Deep thoughts as the NHL offseason really gets underway

Touching on all of the big recent moves ahead of the NHL draft including JJ Peterka, Noah Dobson, Trevor Zegras, John Tavares and the Vancouver Canucks.

This weekend is when the NHL offseason really kicks off, and for the next week the 32 rosters are going to significantly change before everybody goes away to the cottage for the summer and checks back in for training camp. Some moves have already started.

Let’s talk about them.

1. Montreal swings big for Noah Dobson

Every year we get promises of draft-day blockbuster trades, and almost every year we leave the weekend disappointed.

The New York Islanders and Montreal Canadiens came through on Friday afternoon.

That was when the Islanders sent defenseman Noah Dobson to the Canadiens for forward Emil Heineman and both of Montreal’s first-round picks in 2025 (No. 16 and No. 17 overall).

The Canadiens also re-signed Dobson to a long-term deal worth $9.5 million per season.

From the Montreal side: I absolutely love this move. Love it. I love the trade itself, I love the mindset, I love the fact the Canadiens are making an effort to really try and become a contender. Their run to the playoffs this season was a huge surprise, and exceeded all preseason expectations. But for as exciting as that was, and for as good as their young core is, there is no way they were in a position to be content with that progress and just hope for it to keep getting better. There were some red flags in their underlying numbers — especially on the defensive end — that maybe it was not going to be sustainable without some bigger additions to the roster.

Credit to them for recognizing that and adding a potential star to their blue line.

I do think there is at least some risk with Dobson and his contract, especially given some of his defensive shortcomings at times and the fact his offense took a step backwards in 2024-25. But I also think he’s a really good player even if the offense doesn’t bounce back, and a potentially excellent player if it does. Now you’re adding that to a defense that already has Lane Hutson, and a young forward core that already has Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Ivan Demidov, and that’s an exciting development for the Canadiens.

Especially since it only cost them one depth player off of their NHL roster.

From the Islanders side: This is a team that’s needed a reset for a couple of years now, and maybe they didn’t feel comfortable with investing that much money in Dobson long-term. I know two first-round picks LOOKS like a lot, but the success rate of a mid first-round pick in terms of just becoming an NHL regular is around 60 percent. The chance of that pick turning into a star is around 10 percent. They basically traded a top-pairing defenseman for two coin flips and a depth forward.

There is a good chance neither pick produces a player that is ever as good as Dobson.

Maybe the Islanders package those picks to move up in the draft again and land another top-five pick to go along with their own No. 1 overall pick. Maybe that changes the math a little bit. But the short-term, immediate reaction here is that Montreal did really well for itself and the Islanders look like a team on the verge of taking big short-term step backwards.

2. What are the Canucks doing?

There are definitely worse teams in the NHL than the Vancouver Canucks, but I am not sure there is a team that feels more directionless and hopeless. They have been stuck in the NHL’s no-man’s land for more than a decade now, never quite bad enough to get a No. 1 pick and never quite good enough to ever do anything meaningful on the ice.

They have made just three playoff appearances in 12 years and are coming off an absolute failure of a 2024-25 campaign that made them seem like the most dysfunctional franchise in the league.

Just a quick little rundown of all of the shit that happened over the past year.

• The two best forwards to start the season (J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson) hated each other so much that they had to eventually give in and trade one of them (Miller) and now have to go through the process of trying to rebuild the other one (Pettersson) into the star and elite scorer he once was. He looked like a broken player this season. Given his talent, importance to the offense and contract … that’s a problem. They have to fix that.

• They traded what turned out to be the No. 12 pick in the draft for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor. Which … I guess is fine. The No. 12 pick isn’t exactly a franchise-changing pick. It’s maybe a 60 percent chance to result in an NHL player and a 10 percent chance at a star. It’s probably not moving the needle. But I have some bad news for you on the potential impact of Pettersson and O’Connor in the coming years….they’re probably not moving the needle much, either.

• They desperately wanted to keep their head coach, Rick Tocchet, but failed to do so as he jumped ship to head to the Philadelphia Flyers (I’m not convinced this is a huge loss, but the point is the Canucks didn’t want to lose him — and then did.)

• They didn’t trade Brock Boeser at the deadline (sighting the lack of a market for him) when they already seemed resigned to the fact they were not going to re-sign him and were likely to lose him for nothing.

• Their best player, defenseman Quinn Hughes, has two years remaining on his contract and there already seems to be a countdown happening for his exit. Team president Jim Rutherford already planted the seeds for that when he said the team really only controls him for a year and three quarters, because they would probably have to trade him at that deadline without a new contract extension in place, while also acknowledging that Hughes would have an interest in potentially playing alongside his brothers (Jack and Luke) who happen to currently reside in New Jersey.

Really encouraging stuff.

So how did the Canucks kick off their offseason? By bailing a divisional rival (Edmonton) out of their salary cap hole by taking on the remainder of Evander Kane’s contract and giving up a draft pick for the honor. They didn’t even get the pick for taking on the contract. There was no fee for doing Edmonton the favor.

Not only is Kane going to be 34 years old when this season begins, and not only did they help a division rival, and not only does he do nothing to further the team on the ice, he’s also a terrible presence to have around given his numerous off-ice issues, but he’s also not even a particularly good player anymore. He was a liability in the Stanley Cup Final for the Oilers, and the Canucks were already talking about him being a potential “long-term fit.”

I don’t get it.

I don’t understand it.

I don’t see any sort of a vision.

3. Will JJ Peterka be the next former Sabres player to blossom elsewhere?

Getting traded away from the Buffalo Sabres seems to be a quick ticket toward either realizing your full potential, or getting your name on the Stanley Cup, or in some cases …. both.

It happened for Ryan O’Reilly. It happened for Jack Eichel. It happened for Sam Reinhart. It happened, to a lesser extent, for Brandon Montour and Evan Rodrigues.

All of them won Stanley Cups elsewhere shortly after getting out of Buffalo, while players like Linus Ullmark and Rasmus Ristolainen saw their games take off on an individual level.

That brings us to JJ Peterka who was just traded to the Utah Mammoth — for defenseman Michael Kesserling and forward Josh Doan — and immediately re-signed there on a long-term deal.

It seems like a good fit for both him and the team.

But what does it mean for Buffalo?

Let’s talk about that, and some other big recent moves around the NHL.