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Archives for June 2025

Boston Bruins Hire Steve Spott As Assistant Coach

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The Boston Bruins have hired their third assistant coach for the 2025-26 NHL season, joining Chris Kelly and Jay Leach. The Bruins announced they’ve hired Steve Spott as their final assistant coach, and he’ll primarily work with the team’s power play.

Despite spending most of his adult life in varying roles for the OHL’s Plymouth Whalers and Kitchener Rangers, Spott didn’t join the professional ranks until the 2013-14 season, when he was named head coach of the Toronto Marlies. Spott coached the Marlies to a 45-25-2-4 record, a North Division title, and a Western Conference Final appearance. That one-year test as the Marlies head coach earned Spott a promotion to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ bench in the 2014-15 season as an assistant coach.

After two years with the Maple Leafs organization, Spott joined Pete DeBoer’s staff with the San Jose Sharks ahead of the 2015-16 season. The two had previously worked together in Kitchener and enjoyed success with the Sharks, reaching the Stanley Cup Final in 2016. Unfortunately, the two were fired midway through the 2019-20 season after the Sharks got off to a 15-16-2 start.

It wouldn’t take long for either to find work, as Spott and DeBoer were both hired by the Vegas Golden Knights in their same roles a month later. Their time in Vegas was short-lived, and both were let go after the Golden Knights failed to make the playoffs in the 2021-22 season.

Continuing to work together, DeBoer brought Spott with him to the Dallas Stars for the 2022-23 NHL season. Spott and DeBoer led the Stars to three consecutive Western Conference Finals, but they did not reach the Stanley Cup Final. Dallas finished with a top-10 powerplay in two out of three years with Spott serving as the team’s primary powerplay coach.

Dallas Stars Sign Mavrik Bourque To One-Year Deal

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Shortly after announcing a new one-year deal for defenseman Nils Lundkvist, the Dallas Stars have signed their only remaining restricted free agent. According to a team announcement, the Stars have signed forward Mavrik Bourque to a one-year, $950K contract for the 2025-26 NHL season.

Re-signing Bourque relatively early was a smart play by General Manager Jim Nill. Given their projected salary cap space entering the summer and Bourque’s combination of youth and skill, he was a prime offer sheet candidate this offseason. Now, he’ll remain with the Stars on a sub-$1MM deal.

The only concern with this deal is that Dallas was unable to secure a longer contract for him. According to PuckPedia, the Stars have less than $3MM in financial wiggle room, meaning they were practically forced to give Bourque a short-term deal to keep the salary low.

Despite already having solid players at the NHL level, Bourque forced himself onto the NHL roster this past season. Bourque had a historic season with the AHL’s Texas Stars in 2023-24, scoring 26 goals and accumulating 77 points in 71 games, along with three goals and 11 points in seven playoff contests. He likely had to buy a new shelf for his hardware, earning the AHL’s Les Cunningham Award, John B. Sollenberger Trophy, President’s Award, and First All-Star Team honors.

Due to the depth of the Stars’ roster, Bourque had limited opportunities in 2024-25. Still, he had a quality rookie season, scoring 11 goals and 25 points in 72 games, averaging 12:41 of ice time per game. Despite finishing 11th among forwards with more than 20 GPs in ice time at even strength, Bourque finished third among forwards in CorsiFor% at even strength with a 52.6% rate.

Dallas Stars Sign Nils Lundkvist To One-Year Deal

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A day after re-signing Matt Duchene to a four-year deal and trading Mason Marchment to the Seattle Kraken, the Dallas Stars have gotten another piece of business finished. According to a team announcement, the Stars have signed defenseman Nils Lundkvist to a one-year, $1.25MM contract for the 2025-26 NHL season, matching his projected qualifying offer.

According to PuckPedia, the new deal reduces Dallas’s available cap space to $3.705MM, with six players projected to reach unrestricted free agency, and Mavrik Bourque as the only remaining restricted free agent on the team. A few more transactions are needed to achieve the financial flexibility required, but the Stars continue taking steps in the right direction.

Whether through trade or free agency, the depth leaving Dallas this summer could create a large opportunity for Lundkvist. Outside of defensemen Mathew Dumba and Ilya Lyubushkin (who could be traded in the coming days), Lundkvist is the top right-handed option for the Stars on the blue line.

It’ll be difficult for him to have a worse season than the 2024-25 campaign. Limited by injuries for much of the campaign, Lundkvist finished the 2024-25 season with five assists in 39 games, averaging 15:01 of ice time per night. In Lundkvist’s defense, he performed much better with increased availability from 2022 to 2024, scoring eight goals and 35 points in 119 games, averaging 15:13 of ice time.

Lundkvist’s primary value lies in his defensive play, which explains why he was selected in the first round of the 2018 NHL Draft. Since joining the Stars during the 2022-23 season, Lundkvist has averaged an impressive 52.9% CorsiFor% at even strength and a 92.2% on-ice save percentage at even strength. According to Hockey Reference, he’s never held an Expected +/- of less than zero throughout his tenure in Dallas.

There’s a concrete argument that Lundkvist is the Stars’ top defensive-oriented blue liner behind Esa Lindell. Because of this, there should be little doubt that he’ll find regular playing time in Dallas’s top two defensive pairings during the 2025-26 campaign.

Penguins Announce Multiple Coaching Hires

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The Pittsburgh Penguins have finalized their coaching staff under head coach Dan Muse. Pittsburgh announced that they’ve hired Todd Nelson, Nick Bonino, and Rich Clune as assistant coaches, and Troy Paquette as the team’s assistant video coach. 

In his second stint as an assistant coach at the NHL level, Nelson is arguably the most important of the hires. Serving as the head coach of the AHL’s Hershey Bears for the last three years, Nelson will make the more than 200-mile move to western Pennsylvania. It’s difficult to find many faults during his time with the Bears, amassing an impressive 65.28% win percentage with a 141-53-12-10 record in 216 regular season games. His winning ways continued in the postseason, coaching the Bears to a 31-17-0 record in 48  (64.58%) postseason contests over the last three years, with back-to-back Calder Cup Final championships.

Bonino’s formal hire comes with little surprise. The Penguins announced on their Facebook page a few days ago that Bonino had officially retired from his professional playing career and would be joining the team’s bench for the 2025-26 campaign. Coupled with his time on the ice, the 2025-26 campaign will be his fourth with Pittsburgh.

Like Nelson and Bonino, the Penguins are also bringing in a former NHLer in Clune. The longtime veteran for the AHL’s Toronto Marlies began his coaching career shortly after retiring in 2022-23 as the Marlies’ development coach. He’s coming to Pittsburgh on the heels of his first coaching job in the NHL, serving as an assistant coach for the Anaheim Ducks on Greg Cronin’s bench last season.

Avalanche Sign Jason Polin, Matthew Stienburg To One-Year Deals

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In separate announcements, the Colorado Avalanche shared that they’ve signed forwards Jason Polin and Matthew Stienburg to one-year deals through the 2025-26 season. According to contract data provided by Puck Pedia, Polin will earn an NHL salary of $775K and $130K in the AHL. No contract details for Stienburg have been disclosed, but his salary will likely fall within a similar range.

Polin’s new deal comes with some surprise. The former Hobey Baker Award finalist hasn’t come close to the scoring output that he demonstrated with the NCAA’s Western Michigan University Broncos. Throughout his tenure with Colorado, the Holt, MI native has scored 15 goals and 30 points in 88 AHL contests, and only one goal in nine NHL appearances. Still, given the improbable number of injuries sustained by the Avalanche throughout the 2024-25 season, it makes sense that the team would like to retain most of their depth pieces in the system.

Like Polin, Stienburg signed with the organization out of college, though he had been previously drafted by the Avalanche in 2019, from Cornell University. Unlike Polin, Stienburg didn’t come to the organization with as much hype, given his career high of 13 goals and 29 points in 28 games with Cornell during his junior campaign in 2021-22.

Similarly to many of his peers, Stienburg earned a call-up with Colorado this past season, due to injuries to players on the NHL roster. Going scoreless in eight games, Stienburg’s only notable play was earning a two-game suspension for elbowing Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Erik Černák.

Link to the team’s announcement for Polin.

Link to the team’s announcement for Stienburg.

Dallas Stars Re-Sign Cameron Hughes To Two-Year Deal

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As announced by their AHL affiliate, the Texas Stars, the Dallas Stars have re-signed forward Cameron Hughes to a two-year, two-way contract. Although the team hasn’t confirmed his upcoming salary, the contract is likely to pay Hughes an AAV of $ 775K at the NHL level.

The former sixth-round pick of the Boston Bruins recently completed his first season with the Stars organization. The AHL Stars’ assistant captain finished third in scoring on the team, tallying 23 goals and 57 points in 69 games, with four additional goals and 19 points in 14 postseason contests, this time leading the team.

Still, as previously mentioned, Texas isn’t where Hughes began his professional playing career. As the 165th overall pick of the 2015 NHL Draft, it would take an additional three years for Hughes to debut with the AHL’s Providence Bruins. He was relatively successful with AHL Providence, primarily as a secondary scorer from 2018 to 2021. It wasn’t until the 2021-22 season that Hughes nearly doubled his previous career-high, scoring 14 goals and 45 points in 61 games.

Becoming a free agent after the 2021-22 campaign, Hughes settled on a two-year, $1.53MM agreement with the Seattle Kraken. His departure from the Bruins organization marked the final time he has played at the NHL level, appearing in one game during the 2019-20 season and another in the 2020-21 season.

Hughes’ two-year commitment with the Kraken proved wildly successful at the AHL level, this time with the Coachella Valley Firebirds. Scoring 44 goals and 113 points in 130 regular-season games, with another four goals and 39 points in 44 postseason contests, Hughes helped the Firebirds reach back-to-back Calder Cup Finals.

Rangers Sign Matthew Robertson To Two-Year Extension

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The New York Rangers have signed defenseman Matthew Robertson to a two-year contract extension. The deal will carry two-way status in year one, and one-way status in year two. Both years will have a league-minimum, $775K cap hit at the NHL level.

This move is a tidy piece of business, and checks one of the 14 pending restricted-free agents off of New York’s to-do list. Robertson spent the majority of last season with the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack. He graduated into a top-end role with the club as the year went on, and finished the season with a defense-leading 25 points in 60 games played. Interestingly, only one of those points was a goal – scored just four games into the season in a comeback win over the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Robertson went on to lean into a defense-first role, and earned the first two games of his NHL career in New York’s final two games of the regular season.

Robertson’s NHL debuts didn’t come with any scoring, but nonetheless stood as two promising performances. He posted a plus-three across the two matchups, and earned 20 minutes of icetime in the latter of the two: a 4-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. Robertson looked capable of handling NHL tempo and speed, using his full-size frame and lengthy reach to control opponents into the boards and knock the puck loose. Those will be the traits that headline his game, and potentially earn him NHL reps, as soon as the start of next season.

Hurricanes Sign Eric Robinson To Four-Year Extension

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The Carolina Hurricanes have signed forward Eric Robinson to a four-year, $6.8MM contract extension per a team release. The deal will carry an annual cap hit of $1.7MM, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.

Robinson has found a healthy stride in the latter half of his pro career. He originally went undrafted, and didn’t earn NHL acclaim until signing an entry-level contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets at the end of the 2017-18 season. Robinson was coming off of four impressive seasons at Princeton University. His rookie season in the AHL in 2018-19 was marked with solid impacts and hard effort – ultimately earning Robinson 24 points in 45 AHL games and the first extended NHL stint of his career, where he went scoreless in 13 games.

But Robinson wasn’t deterred – and continued to provide a strong impact to the AHL lineup through the start of the 2019-20 season. After just 14 games, Columbus made the move to promote him to a menial fourth-line role. He began rotating in-and-out of the lineup, though never managed much in the way of scoresheet impact. Prior to this season, his career-years stood as a 27-point performance in 67 games of the 2021-22 season, and 24 points in 72 games of the 2022-23 campaign.

Columbus relinquished Robinson last season, shipping him off to the Buffalo Sabres for a menial return. But Robinson began to show flashes of impact in the Buffalo lineup – even through scoring just nine points in 40 games. His stat line wasn’t enough to convince Buffalo to re-sign him, but it did catch the eye of new Carolina Hurricanes general manager Eric Tulsky, who signed Robinson to a one-year, $950K contract last summer.

That proved to be one of the more lucrative deals of the NHL season. Robinson posted 14 goals and 32 points while appearing in all 82 games of Carolina’s season. He was a low-stakes, high-reward lineup addition for a Hurricanes team that routinely relies on impactful pieces down the lineup. With that performance, Robinson has now earned the first million-dollar deal of his eight-year NHL career – and solidified a contract through his age-34 season.

Flyers Hire Todd Reirden, Dylan Crawford As Assistant Coach

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6/20: Philadelphia has made Reirden’s appointment official. They also announced they’ll be hiring Dylan Crawford to an assistant role as well. Crawford spent the last seven years in various video coaching positions across the NHL – first spending three years as an assistant video coach in Chicago, then getting promoted to head video coach for one year, and most recently continuing to serve the last three years as head video coach for the Vancouver Canucks. The 35-year-old Crawford’s move to assistant coach will mark the next big step in his young coaching career.

6/19: The Flyers have “made progress” toward hiring former Capitals head coach Todd Reirden to complete Rick Tocchet’s staff of assistants, reports Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff.

Reirden, 54 later this month, is the third and final assistant hire for the Flyers this offseason, concluding what’s been a complete staff turnover aside from goaltending coach Kim Dillabaugh. He’s likely geared as a replacement for former associate coach Brad Shaw, who took over as interim head coach in the final days of the season after John Tortorella’s firing but finished as the runner-up to Tocchet in their head coaching search several weeks ago. He’ll presumably manage the club’s defense group while new assistants Jaroslav Svejkovský and Jay Varady, whose hirings were announced earlier this month, will handle other duties.

Reirden, a former NHL defenseman himself, has spent his entire coaching career in the Metropolitan Division, mostly with the Penguins. He landed his first professional job there as an AHL assistant for the 2008-09 season but was promptly promoted to head coach when the Pens brought Dan Bylsma up from the minors to coach the NHL club en route to the 2009 Stanley Cup. Reirden spent one full season as head coach in WBS before being promoted again to an assistant role on the NHL bench in 2010. He spent four years in the role before being fired alongside Bylsma in the 2014 offseason.

The Illinois native was quickly scooped up by the Capitals to serve as an assistant on Barry Trotz’s staff, and he was named their head coach four years later when Trotz departed the organization following their Stanley Cup victory in 2018. Reirden compiled an 89-46-16 (.642) record in two seasons behind the Washington bench before being fired following the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Reirden then returned to Pittsburgh, where he again served as an associate coach under Mike Sullivan from 2020-21 until the former’s dismissal last year. While both he and Tocchet share a former employer with the Pens, their tenures didn’t overlap there. Nonetheless, he’ll get his next NHL job after not coaching at all during the 2024-25 season.

Jonathan Toews In Agreement On One-Year Deal With Winnipeg Jets

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The Winnipeg Jets are approaching a one-year contract with three-time Stanley Cup winner Jonathan Toews, per Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic. The team later confirmed Toews’ agreement to join the club when he becomes eligible to sign on July 1st.

The details of Toews’ contract with Winnipeg have been revealed by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman and Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Free Press. Toews will carry a base salary of $2MM, and receive a $550K bonus for every 20 regular season games that he plays. He will also receive a $500K bonus if the Jets make the playoffs and he appears in 50-or-more games. He’ll additionally receive a $250K bonus for each playoff round Winnipeg wins – assuming he plays in at least 50 percent of games – and a $1MM bonus if Winnipeg wins the Stanley Cup.

This news caps off a saga surrounding Toews’ professional career spanning the last four years. He hasn’t played in a pro game sine April 13, 2023 – though he only managed to play in 53 games of the 2022-23 season collectively. His absences were caused by a diagnosis with Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), which can make workouts painful to get through even on a small scale. Toews spoke at lengths about his illness and rehabilitation process, which included a journey to India where he practiced Ayurveda – a traditional healing approach focused on centering spiritual wellness and purging unnecessary toxins.

It was on the heels of his five-week trip to India that Toews first spoke about making a return to the NHL level. Sparks around that fire grew stronger as the months went on, ultimately leading to Toews fully committing to a return in late May. With that commitment came plenty of NHL interest. The Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning were both listed as strong contenders to land Toews’ next contract alongside the Jets. But Toews will ultimately settle on continuing his career with his hometown club, and return to pastures of Winnipeg where he grew up.

The importance of Toews’ decision to move north can’t be understated. He is unequivocally one of the greatest Blackhawks in franchise history, having captained the team to three Cup wins starting at the clean-shaven age of 21. He was the yin to Patrick Kane’s yang for the entirety of the 2010s, serving as the responsible and impactful defensive backstop that facilitated Kane’s all-out offense. Toews reached unprecedented heights in that role. His 883 points in 1,067 games averages out to 29 goals, 39 assists, and 68 points per 82-game season. He tacked onto that Selke Trophy votes in every season between 2009 and 2020, including a Trophy win in 2013 and runner-up bids in 2011 and 2015.

Toews will go down in history as one of the league’s all-time great two-way forwards, in the vein of modern greats like Patrice Bergeron and Aleksander Barkov. But his return to the league stands out as an interesting move. He recorded 15 goals and 31 points in his shortened 2022-23 campaign – good for an 82-game pace of 23 goals and 48 points. Those are stout numbers for a then-34-year-old Toews – but it’s been two years since he’s competed at the same level, and it’s unclear if a 37-year-old Toews will bring the same punch.

Lucky for Winnipeg, they won’t need to rely on an all-star performance from Toews to get to the next level. The squad has appeared in three consecutive postseasons, and seven of the last eight. Many of those runs have come on the back of top-line center Mark Scheifele and partner-in-crime Kyle Connor, who are both already under contract for next season. That means that a rehabilitated Toews will only need to man second-line – or, thanks to Adam Lowry, even third-line – minutes in his return to the NHL scene. A one year deal and minimal role should give Toews the chance to really get his feet under him once again. Should he perform well, the polarizing return could stretch into a multi-year campaign with his childhood-favorite NHL squad.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports, Imagn-Images.

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