The NHL’s Long Summer Starts Now

The season is over, which means every front office suddenly turns into a chess club with salary-cap math. The draft, the trade market, and free agency now become the real event calendar, and plenty of teams are already deciding whether they are retooling, resetting, or pretending they are only one piece away. This is the stretch where contenders try to stay sharp and everybody else tries to sell hope without saying the quiet part out loud.