- Anthony Mantha leads this year’s UFA class in scoring but sits unsigned a week and a half into free agency
- The 31-year-old winger wants a longer-term deal, and teams are hesitant given his injury history
- Read below for the full breakdown on his market and the teams that fit
The best scorer in this year’s free agent class is still waiting for a phone to ring.
A week and a half into free agency, Anthony Mantha remains unsigned. That almost never happens to the guy who put up the most goals of any player to actually reach the open market, but here we are. Per Pro Hockey Rumors, teams aren’t biting yet on what his camp is asking for.
Mantha earned the leverage. He signed a cheap prove-it deal with Pittsburgh last summer and turned it into the best season of his career: 33 goals, 31 assists, 64 points in 81 games. It was the first time he cleared 30 goals, 30 assists, and 60 points in a single year.
Catch a piece of his career year with the Penguins:
The 30th goal came on March 31 against Detroit, the team that drafted him 20th overall back in 2013. Full-circle stuff for a guy whose career looked stuck for a long stretch.
Term is the holdup. Mantha wants a longer deal with a real raise, the kind of contract a 30-goal season usually buys. Teams remember the other side of his career too, the injuries that wiped out big chunks of seasons and the years his production dried up. He tore his ACL with Calgary in November 2024 and has been rebuilding value ever since.
There’s still a market for him. The Flyers have cap space after the Leo Carlsson offer sheet got matched. Detroit could bring back its former first-rounder. Montreal, Buffalo, and New Jersey could all take a short-term flyer, and out west the Blackhawks, Kraken, Jets, and Canucks all need top-six help.
Here’s a longer look at what he did in 2025-26:
We flagged Mantha as a name to watch when he set out to test free agency in May, and he isn’t the only quality scorer still on the board. If he drops the term ask, his list of suitors gets a lot longer in a hurry.
