Minnesota’s $136-million man, captainless Cats, and the biggest NHL storylines to watch in October

Oct 8, 2025, 10:30 EDTUpdated: Oct 8, 2025, 08:51 EDT

Minnesota’s $136-million man, captainless Cats, and the biggest NHL storylines to watch in October

Credit: Nick Wosika-Imagn Images

In the world of hockey, the summer of 2025 was agonizingly slow. After superstar winger Mitch Marner’s trade from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Vegas Golden Knights on the morning of July 1, there just weren’t enough jaw-dropping moves to tide over fans in the absence of game action; overwhelmingly, top players opted for soon-to-be-outlawed eight-year extensions.

The camp battles, preseason action and contract resolutions of the past month added some badly needed intrigue ahead of the season, which kicked off last night with a triple header. Off the ice, Kirill Kaprizov of the Minnesota Wild became the highest-paid NHLer in league history amid a wave of eyewatering extensions for young stars like Devils’ D-man Luke Hughes. On the ice, the Florida Panthers lost two-time Stanley Cup-winning captain Aleksander Barkov for the season to a torn ACL when they weren’t busy brawling with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Our exhaustive efforts to prepare ourselves and our readers for the 2025-26 season may be just about complete at Daily Faceoff, but our previews of the storylines that will define the next month’s on-ice action are just getting started. Read on for the latest on Kaprizov, Barkov, and the hottest storylines to watch in October.

What does $136 million buy the Minnesota Wild?

The Wild did not put themselves in a position of strength during contract talks with Kaprizov. Eager to avoid comparisons between the Kaprizov negotiations and the 2009 Marian Gaborik saga, team owner Craig Leipold assured the public an extension for ‘The Thrill’ was imminent, and that it’d be “huge … likely the biggest in the NHL ever.” Leipold was right, of course. As the first superstar player to negotiate a contract after the announcement of the rising cap that wouldn’t keep him with a perennial Stanley Cup contender or in a state with no state income tax (both qualifiers describe Marner and Mikko Rantanen’s new teams), Kaprizov was a lock to reset the market.

Still, Leipold talked himself into a corner. He couldn’t afford to lose Kaprizov after all that bluster, and Kaprizov, his representatives, and Wild GM Bill Guerin knew it. That allowed the Russian to secure a record-smashing deal, both in terms of AAV ($17 million) and total value ($136 million). That salary could become increasingly commonplace under the new CBA, but after Connor McDavid’s bargain extension, it’s anyone’s guess when. For now, the Wild have committed roughly the cost of a good second line to one man. Is he worth it?

It seemed that way last year, when Minnesota played at a 50-win pace with Kaprizov in the lineup. There are no questions about the 28-year-old’s individual bona fides, either: just four players have scored more goals per game since his debut in 2020. The Wild kick off their season in St. Louis Friday night, and an injury to wily old playmaker Mats Zuccarello means they’ll rely on Kaprizov’s offense more than ever. Will he play at a $136-million (see: MVP) level, or was that just the cost of keeping the egg off Leipold’s face?

Will losing Barkov really slow down the Panthers?

Over the past three seasons, Florida avoided the free agency exodus that so often befalls top teams during the cap era. With the notable exception of Brandon Montour (whom GM Bill Zito tidily replaced with Seth Jones after a few months), the Cats have used their record of success, lax local market, and the Sunshine State’s notoriously favorable tax environment to lock up virtually all of their key players (even Brad ‘Methuselah’ Marchand) to long-term, team-friendly deals.

Unfortunately for Florida, no amount of good management and good fortune could stave off the wear and tear that came with 68 extra games over the past three postseasons. They were already without Matthew Tkachuk until December after the superstar agitator’s offseason surgery, and Barkov’s preseason ACL tear took two of the Panthers’ top three forwards off the lineup card on opening night as Florida overwhelmed the lowly Chicago Blackhawks. Unlike Tkachuk, Barkov won’t be back this year. Losing a perennial Selke winner and team leader with 90-point upside would be a season killer for most clubs, but the Panthers are not most clubs.

Conn Smythe Trophy winner Sam Bennett, coming off his healthiest season since leaving Calgary, is on hand to slide into Barkov’s spot between two-way snipers Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe. The Luostarinen-Lundell-Marchand unit that tormented Toronto and Edmonton as a grossly overqualified third line is ready for top-six duty. Add in a stacked blueline and the evergreen Sergei Bobrovsky in goal, and any celebrations of Florida’s downfall seem premature. A team missing a Selke winner down the middle and a Hart finalist on the wing shouldn’t look this deep. A light October schedule (eight non-playoff opponents in 11 games) means the Panthers’ new-look lineup has some runway to get on a roll.

This could get ugly for the Buffalo Sabres

Get your jokes out. A record-setting playoff drought? Ugly. Watching countless former players achieve stardom and championship success elsewhere? Ugly. Refusing to spend to the cap year after year? You get the picture. But, seriously, this could get ugly. The Buffalo Sabres have typically put together a decent lineup on paper since 2022, only to be undone by a lack of cohesion and focus. How low will the Sabres sink when the talent isn’t there? Buffalo beefed up its defense during the offseason, but that won’t matter if half the team is crocked.

Michael Kesselring seemed like a natural foil for former No. 1 selection Owen Power when the Swords got him in the JJ Peterka trade. Instead, Power is pushing hard to return from an injury that kept him out of training camp, and Kesselring’s absence is considered week-to-week. In the crease, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen could have seriously bolstered Buffalo’s playoff chances by returning to his excellent 2023-24 form, but he’s also on the shelf with a lower-body injury. Are his temporary replacements, rookie waiver claim Colten Ellis and career tweener Alex Lyon, really a duo that can prop up a suddenly shaky back line?

The undermanned Sabres will face the Panthers, the Colorado Avalanche, and the rival Maple Leafs (twice) in October. No team has done a worse job of overcoming adversity than the Sabres over the past decade, and they’ll see plenty of it out of the gates this season. If Buffalo crumbles once again, it could spell the end of GM Kevyn Adams, who may have inadvertently hired his replacement by adding former Columbus exec Jarmo Kekalainen to his staff last May.

Mitch Marner and the Golden Knights can make an early statement

The Golden Knights and Mitch Marner seemed like a natural fit even before GM Kelly McCrimmon nabbed Marner in a sign-and-trade with the Leafs. Marner would give Vegas’s aging core a shot in the arm by providing 90-100 points and fitting seamlessly into the club’s defensive identity. The Knights would insulate Marner’s propensity to shrink from nasty, physical games with a brawny supporting cast, including captain Mark Stone and power forwards Tomas Hertl and Ivan Barbashev. Better still, they’d insulate him from the media fervor that surrounds superstar players in Canadian hubs like Toronto.

As well as Marner fits into Vegas’s lineup on paper, it’s not like McCrimmon made no concessions to fit a $12-million player onto an already crowded cap sheet. He sent physical center Nic Roy the other way to Toronto after shipping bottom-pair banger Nicolas Hague to Nashville instead of paying him. Worse yet, McCrimmon was only free to move for Marner after blueline leader Alex Pietrangelo effectively retired to Robidas Island. Those moves took a bite out of the Golden Knights’ vaunted defensive depth, and coach Bruce Cassidy will need heavy matchup minutes from a top six featuring elite backcheckers Marner, Stone, Jack Eichel, and William Karlsson.

Cassidy will soon find out if Marner’s superior talent was worth becoming a bit more top-heavy, starting with a daunting early schedule. Matchups with the smothering Carolina Hurricanes on Oct. 20 and Oct. 28 bumper back-to-back meetings with the champs in Florida and the ever-dangerous Lightning before Vegas finally returns home on Halloween to host MacKinnon, Makar, and the Avs. If the Knights can run a gauntlet like that relatively unscathed, they won’t just look like geniuses for pursuing Marner; they’ll become the early Stanley Cup favorites.

When will the other shoe drop in New Jersey?

Something fishy is going on with the Devils. It’s not the Luke Hughes deal, which will almost certainly become a bargain as the salary cap continues to rise. The kid can play. It’s what the rapid blueliner’s payday means for the rest of the roster, which is nearly $4 million (!) over the salary cap. GM Tom Fitzgerald can make his club cap compliant by moving Johnathan Kovacevic onto the LTIR for a few months as he rehabs from knee surgery, but that’s a temporary fix.

Fitzgerald didn’t reward Kovacevic’s emergence as a tough, shutdown defenseman with a long-term deal to bury his salary, anyway, especially given the new postseason salary cap. ‘Fitz’ must have another move in the works to clean up the books. The dream scenario would be finding a taker for the $6.25-million Ondrej Palat mistake, but any team willing to eat a bad deal for picks or prospects will likely find itself on Palat’s 10-team no-trade list. Dawson Mercer is the team’s highest-paid non-Hughes without trade protections, but moving Mercer would drag out last season’s depth scoring woes.

Could former Norris third runner-up Dougie Hamilton become trade bait? Signing Hamilton in 2021 was a statement of intent by Fitzgerald, but the big offensive D-man might be surplus to requirements for a team with so much defensive depth and so little cap space to find another impact forward. If moving a well-liked veteran is like ripping off a band-aid, might New Jersey try to get it over with before a slightly reworked lineup develops too much chemistry?

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