Free agency and draft plans for Stars, Hurricanes, every other eliminated team

The 2024-25 NHL regular season is over and the playoffs are underway..

This is the place where we look ahead to the offseason for all the teams eliminated from contention: Who will those teams try to add via free agency, trades and the draft? How much better will the team be in 2025-26?

Read on for a look at what went wrong for each eliminated team, along with a breakdown of the biggest keys this offseason and realistic expectations for next season. Note that more teams will be added to this story as they are eliminated.

Note: Profiles for the Atlantic and Metro teams were written by Kristen Shilton, and Ryan S. Clark analyzed the Central and Pacific teams. Stats are collected from sites such as Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference and Evolving Hockey. Projected cap space per PuckPedia. Dates listed with each team are when the entry was published. Teams are listed alphabetically by publication date.

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Playoff teams

Dallas Stars

Projected cap space: $5.32 million

2025 draft picks: 3rd, 5th, 5th (NJ), 6th, 7th

What went right? There’s no questioning their status as a championship contender. Not that the Stars’ aspirations were ever in question, but the moves that GM Jim Nill made throughout the 2024-25 season further reinforced the Stars to win now.

A team that once thought of draft picks as sacred moved on from first- and fourth-round picks in this summer’s draft in a trade that returned Cody Ceci and Mikael Granlund. Then Nill moved even more draft capital (two first-round picks and two third-round picks) and promising young forward Logan Stankoven to get Mikko Rantanen, before signing the superstar Finn to an eight-year extension.

All of that helped get the Stars back to the Western Conference finals for the third straight season.

What went wrong? Some of the questions that were present throughout the Stars’ playoff run — such as their depth — were issues in the conference finals against the Edmonton Oilers. It initially appeared as if the Stars had found a solution with the number of players who contributed to their 6-3 comeback win in Game 1.

But the next three games would see them score only twice, which made the Stars the second team that was in the top five in goals per game during the regular season to be effectively silenced by the Oilers in a playoff series (the Vegas Golden Knights were dispatched in the second round).

Failing to consistently score goals or generate some sort of a breakthrough in other areas is what led to Stars becoming the first team to reach three straight conference finals without advancing to the Stanley Cup Final in NHL history.

Keys to the offseason: Perhaps the only thing more draining than being a championship contender that can’t seem to reach the Stanley Cup Final? Figuring out how to remain in contention despite having only so much cap space.

The Stars have built well from within, allowing them to maintain the sort of cap space that has given them an advantage to this point. But with Wyatt Johnston and Jake Oettinger set to receive significant pay bumps on their new deals, and the first year of Rantanen’s new contract kicking in, the Stars will need to get creative — along with making some difficult decisions this summer. Matt Duchene, Jamie Benn, Evgenii Dadonov, Granlund, and Ceci headline the class of unrestricted free agents.

Realistic expectations for 2025-26: Much like they were this season, the Stars will again be among that category of teams in a championship window. But what will make next season hypothetically more challenging is the fact that the young core who have been key performers on those cheap contracts are now making more money. That not only amplifies the need for the Stars to hit on players on team-friendly deals, but it ramps up the pressure to start winning in this part of their window.

May 28: Carolina Hurricanes

Projected cap space: $36.18 million

2025 draft picks: 1st, 3rd (TB), 4th, 6th, 6th (TB), 7th

What went right? Carolina had another impressive regular season. The Canes finished in second place in the Metro Division, with a 99-point effort that set them up in good position for a long playoff run.

The Hurricanes were strikingly stingy again on defense, finishing in the top 10 in goals-against average (2.80), and their penalty kill was tops in the league (83.6%). Carolina’s offense was propelled by Seth Jarvis (32 goals) and Sebastian Aho (74 points), and worked in complement with their dialed-in defense.

The Hurricanes also lucked out in the trade-gone-bad for Mikko Rantanen; while Rantanen didn’t stick around,…