Author: NHL Trade Tracker

Ottawa Senators owner Michael Andlauer said Brady Tkachuk’s father, Keith, and brother, Matthew, pressured the captain into demanding the trade that sent him to the Florida Panthers in June.

“Blood is thicker than water, and let’s just say that his father and his brother got in his kitchen. Ultimately, the decision was made to go and play with his brother. It’s a decision that was out of our control to a certain degree,” Andlauer said in an interview with Pierre LeBrun published September 22.

Tkachuk has said publicly that his trade request was not about his brother, so the owner’s account and the player’s own explanation do not match. The request itself is not in dispute: Tkachuk held a full no-movement clause and asked out after the season, and general manager Steve Staios granted it on June 21, dealing the captain to Florida for a package of draft picks.

Three months after the deal, the return Ottawa received is beginning to take shape. The Senators acquired the Nos. 9 and 25 picks in the 2026 draft, a conditional first-round pick in 2029 and a 2027 second-round pick. Ottawa then used the No. 9 pick in a trade with San Jose that brought in William Eklund, Kasper Halttunen and Brandon Svoboda.

What Ottawa gave up was significant. Tkachuk, drafted fourth overall in 2018, played his first eight NHL seasons with the Senators and captained the team for five, leading it to back-to-back playoff appearances before the trade.

Andlauer said Tkachuk left as a model Senator. He called him “an exemplary captain for us and leader and role model” and praised the community work Tkachuk and his wife, Emma, did in Ottawa.

Whether Tkachuk responds publicly to the owner’s characterization is not known. Andlauer said Ottawa fans backed Tkachuk to the end, even after Team USA won Olympic gold.

Steel signs four-year, $14.8MM extension in Dallas

The Dallas Stars signed forward Sam Steel to a four-year contract extension worth $3.7MM per season, the team announced on September 21, 2026 in a post on X. The deal carries a total value of $14.8MM and begins with the 2027-28 season.

Steel is in the final season of a two-year contract paying $2.1MM AAV, and the new deal buys out what would have been his first four years of unrestricted free agency. It expires after the 2030-31 season, when he turns 33.

Why the Stars paid for the penalty kill

General manager Jim Nill pointed to Steel’s consistency and versatility in the team’s announcement, with particular weight on his shorthanded work.

“His consistency during his time with our team, especially on the penalty kill, plus his versatility has made him a valuable asset to our organization, and we’re happy to be locking him up for the next four seasons.”

Steel leads all Stars forwards in shorthanded ice time with a little over 450 minutes, well clear of Radek Faksa’s 279:25, though the exact span over which those minutes were accumulated is not specified. The commitment follows two Dallas runs to the Western Conference Finals, in which Steel recorded 12 of his 14 career playoff points.

The signing also marks a step up in stability. Steel signed four one-year contracts across three teams, Anaheim, Minnesota and Dallas, before landing in Dallas in 2023 free agency. Since then he has totaled 27 goals and 82 points in 229 games, ninth among Stars forwards over that span.

Where the deal sits in the cap picture

Dallas has roughly $39MM of projected cap space for the upcoming offseason, and Steel’s $3.7MM AAV takes a first bite out of it. Jason Robertson, Tyler Seguin, Joel Kiviranta, Tyler Myers and Lian Bichsel are all on expiring contracts, so the extension is the opening move in a busy stretch for Nill.

No year-by-year salary breakdown for the new contract has been made public.

Cutter Gauthier signed a six-year, $81 million contract with the Anaheim Ducks, a deal the club funded in part by terminating Chris Kreider’s contract, reportedly ending the veteran winger’s tenure without a buyout or a trade.

Gauthier, 22, will carry a $13.5 million average annual value, the second-highest cap hit on the Ducks behind Leo Carlsson’s five-year, $80 million deal. The extension rewards a 2025-26 season in which Gauthier scored 41 goals and 69 points and added 12 points in a playoff run that returned Anaheim to the post-season for the first time since 2018.

The price to pay it, however, came off another man’s contract. Anaheim terminated Kreider’s contract outright to create the cap room needed for Gauthier. The exact terms of the termination were not laid out. Gauthier led the Ducks in scoring last season, a 21-goal jump from the season before.

Kreider leaves, the room moves on

Carlsson, the Ducks’ highest-paid player after signing his offer sheet this off-season, described Kreider’s exit as an accepted cost of the business.

“Chris, he’s leaving, but he’s also really happy for me as well. It’s a hard business.”

Carlsson’s own five-year, $80 million offer sheet reset the restricted free agent market league-wide, and Gauthier’s $13.5 million AAV is the downstream effect. Before the deal settled, some speculation had put Gauthier’s number closer to $15 million or $16 million a year.

The Washington Capitals signed Ryan Leonard to an eight-year extension carrying a $10.5 million AAV hours before the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement expired, and the structure of the deal explains why he took it.

More than 82 percent of Leonard’s money comes in the form of signing bonuses, a structure the analysis of the deal lays out in detail. Bonus-heavy money is the most contract-protected money in the league: it is paid regardless of a buyout or a lockout, so the player gives up headline salary in exchange for security. Leonard left what would likely be more money on the table to get it, and Washington got a 21-year-old, 20-goal winger locked in well below the going rate at a time when 30-goal scorers cost well in excess of $14 million against the cap.

The deal begins in 2027-28 and runs through 2034-35. Leonard, drafted eighth overall in 2023, finished his rookie season with 20 goals and 45 points after leading the NCAA in goals in one of his two college seasons and finishing third in the other.

The Sourdif companion deal

The same window produced an eight-year, $6.35 million AAV extension for Justin Sourdif, another player who had one full NHL season behind him. General manager Chris Patrick committed to the 24-year-old center after he put up 15 goals and 35 points in 78 games, his first real NHL look after four career games and years as an AHL mainstay in the Florida Panthers organization.

Both contracts carry little trade protection, which caps Washington’s downside if either bet misses. Combined, the two deals put $16.85 million per season on the books from 2027-35.

The exact signing date of both extensions has not been announced by the team.

A bargain price on a thin résumé

The Anaheim Ducks signed center Tim Washe to a four-year contract extension on September 19, 2026, a deal Elliotte Friedman reported at a $2.25 million cap hit and $9 million total.

On paper, that is a lot of term for a player with 41 career NHL games. Washe, 25, has two goals and five points in those 41 appearances with a minus-6 rating and 11:50 of average ice time. The extension carries him to age 30, buying out what would have been his prime unrestricted years on a sample smaller than half a season.

What the $2.25M actually pays for

The case for the deal is not scoring. Washe won 58.0 percent of his faceoffs in 2025-26, second among NHL rookies and first on the Ducks, and he threw 95 hits in 41 games. Anaheim dressed him in all 12 of its playoff games that spring, a run that beat Edmonton in the first round before Vegas ended it in the Western Conference semifinals. Playoff trust from a coaching staff is worth real money, and $2.25 million sits below what established fourth-line centers with 500 games command.

The risk is that 41 games is a small window to judge a defensive center. If the faceoff rate holds and the skating translates, the Ducks own a cost-controlled piece through his prime. If his role shrinks under a new coach, the final two years of the deal age badly on a cap sheet that also has to fit a young core.

Undrafted to NHL regular in 18 months

Washe signed with Anaheim in April 2025 as an undrafted free agent out of Western Michigan, days after captaining the Broncos to their first national championship with 16 goals and 38 points in 42 games. He opened 2025-26 as an AHL All-Star with the San Diego Gulls, 14 goals and 27 points in 36 games, before sticking with the Ducks for 39 regular-season games.

The club confirmed the four-year term in its announcement; only the dollar figure came from Friedman’s report. The full structure, including the start year, has not been disclosed.