Are NHL Teams Losing Interest In Reclamation Projects?

If you skim the list of remaining NHL free agents, a few names jump out as reclamation projects. Two of those players in particular are forwards Jonathan Drouin and Patrik Laine, both top-3 picks a decade or more ago. NHL teams used to jump at the chance to grab a player with upside on the cheap and still do. A good example is the Pittsburgh Penguins signing Anthony Mantha last summer to a low-risk one-year deal that worked out really well (until the playoffs). In the case of Drouin and Laine, it is curious that they haven’t signed NHL deals yet given their draft pedigree and NHL production, but then again, they have had several changes of scenery and ended up here.

For years, the NHL template has been to find a player whose career has stalled, sign him to a cheap, short-term contract, and hope that a blank slate sparks something in his game. Drouin and Laine have ironically been that before, and in Drouin’s case it worked out quite well in Colorado just a few years ago. Laine got the same opportunity with Columbus and then Montreal, and while he scored many power-play goals in Montreal a few years ago, he didn’t do much else. Drouin and Laine have had very similar career trajectories and share many similarities on the ice, although Drouin is a playmaker and Laine is a goal-scorer. Now they’re linked as two of the highest-profile free agents left on the market, which makes you wonder whether NHL teams are less interested in reclamation projects or simply not interested in Drouin and Laine as reclamation projects.

But Laine is just 28 years old and a former two-time 40-goal scorer with 224 goals in 537 NHL games; one might think he still has something left in the tank. Just two years ago, Laine posted 20 goals in 52 games, which led people to believe he’d regained his goal-scoring touch. However, during the 2025-26 season, everything fell apart as Laine recorded just a single assist in five games before undergoing surgery for a core muscle injury that kept him out for the rest of the year. Laine is clearly talented, but troubling signs likely explain why he remains unsigned.

NHL teams might not believe he can ever score 20-30 goals in a season again, especially given his inability to stay in the lineup. And if he can’t score, Laine is a significant liability. His defense has always been a weakness, and if his injury has affected his shot at all, his impact on the ice would be minimal, and he would be a liability given his poor play in his own zone. That would be a tough pill to swallow for teams looking for scoring, because if Laine goes cold or struggles to get his shots, you are almost playing shorthanded with him on the ice.

Drouin is an older, perhaps less polarizing reclamation project. He’s 31 and has played 671 NHL games, tallying 398 points. He’s just two years removed from registering 56 points in 79 games with Colorado, then followed that with 37 points in 43 games during the 2024-25 season. Last year, Drouin had just 24 points in 64 games split between the New York Islanders and St. Louis Blues. The Blues acquired Drouin in the Brayden Schenn deal to make the money work, but they bought him out after just nine games. It was a disastrous year for a once highly touted prospect.

The biggest issues likely facing Drouin and Laine are probably similar to those that faced other players, such as Michael Bunting. The NHL has become a young man’s game, with 283 players in the league born in the 2000s. That represents a staggering 39% of NHL players. And those players come with something even reclamation projects don’t offer: much bigger upside, cheaper contracts, and organizational control. Just look at a reclamation project like Mantha in Pittsburgh last year. He had one good year and bounced to New Jersey; had he been a rookie, the Penguins would still hold his rights for another six years. That is part of why younger players are more attractive to teams than players like Laine and Drouin.

Then there is the analytics side of things, which has changed how teams view players. 20 years ago, teams would’ve lined up to sign Drouin after his 56-point season with the Avalanche. But he had to settle for short-term money because teams understood his real impact, not just his assists and points. In Colorado, Drouin found a niche, but he did little beyond making the occasional solid pass to an Avalanche star, who could generally bury their shots.

Then teams have to consider the opportunity cost of signing a Drouin or Laine. If they give up that roster spot, a young player might not get the chance to get NHL reps and could see his development suffer, which teams are reluctant to risk after putting so many resources into their young players. This is likely a common question for NHL teams when considering players like Drouin and Laine: will the potential upside of having this player create a significant opportunity cost for our young players?

Laine and Drouin’s careers aren’t necessarily over, and one or both will likely find an NHL contract this season. But their long, drawn-out free agency is worth watching, as they are hardly the only veterans with consistency issues who have had to wait to get paid. The aforementioned Mantha didn’t get nearly the money he expected this summer, and Bunting fell well short of contract projections. The list of players who have had to be patient for their next contract keeps growing, and as the NHL moves more and more toward young players, it may become even more common to see veterans sitting into the fall every year.