Five NHL Veterans Cut From Their PTOs Before The 2024-25 Season

The NHL’s regular season is here, which means it’s deadline time for players who participated in training camp on professional tryout offers (PTO). 

Some veterans – Max Pacioretty and Steven Lorentz in Toronto and Tyson Barrie in Calgary, for example – had great camps and landed contracts for this season. But others wound up being released from their PTO and face new questions about the future of their playing careers.

In this file, we’re looking at players from that latter group. Here are five notable players in particular who were released from their PTOs so far.

Gagner is an NHL lifer, with 1,043 regular-season games played since he broke into the league in 2007. Last year, the 35-year-old had five goals and 10 points in 28 games with the Edmonton Oilers – he also had six assists and nine points in 15 games with the AHL's Bakersfield Condors.

Gagner’s ability to keep playing at hockey’s highest level is admirable, but he was always going to be a long shot to make the high-octane Hurricanes. Like Phil Kessel last season, Gagner may just take his time and see what offers come his way during the year, but for now, he’ll have to be patient before another job opportunity pops up in the NHL or elsewhere, or he’ll have to decide whether it’s time to retire.

The 39-year-old Bellemare played for the Seattle Kraken last season, generating four goals and seven points in 40 games. He has 700 regular-season NHL games to his credit, but at nearly 40 years old, Bellemare is at or near the end of the line.

Bellemare is at best a fourth-liner and a depth asset. But unless he’s willing to play for the league-minimum salary, teams will likely pay a younger player with more upside than they are to sign him to a one-year deal. His amount of experience is his biggest selling point, but Bellemare wasn’t good enough to land a job with the Avalanche, and we don’t see him landing on an NHL team anytime soon.

Addison spent most of last season with the San Jose Sharks after a few years with the Minnesota Wild. He latched on with the Senators in September, but Ottawa cut him over the weekend, meaning the 24-year-old blueliner remains a UFA.

Addison is probably bound for the AHL for now, but if he does perform well at that level – as he did in 2021-22 when he posted 27 assists and 34 points in 43 games for the Iowa Wild – Addison will get another NHL opportunity fairly soon. Addison must play the waiting game, but that should end once a team has injuries and needs a depth addition. 

That said, if the Sharks didn't want to keep Addison, he had a tougher chance to make a Sens team with a variety of NHL-caliber right-handed defensemen already.

Hoffman once was a 36-goal and 70-point scorer, but his numbers on offense dropped significantly. Last season, he put up only 10 goals and 23 points in 66 games with the Sharks. 

The 34-year-old attempted to earn a spot with the Oilers, but he’s not the type of fourth-line energy role player Edmonton could have used, and the Oilers had depth options already.

In the two seasons before 2023-24, Hoffman averaged 14.5 goals and 67 games with the Montreal Canadiens. If teams need help producing offense, Hoffman could still be of service to them. The Oilers had more than enough depth on the wings to cut him loose, but other teams could throw him an NHL lifeline at some point in the season. It will likely take weeks, if not months, to get to that point, though. Otherwise, Europe is another option for Hoffman.

Kulemin played in his homeland of Russia since 2018, scoring somewhere in the area of 12 to 16 goals in almost every season. He did have 669 games of NHL experience with the Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Islanders, so you can’t fault him for attempting an NHL comeback as a piece of the puzzle in Ottawa. But the Sens’ depth up front made Kulemin a long shot to sign with them, and Ottawa released him at the end of September.

Kulemin is now 38 years old. While it’s not too late for him to return to the KHL and end his career at home or play in the AHL, he wanted to give himself one last shot at extending his NHL days while his son plays youth hockey in Toronto. But Kulemin didn’t have enough positive results with Ottawa in the pre-season, and that’s why the Senators parted ways with him.

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