AHL free agency opens with veteran depth signings across the league
Veteran signings and depth trades hit the AHL market at noon ET, with Dennis Hildeby and Devon Levi among the first big goalie moves.
Veteran AHL contributors and NHL depth pieces started changing addresses the moment free agency opened at noon ET on July 1. The first wave of names on the league tracker, including Glenn Gawdin, Zach Aston-Reese, Jack Studnicka, Riley Tufte, Mason Shaw, Samuel Blais, Scott Perunovich and Brandon Halverson, showed how quickly clubs moved to shore up affiliates that can hold together through injuries, recalls and long stretches between NHL call-ups.
The AHL framed the opening days as vital for adding veterans, Calder Cup winners and prospects looking for a new opportunity, and the early list matched that view. The board was heavy on players who can do more than fill a jersey number: Cameron Butler, Josh Dunne, Antti Tuomisto, Roland McKeown, Zac Jones, Trey Fix-Wolansky, Noah Gregor, Mads Sogaard, Olivier Rodrigue, Michael Callahan, Jett Woo, Corey Schueneman, James Hamblin, Andreas Englund, Mike Benning, Ben Jones, Jake Livingstone, Marc Del Gaizo, Brian Halonen, Jiri Patera, Brendan Gaunce, Jack Ahcan, Cam Dineen, Phil Tomasino, Ryan Suzuki, Lane Pederson and others all fit the same mold of usable depth with enough upside to matter if the NHL parent club needs a lift.
The contract mix told the same story. The tracker showed 1-year, 2-way deals, 2-year, 2-way deals, 1-year AHL deals, 2-year AHL deals and one-way NHL contracts, a spread that matters because each one shapes how freely a club can move a player between levels. For AHL teams, that flexibility is often the difference between a roster that can survive a rash of injuries and one that gets thinned out the moment the NHL calendar turns.
The timing raised the stakes even more. The Toronto Marlies won the 2026 Calder Cup on June 19, giving teams only a short runway to turn playoff lessons into offseason decisions before the market opened. The first day also brought trade movement that affects depth charts as much as pure signings, with Tampa Bay landing Dennis Hildeby from Toronto and Edmonton acquiring Devon Levi from Buffalo. Those moves underline how closely the league’s goaltending and prospect pipeline decisions are tied to NHL roster planning.
The AHL’s tracker, daily-report updates and transactions pages are all changing in real time, and that speed is the point. Day one was never going to be about one headline signing, but about how many clubs could solve several roster problems at once while the market was still wide open.
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