BUFFALO, N.Y.

As team executives began gathering on the arena floor an hour before the start of the NHL draft’s second round Saturday morning, a video highlighting former No. 1 selections began playing on the big-screen video boards.

The first player featured just happened to be Steven Stamkos, the top pick in 2008.

At a time when Arizonaborn center Auston Matthews was selected first by Toronto, and on the heels of the buzz the league’s expansion into Las Vegas created, the Tampa Lightning captain’s presence during the two-day draft in Buffalo was hard to overlook.

Stamkos is set to be, as Sabres general manager Tim Murray put it, the potential “big fish” in the league’s free-agency period, which opens Friday.

Buffalo, Boston and Vancouver are among the teams to have already expressed interest in Stamkos.

And others, as in the case of Toronto and Detroit, have freed up more than $10 million in salary cap space with an expectation they will jump into the bidding for the four-time, 40-goal scoring star.

Meantime, Lightning GM Steve Yzerman isn’t ready to shut the door on the possibility of re-signing Stamkos.

“I haven’t ruled out anything just yet,” Yzerman said. “The process hasn’t changed.”

Stamkos heads a list of pending free agents that includes St. Louis center David Backes, New York Islanders forward Kyle Okposo and Los Angeles forward Milan Lucic. Other players could be available by trade, including Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler.

Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin dismissed the latest round of speculation that he’s shopping star defenseman P.K. Subban.

And Penguins GM Jim Rutherford was blunt in telling the NHL Network that he’s not trading star forward Evgeni Malkin.

The Red Wings became the latest team to jump into the Stamkos sweepstakes after GM Ken Holland made the deft move of trading the rights to star forward Pavel Datsyuk to Arizona on Friday.