Many players across the league prefer not to engage in extension discussions when the regular season gets underway, wanting to solely focus on their on-ice performance and not the off-ice situation. That doesn’t appear to be the case for Islanders center Brock Nelson, however, who indicated to reporters including Ethan Sears of the New York Post that he’s open to having in-season negotiations about a new deal.
The 32-year-old has become a much more impactful player offensively over the past three seasons. Before then, his career bests were 26 goals and 54 points but since 2021-22, he has notched at least 34 goals and 59 points in each of the last three years. Last season, Nelson had 34 goals and 35 assists while averaging a little over 18 minutes a night while adding two goals and two helpers in five postseason appearances.
There’s a case to be made that Nelson’s contract has become a team-friendly one as it stands to reason that if he was a free agent this summer coming off three straight 30-goal years, he could have landed more than his current $6MM price tag on a multi-year deal.
However, Sears suggests that the prudent move for the team at this point would be to hold off on those discussions for a while. If the team falters and finds themselves in a selling position, they could be positioned to cash in nicely on Nelson who would quite likely be one of the top rental centers available (though there is a 16-team no-trade clause they’d need to contend with). Meanwhile, given that a breakout this late in his career isn’t generally typical, it’s also prudent for the Isles to see if Nelson can continue at this rate of production or if he’ll start to slow down.
It should be noted that the Islanders already have nearly $66MM in commitments for next season on the books to only 13 players, per PuckPedia. That’s not impossible to work around but another contract at or around Nelson’s current price tag would mean that a lot of those remaining spots would need to be filled by low-cost players. And with Noah Dobson heading for a substantial raise on his current $4MM AAV and Alexander Romanov ($2.5MM) also heading for an increase, things could get very tight on their books very quickly even with a projected 5% increase in the salary cap.
With all that in mind, while Nelson would probably like to get a deal done sooner than later even if it comes in-season, that probably isn’t going to be happening for the foreseeable future.