{"id":698672,"date":"2026-10-29T21:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T21:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/698672\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T21:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T21:30:14","slug":"snapshots-shabanov-lardis-2027-draft-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/698672\/","title":{"rendered":"Snapshots: Shabanov, Lardis, 2027 Draft \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

While it\u2019s still very early in the 2026-27 season, it\u2019s not too early to begin looking at players who may be setting themselves up to earn a big pay raise in the summer. With the salary cap rising at a steep rate, promising individual performances can have even more weight as teams look to identify and pay players before those players can realize the full extent of their value on the open market. The Anaheim Ducks\u2019 decision to pay Tristan Luneau<\/a>, with less than 30 NHL games to his name, a $7.2MM AAV on a long-term contract extension serves as an illustration of this principle in action.<\/p>\n

One player who is lining himself up to earn a substantial pay raise is Minnesota Wild winger Max Shabanov<\/a>. The 26-year-old former KHL star endured a difficult NHL rookie season with the New York Islanders in 2025-26, and New York ultimately non-tendered him after he scored just 18 points in 44 games. The Wild inked Shabanov to a one-year, $1.6MM deal, and he\u2019ll be an RFA with arbitration rights over the summer. His early-season form suggests a major pay raise could be in store, as he\u2019s found himself a regular role on Minnesota\u2019s top power play unit and has produced nine points in his first 13 games with the Wild.<\/p>\n

Other notes from around the league:<\/p>\n

Given a tough 4-8-0 start to the season, it may seem natural for the Chicago Blackhawks to consider a major roster shuffle that would see top talents from the team\u2019s AHL affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs, called up. But Scott Powers of The Athletic writes<\/a> that such a decision is \u201cunlikely,\u201d at least for the time being. If Chicago did consider recalls, though, Powers indicated that top prospect Nick Lardis<\/a> would be first in line after scoring six points in five AHL contests.
\nThe 2027 NHL Entry Draft is certainly far away, but it\u2019s not too early to begin looking at which prospects may be selected at the top of the order. The Athletic\u2019s Scott Wheeler released<\/a> his preliminary ranking of the class\u2019 top 64 prospects, and, as expected, star NCAA defenseman Landon DuPont<\/a> has earned the No. 1 position. Wheeler wrote that DuPont \u201clooks like a future star defenseman in the NHL.\u201d Behind DuPont, Wheeler ranked OHL forward Dima Zhilkin<\/a> No. 2, and had a pair of Russian forwards, Sergei Skvortsov<\/a> and Nazar Privalov<\/a>, at No. 3 and No. 4, respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While it\u2019s still very early in the 2026-27 season, it\u2019s not too early to begin looking at players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[20552,96,5,14645,35971,10018,38,20307,404],"class_list":["post-698672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hockey","tag-2027-nhl-draft","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-hockey","tag-landon-dupont","tag-max-shabanov","tag-maxim-shabanov","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nick-lardis","tag-snapshots"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117526332929507326","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}