It’s been an unusually quiet summer, particularly in the NHL’s unrestricted free agent market.

James Mirtle of the Globe & Mail recently reported that of the 621 NHL players who played 40-or-more games last season, 84 remain unrestricted free agents.

It’s not just marginal talent remaining unsigned. Notables like Marty Turco, Paul Kariya, Maxim Afinogenov, Andy Sutton, Jose Theodore, and Bill Guerin are still available and still seeking new contracts for next season.

It’s expected when most of these players are eventually signed it’ll be for considerably less than what they earned on their previous contracts, perhaps less than market value heading into the UFA period.

In an informal poll of player agents Mirtle noted most agreed the market for depth "had eroded to the point where teams aren’t willing to pay more than league minimum for the bottom 8-10 players on their rosters."

One agent suggested to Mirtle if this trend continues it could lead to a “watering-down” of the league’s talent pool as more of these UFAs unable to find lucrative contracts could turn to Europe, especially Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).

This trend however has been going on for some time but to date it hasn’t been a significant drain to the NHL talent pool and probably won’t become one over the remaining life of this CBA.

The article also suggested the contract saga of Ilya Kovalchuk, currently headed for arbitration as the NHL and NHLPA battle it out over whether or not his 17-year, $102 million deal constitutes salary cap circumvention, is partly to blame for the stagnant market. Many agents apparently believe once Kovalchuk's situation is resolved unsigned players "could get a closer look from teams waiting out the market."

This opinion however is a puzzling one. Only two teams – the Devils and LA Kings – expressed serious interest in Kovalchuk’s services.  It was rumored several teams had offered Kovalchuk a one-year deal at the league maximum salary but his camp has always maintained they were seeking long-term deals, so that would rule out all but the Kings and Devils.

Now that he’s signed a deal with the Devils, one which is expected to stand when this matter finally goes to arbitration, it has no bearing upon the remaining 29 teams.

Even if the arbiter rules in favor of the league and in the unlikely event Kovalchuk and the Devils decide not to do another deal, not even the Kings would be interested in signing him as they've pursued other options by signing Alexei Ponikarovsky to a one-year contract.

Unless Kovalchuk would then be willing to accept a one-year deal at the league maximum salary (worth over $11 million) or is willing to back off considerably from seeking a contract tenure of ten years or longer there simply won't be that many teams interested in him because at this point in the season most teams have committed the bulk of their available cap space to their respective payrolls for next season. 

The real reasons for the slow market this summer are two-fold; lack of depth of quality talent and too many teams with little available cap space.

Heading into this summer’s UFA market many observers agreed it wasn’t as deep in talent as in previous years.

Kovalchuk was the only superstar available; after him the depth of talent noticeably dropped with most of those available being aging stars passed their prime.

The notables included Paul Kariya (35), Marty Turco (34), Evgeni Nabokov (34), Sergei Gonchar (36), Pavol Demitra (35), Jose Theodore (33), Ray Whitney (38), Mike Modano (40), Saku Koivu (35), John Madden (37), Owen Nolan (38) and Bill Guerin (39).

This list of names would’ve been impressive, say, five or seven years ago, when all of these players were still in the playing primes.

Of those available who are in their primes – Afinogenov, Lee Stempniak, Denis Grebeshkov – most of them would’ve been considered second-tier in a much deeper market. All probably would’ve waited nearly as long for new contracts in previous summers as they currently are in this one.

Meanwhile, there are currently 17 teams with $8 million or less in available salary cap space, fourteen of which have 20 or more players signed to NHL contracts.

Of the thirteen teams with $10 million or more in available cap space, many – Florida, Carolina, Tampa Bay, Dallas, Phoenix, St. Louis, Anaheim, Nashville, Colorado, Atlanta and the NY Islanders – are considered “budget teams”, meaning they’re operating under self-imposed salary caps lower than the league cap of $59.4 million…in some cases, considerably lower.

It should also be noted that all but two of those teams – Atlanta and Tampa Bay – have committed payroll to 20 or more players for next season.

Columbus and Buffalo are amongst those with $8 million or less in available cap space, but they are also considered “budget teams”.

As we can see, trying to blame the status of one player for the slow movement in this summer’s free agent market is a theory which does not hold up.