NHL Agent: Don't Expect UFA's to Sign Right Now

It is some interesting times in the NHL as there's still a ton to be deciding on for next season and at this point nobody can guarantee it even takes place. 

The NHL and the NHLPA continue to chat about the financial set up of the league and a bunch of free-agents continue to sit unsigned as teams and players alike wait this thing out.

According to one agent who spoke to the Athletic's Thomas Drance, don't expect much action these next few weeks:

In early November teams were calling every day. Now it’s every other day. They’re still indicating interest, but some of them are waiting. And some of it is us. We want to wait too.

We want to see what develops out of this. At this point, it doesn’t make sense to do something until we know what things look like … If we wanted to have signed already, we could’ve done that. Then again, those teams we could’ve signed with haven’t done anything else yet either. It’s like a very long engagement, or like there’s 31 people at the dance, but there’s just no dance partners. 

There's certainly an interesting vibe around the league right now as the players are pissed off, the owners aren't even sure they want to hold a season with no fans, and the free-agents on the market aren't in a rush to sign contracts. 

The waiting games continues and hopefully sometime over the course of the next 10-14 days we will have some answers. For now it appears a February start with 48-60 games is most likely, including a schedule where you play the same team three out of four nights.

Are you sure you're ready for this?

Photo credit:  Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire