Remaining NHL Free Agents: Kane Is Gone and the Leafs Still Can't Shop

The remaining NHL free agents list is down to leftovers

The list of remaining NHL free agents got shorter again when Patrick Kane went home. Kane agreed to a two-year, $16-million contract with the Chicago Blackhawks that was announced on July 23, an $8-million cap hit with a full no-move clause, ending the last piece of genuine drama in a free agent market that has been dying slowly since July 1. What is left on the board is a collection of reclamation projects, and the Toronto Maple Leafs cannot meaningfully shop from it anyway.

That is not a complaint about the players still available. It is a statement about arithmetic. Toronto currently projects slightly over the $104-million upper limit with a full roster under contract. Until salary goes out, nothing comes in.

Who is actually still unsigned

The best of the rest, as of the final week of July:

• Vladimir Tarasenko — 34 years old, coming off 23 goals and 47 points in 75 games with Minnesota, a modest bump on his Detroit production the year before. He is the only remaining forward with a real claim to top-six usage.
• Patrik Laine — 28, and the highest-variance name left. We made the case for Toronto making a phone call earlier this month.
• Michael Bunting — the former Leaf, now 30, who put up 33 points in 74 games split between Nashville and Dallas after a March 5 trade, including a goal and an assist in 13 games with the Stars.
• Eeli Tolvanen — a middle-six winger whose fit in Toronto we looked at last week.
• Logan Stanley — a big left-shot defenceman reportedly looking for four or five years at around $25 million, which is not a contract that exists for him in this market.
• Cam Talbot — a veteran goaltender who will end up somewhere as insurance.

Read that list honestly. There is one player on it who changes a lineup, and it is Laine, and only if the version that shows up is the one who scores 40. Everyone else is depth priced like depth — which is exactly why they are still available.

Patrick Kane's return was the last real domino

Kane's deal is worth pausing on because it says something about how the market cleared. He turns 38 during the season and produced 57 points in 67 games with Detroit last year — 16 goals, 41 assists — which is legitimately good middle-six production for a player at that stage. He got $8 million a season and a full no-move clause to go back to the organization where he won three Stanley Cups.

Chicago paid a premium for the story. That is fine; the Blackhawks have cap room and a young roster that benefits from a marquee veteran. But it also means the last team with both money and a reason to spend it has now spent. The remaining names have no leverage left, which is why several of them will end up on professional tryouts in September rather than guaranteed contracts in August.

We argued back on July 1 that Toronto was never a real Kane destination, and nothing about how this resolved changes that read.

Why the Maple Leafs cannot participate

Toronto's cap picture is the whole story. Public cap trackers have the Leafs projected marginally over the $104-million ceiling with a 23-man roster in place and dozens of players signed organization-wide. Teams are permitted to exceed the limit by 10 per cent — roughly $10.4 million — during the offseason, so there is no crisis today. There is a hard deadline in September.

The paths to compliance are the ones we mapped in our breakdown of how Toronto gets legal: Max Domi's likely long-term injured reserve placement, and sending depth contracts such as Zack MacEwen ($875,000) and Troy Stecher ($1.35 million) to the Marlies. Those moves get the Leafs compliant. They do not create spending money, because LTIR relief is not the same thing as cap space, and burying depth contracts recovers less than the full hit.

In other words: John Chayka can field a legal roster. He cannot add a $3-million winger without first subtracting a $3-million player. That has been true since the first week of July, when a UFA forward was reportedly waiting on Toronto to clear room, and it is still true now.

The Bunting question, answered

Every summer that Michael Bunting is unsigned, somebody in Toronto suggests bringing him back. He was genuinely useful here — a net-front irritant on a cheap deal who scored 23 goals in his first Leafs season and put up 63 points. The nostalgia is earned.

The 2026 version is a different player. Thirty-three points in 74 games across two teams, with a nearly invisible 13-game finish in Dallas, is fourth-line production. Toronto already spent this offseason rebuilding its bottom six with Nick Paul, Colton Sissons, Teddy Blueger, Jack Roslovic and Brandon Duhaime. Those are all bigger, more defensively reliable versions of what Bunting would provide, and they are already signed.

There is no roster spot, no cap space, and no need. The answer is no, and it is not close.

Vladimir Tarasenko is the name that will linger

Tarasenko is the interesting one, because he is the only player left who has scored 30 goals in a season this decade and is not asking to be paid like it anymore. Twenty-three goals and 47 points in 75 games with Minnesota was a step up from what he managed in Detroit the year before, and it came in a bottom-six-adjacent role rather than as a driver.

He has two Stanley Cup rings' worth of playoff experience — one earned in St. Louis in 2019, one in Florida in 2024 — and at 34 he is looking for a contender rather than a paycheque. That combination is exactly the profile that ends up on a one-year deal in mid-August with a team that had a training-camp injury.

Would he help Toronto? Marginally. He would be a better fifth-best forward than anyone currently penciled into that role, and he would give Jim Hiller a right-shot option on the second power-play unit. But he is also a defensively indifferent 34-year-old on a team that just spent an entire summer specifically acquiring players who are not that. Chayka's stated goal was a lineup that is deeper, faster, bigger and heavier. Tarasenko is none of the four.

What Toronto should actually do

Wait. That is the entire strategy, and it is the right one.

The single most valuable thing about the current market is that time is now on the buyer's side. Every week that passes without a contract makes Tarasenko and Laine cheaper. Professional tryouts open at training camp in September, and a PTO costs nothing until the team decides to convert it. If Chayka is going to add a forward, the September PTO route is the only one that respects Toronto's actual cap position — and it is how teams have landed useful veterans in each of the last several seasons.

The one caveat: PTOs only work if a roster spot exists. If the Leafs are still counting on Domi's LTIR relief just to be legal, converting a tryout means somebody else has to go. That is a real constraint, and it argues for patience rather than a splash.

What's next

Salary arbitration hearings across the league run through August 1, and those outcomes will shake a handful of additional players loose via walk-away rights — which is the last realistic source of new supply this summer. We covered the arbitration calendar and what it means for Toronto earlier this week.

After that, the market goes quiet until camp. Watch for a Leafs trade that sends money out before you watch for one that brings a player in, and keep an eye on the contracts page for where every dollar currently sits.

The remaining NHL free agents are not going to fix Toronto's roster. The roster Toronto already has is the one that has to.