2026 NHL Free Agent Midseason Contract Predictions

Jan 07, 2026

Welcome to my 2025/26 midseason NHL Free Agent Contract Predictions, with a free preview of the contracts coming in the next 9 months. NHL GMs made my job easier with a frenzy of extensions that threatens to make July 1^st far less entertaining than a fully stocked cupboard. My preliminary predictions for the 2026 class were posted in May, so I’m already on the record for most of these players, except those who signed one-year deals in the summer and I didn’t know would be on the market in 2026. The problem from my end was not anticipating the number of 8-year deals to young players, and at younger ages, more term increases AAV, especially when you’re buying UFA years at the end.

As a result of the race to sign for 8 years before the new CBA caps max at 7, several of my preliminary predictions came in too low. I’m also a little confused why so many wanted to lock in that long when projected cap increases make fertile ground for betting on yourself, like what McDavid and Matthews did. Though I don’t think McDavid cares about his NHL salary because he makes way more than that in endorsements. Generally, players who sign early extensions are the cream of the crop, and tend to get more money, so technically I should juice predictions for premium players a year out, then lower them in my midseason for those still unsigned. Something to remember in June when my 2027 preliminary predictions are released.

It needs to be disclaimed that my time to dive deeper into comparables and re-adjust my Expected Free Agent Value model for recently signed deals was limited, so this has “half-assed” relative to my normal effort. That EFA model gets reset every May, when the regular season ends, and my final predictions in June will include a deeper dive than time permitted in December. The old EFA model cranks out values, then the current free agent class is mixed with recently signed players and sorted by EFA. My predictions are made scrolling down a list, doing young-middle-old aged players as groups by position. Then I manually write in prediction numbers for the pending FAs, while also keeping an eye on recent comparables.

Hopefully the process produces good results. One final note on the images below, typically I’ll list “age July 1^st” but this year it’s just age as listed at the time of stat download from Hockey Reference. Sorry, I didn’t have time to update all the player information, but will in June. There are also a few pending free agents who have not played a game this season who are not listed, typically lower end players likely to get league minimum.