Teams with money will compete for a good crop of free agents this weekend in the EURO. On the auction block will be 23 Type 3 free agents with OV Ratings of 80 or higher, including five with ratings over 85. A cursory look at team finances (before this Type 2 step is done) shows that 16 to 18 teams have the cap space to get themselves into the running for the very best free agents. The only ones that seem too tight to the cap to spend much are every team in the Ahearne Division except for Copenhagen, and Prague Sparta, Munich Red Bull and perhaps Moscow Dynamo.
Here are the positions of the top 23 free agents:
- Goalies – 5
- Defensemen – 5
- LW – 4
- C – 6
- RW – 3
If you like big names, there are many including Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Patrick Kane, Nicklas Backstrom, and Henrik Lundquist. And speaking of names, there are also two T.J.s – Brennan and Brodie.
Of those 23, many have plenty of fuel in the tank. Eight just turned 30 years old and only three are 35 years old or older – Paul Stastny and goalies Brian Elliott and Lundquist.
Two top goalies heading for huge paydays head the list. Frederik Andersen, 30, has played six seasons for the Geneva Generals and his save percentage has never been below 90 percent and his career goals against average is 2.82. No one doubts the Dane will have several offers in the $10 million neighborhood to consider.
Likewise for Simeon Varlamov, 32, who played in St. Petersburg for the last two seasons. His career stats aren’t quite as eye-popping as Andersen’s but he won 40 games last season with a 2.49 goals against average and 90.8 save percentage.
Both goalies are coming off seasons that saw their teams make major improvements and they are surely main reasons for the success. St. Petersburg went from 81 points and a 15th place finish in Season 8 to 101 points and a 5th place finish in Season 9. Geneva improved in that time from 87 to 102 points and jumped from 13th place to 4th place. This would be a terrible time for either team to lose a top goalie but both have enough cap space to make top competitive offers if they really want to.
There are about 20 players in the league with higher OV ratings than Derek Stepan, but there isn’t a single free agent with a higher rating. The 30-year-old center played in Edinburgh for 3 seasons and in Madrid for the last 6. He has scored between 80 and 90 points in his last five seasons with more than 250 shots each of those seasons. And he’s classified as a two-way center. All-time in the EURO League, he ranks 12th in turnover ratio with 275 more takeaways than giveaways. A team that is looking for a great center will be looking first at Stepan and Backstrom this weekend, with Crosby right there with them. The top left wing on the list is Ovechkin and the top right wing is Kane.
And for teams in need of a top-pair defensemen, there are offensive-minded Jake Gardiner and Kevin Shattenkirk, who spent a great deal of their careers together in London, and defensive-minded hitting machine Daniel Fernholm.
Above, we’ve mentioned only 10 of the Top 23 free agents. General Managers will have plenty of options during this free agent frenzy. There are oodles of good veterans available, but don’t shop too far down the list. Remember that players signed at this step come with no-movement clauses, so they will be on your pro team squad for the entire season. They cannot be waived, traded or bought out. That deterrent means there will surely be plenty of good players looking for work even after the free agent frenzy step.
And there could be some excellent Type 2 free agents available if teams let them slide through the current step.
