The St. Louis Blues aren’t on holiday. After extending both Sammy Blais and Marco Scandella earlier this week, the team has announced a new two-year contract for Mackenzie MacEachern. It’s a one-way contract for the depth forward, that will carry an average annual value of $900K and take him through the 2021-22 season.
Interestingly, MacEachern was scheduled to become a restricted free agent at the end of the season after playing in exactly 80 NHL games through the first part of his career. That’s the threshold he needed to meet to be ineligible for Group VI unrestricted free agency, meaning the Blues may have dodged a bullet by having him in the lineup just before the season was suspended.
The 26-year old forward has recorded 10 goals and 15 points in those 80 games, seeing fewer than nine minutes of ice time on average. MacEachern will serve as some inexpensive depth for the Blues as they head into next season trying to squeeze a talented roster into a stagnant salary cap, something that will be made even more difficult if they try to bring back captain Alex Pietrangelo.
MacEachern’s new contract leaves just two more pending restricted free agents on the Blues roster—Jacob De La Rose and Vince Dunn.
Good to see that Big Mac will be back!