Harbour, N.S., some 100 miles up the shoreline from Halifax. “Chasing the waves.”
Back home in New Hampshire for a while prior to another planned surfing excursion, Linseman the other day recounted his long love affair with the sport — one introduced to him by Joe Noris, one of his teammates with the 1977-78 WHA Birmingham Bulls.
Noris, from Denver, late in his career played three seasons in San Diego, and it was a trip to visit Noris there more than 40 years ago, along a beach in Torrey Pines, when Linseman caught the board bug.
“It was a beach where the hang gliders go off, and I saw [someone on a surf board] get tubed in a wave,” recalled Linseman. “And I said, “I want to do that!’ And that was it.”
All these decades later, Linseman’s life, he said, “Pretty much revolves around surfing — after family, of course, but my kids have pretty much grown up now.”
By his estimate, Linseman surfs upward of 250 days a year, maybe more if the hurricane gods are working the winds. He said his son, Kyle, 35, is the far more accomplished of the two. Father and son have traveled to 32 countries to chase the waves. They are also partners in real estate development.
“Kyle’s way, way better,” noted Linseman, who played five-plus seasons with the Bruins in the 1980s, including with the club that faced the Oilers in the ‘88 Cup Final. “I mean, yeah, I get my waves, but I’m by no means something to write home about. Kyle’s world class.”
It’s a sport, he said, good for both body (particularly to maintain core strength) and mind.
“I joke, saying it’s like my heroin, except that it’s healthy,” Linseman said. “What it does for me mentally, and it always did … it just calms my whole body down, my mind down … just gets me to a great place. It’s really the mental thing that drives you.”
The recent trip to Nova Scotia paid off, noted Linseman, with some superb conditions over a stretch of five days. He logged some 20 hours in the water, with the best waves cresting around 15 feet and running as long as 1,200 feet. Conditions sometimes can be equally enticing in New Hampshire and Rhode Island, he noted, but Nova Scotia doesn’t bring out the same number of boarders. Most days at Wine Harbour he was in the water with only seven or eight other surfers.
“Around here, you might be out there with at least 50 people,” he said. “Like the place I would have gone in Rhode Island, I heard it was great, but again, 50 people out there. So when you have that many, maybe only 20 yards apart from each other, trying to catch the same wave, it kind of takes away a lot of the fun of it — but it shows how popular the sport has become, I guess.”
Linseman, originally from Kingston, Ontario, still laces up the skates, often participating in “Wounded Warrior” charity games. One of those gigs this summer brought him to Bozeman, Mont., definitely not surfboard territory.
“I’ve gone from being maybe the fastest guy out on the ice,” offered Linseman, who could really burn in his playing days, “to being the slowest, or one of the slowest.”
Ex-Bruins defenseman Kevan Miller, a fulltime resident of Bozeman, suited up for the opposition in the charity game. He had possession of the puck behind the net and Linseman, true to the form that earned him the nickname “The Rat,” went hard and heavy at Miller on the forecheck.
“I’m slashing away at him, and no one’s doing that, but it’s really the only way I know to play,” recalled Linseman. “I didn’t know who it was … it ended up being Kevan, and he turns to me and goes, ‘I love it!’ I was really whacking him.”
Miller’s response initially brought an instant apology from Linseman. Definitely not something he borrowed from his NHL days.
“I said, ‘Geez, I’m sorry, Kevin,’ ” recalled Linseman. “And he said, ‘Don’t stop!’ ”