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Newsstand

Rangers Hire David Quinn, Joe Sacco As Assistant Coaches

June 5, 2025 at 4:19 pm CDT | by Josh Erickson 6 Comments

4:19 p.m.: The Rangers have officially announced their new hires, according to a team statement.

8:38 a.m.: The Rangers are nearing a deal to bring David Quinn back to the organization as an assistant coach under new bench boss Mike Sullivan, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. They’re also expected to add former Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco to Sullivan’s staff after Boston declined to remove his interim tag and hired Marco Sturm today instead. Sullivan’s third and final assistant will be Ty Hennes, who had been on Sullivan’s staff with the Penguins for the last few years, Friedman adds.

Quinn, whose first NHL head coaching job was in New York from 2018 to 2021, spent last year as an assistant under Sullivan in Pittsburgh as well. He also worked with Sullivan as an assistant for the United States at the 4 Nations Face-Off.

It’s exceedingly rare to see a coach return to a team so quickly after he’d been let go, especially in a reduced capacity, but he’ll take the chance to continue working with Sullivan after coming up short in a couple of head coaching searches. The Kraken and Penguins both reportedly interviewed Quinn for their vacancies this offseason.

Quinn will presumably work with a Rangers power play that had its fair share of struggles this year. After clicking at 26.4% in their Presidents’ Trophy-winning 2023-24 season, their man-advantage units converted at just a 17.6% rate this year, fifth-worst in the league.

Sacco heads to MSG after an 11-year run in Boston that began as an assistant in the 2014-15 season. The Massachusetts native survived two head coaching changes before getting a chance himself as the interim for most of this year following Jim Montgomery’s firing in November. He coached the Bruins to a 25-30-7 record, undoubtedly dragged down by a 5-11-2 post-deadline stretch after trading away captain Brad Marchand and top-four defenseman Brandon Carlo.

The 56-year-old’s previous NHL stops include a four-year run as head coach of the Avalanche from 2009-10 to 2012-13 and one year with the Sabres as an assistant in 2013-14. He also coached the United States to a bronze medal at the 2013 World Championship.

Hennes, the tertiary assistant, is by far the least experienced among the group. The 45-year-old has only ever worked in Pittsburgh at the NHL level, only working on the bench since November 2022. Before that, he worked with the Pens for four years as a skating skills coach.

Boston Bruins| New York Rangers| Newsstand| Pittsburgh Penguins David Quinn| Joe Sacco| Ty Hennes

6 comments

Bruins Name Marco Sturm Head Coach

June 5, 2025 at 8:11 am CDT | by Josh Erickson 7 Comments

The Bruins announced Thursday they’ve appointed AHL Ontario bench boss Marco Sturm as their new head coach.

While it’s Sturm’s first time as an NHL head coach, the former Bruins winger has built up a solid resume over the last decade. He was appointed the head coach of Germany’s men’s national team for the 2015-16 cycle and held that role for three seasons, including a silver medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics.

That Olympic medal put him on the map for NHL clubs. He joined the Kings organization the following season, remaining there until today’s hiring. He spent four years as an assistant on the NHL bench under John Stevens, Willie Desjardins, and Todd McLellan before heading to Ontario to oversee their top development affiliate in 2022. During his time there, the 46-year-old helped the Reign make the Calder Cup Playoffs in each of his three seasons behind the bench and posted a 119-80-11-6 regular-season record.

Sturm was one of the first names linked to Boston’s vacancy in early May, and it was clear he had emerged as the frontrunner a couple of weeks ago. It likely took longer than the Bruins hoped to make the hiring official – they were the last team standing without a permanent head coach after the Penguins hired Dan Muse yesterday – but in the end, they get their man.

General manager Don Sweeney had the following statement on Sturm, who is the 30th head coach in franchise history:

Throughout this process, our goal was to identify a coach who could uphold our strong defensive foundation while helping us evolve offensively. We were also looking for a communicator and leader – someone who connects with players, develops young talent, and earns the respect of the room. Marco impressed us at every step with his preparation, clarity, and passion. His path – playing for multiple NHL teams, coaching internationally, and leading at both the AHL and NHL levels – has shaped a well-rounded coach who’s earned this opportunity. As a former Bruin, he understands what this team means to the city and our fans. We’re embracing a new direction with Marco behind the bench and are confident his energy, standards, and commitment to a competitive, hard-nosed brand of hockey reflect exactly what Bruins hockey should be.

As Sweeney said, this isn’t Sturm’s first go-around in Beantown. He was part of one of the most notable trades in league history, heading to Boston from San Jose when the Bruins traded Joe Thornton to San Jose midway through his Hart Trophy-winning 2005-06 campaign. Sturm, who had already been in the league for eight years and was already the best German-born player the league had ever seen, was a good top-six piece for Boston over the next five years but had a steep decline at the end of his tenure, fueled by a left knee surgery in 2009 that hampered his production for the rest of his career.

Sturm scored 242 goals and 487 points in 938 NHL games over his 14-year playing career, still placing him second all-time in scoring among German NHLers behind Leon Draisaitl. 106 of those goals and 198 of those points came in Boston over a 302-game span.

He’ll now be tasked with injecting the speedy, two-way style he flashed as a player into the Bruins’ retooling roster. The club has made increased scoring its stated priority for 2025-26 after being limited to 2.71 goals per game this year, sixth-worst in the league. He’ll likely need some help from Sweeney this summer to give him more than two 20-goal scorers from 2024-25 (Morgan Geekie, David Pastrňák) to make it happen.

Other names who reportedly made it deep in the process for the Bruins’ gig were assistant Jay Leach and ex-Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft. It’s unclear if Leach will remain on Sturm’s staff as an AC. Former assistant Joe Sacco, who spent most of this year as interim head coach following Boston’s firing of Jim Montgomery in November, is not expected to return to the organization.

Image courtesy of Kevin Hoffman-Imagn Images.

Boston Bruins| Newsstand Marco Sturm

7 comments

Re-Signing Luke Hughes Top Priority For Devils Off-Season

June 4, 2025 at 6:53 pm CDT | by Gabriel Foley 1 Comment

New Jersey Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald sat down with NHL.com’s Mike Morreale to go over the team’s priorities for the off-season. Top of conversation was star defenseman Luke Hughes, who is currently set to become  a restricted free-agent on July 1st. Fitzgerald emphasized that re-signing Hughes before that deadline is a top priority, and that the two parties have already engaged in conversations around a new deal.

The GM pointed out the team’s minimal salary cap space – just over $12MM with nine pending free agents – but he ensured that Hughes would get the priority signing. Fitzgerald told Morreale:

We’re just trying to figure out what’s best for Luke and for us and how do we make our team better with the funds that we have available… Both parties are in agreement… We’re going to get this done.

Fitzgerald’s emphasis sheds some assurance on the biggest storyline shadowing the Devils’ off-season. Hughes took on a major role in the Devils’ blue-line this season, playing opposite of 10-year NHL veteran Brett Pesce and averaging 21 minutes of ice time a game. He handled the role well, recording 37 assists, 44 points, and a minus-nine through 71 games. That mark put him on pace for 42 assists and 50 points across a full 82 games, though injuries at the start of the season forced him out of 10 appearances. Still, Hughes – still just two years into his career – was able to become the first Devils’ defenseman to record consecutive 30-assist seasons since Brian Rafalski between 2005 and 2007.

It was a fantastic follow-up to Hughes’ already-strong rookie performance. He improved across the board, and even grew his plus-minus from a minus-25 to a minus-nine. He still has layers to add to his game and a clear need for more strength in the defensive zone – but all signs point towards the Devils having a star on their hands. His career 0.60 point-per-game scoring pace is the sixth-highest from a U22 defenseman since 2000 – ranked behind Cale Makar (0.88), Lane Hutson (0.81), Quinn Hughes (0.75), Erik Karlsson (0.69), and Dion Phaneuf (0.61).

It seems Fitzgerald is ready to reward Hughes’ promising upside this summer. He is projected to sign a long-term deal with a price tag north of $9MM by CapWages. That mark would eat up two-thirds of New Jersey’s available budget for the summer, and make it harder to re-sign even two of their nine free agents. Notable names like Cody Glass, and Jake Allen are each on expired contracts. Finding the space to bring them back could push New Jersey back to the trade market as the league heats up ahead of July 1st.

NHL| New Jersey Devils| Newsstand Luke Hughes

1 comment

Penguins Name Dan Muse Head Coach

June 4, 2025 at 11:21 am CDT | by Josh Erickson 10 Comments

The Penguins have hired Rangers assistant coach Dan Muse as their next head coach, per a team announcement. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported minutes earlier that the hire was expected to get across the finish line.

Muse is a bit of a surprise hire. He was the most recent name to be reported as a candidate for Pittsburgh’s vacancy, linked just yesterday by Larry Brooks of the New York Post.

Not too long ago, it looked like the finalists for the Pens’ job were Capitals assistant Mitch Love and Kings assistant D.J. Smith. It became apparent that Love was out of the mix and replaced by Muse as a finalist yesterday, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period relays. Love was labeled a name on which Pittsburgh was relatively high from the beginning, but the Penguins will instead opt to poach a different assistant coach in their early 40s from a Metropolitan Division rival in Muse.

This will be Muse’s first chance to be an NHL head coach. He’s spent five years in the league as an assistant, first with the Predators from 2017-18 to 2019-20 before working under Peter Laviolette in Manhattan for the past two seasons. In the interim, he was a head coach for the United States National Team Development Program and coached the Americans to a gold medal at the 2023 U-18 World Junior Championship.

The development of the Penguins’ young players will be crucial over the next few seasons as they look to quickly return to contention as Sidney Crosby’s, Kris Letang’s, and Evgeni Malkin’s careers wind down. That top-down ideology from general manager Kyle Dubas is extremely apparent with the hire of Muse, who’s won multiple accolades at the junior level – including a USHL championship as head coach of the Chicago Steel in 2017 before landing the AC job with Nashville.

Here’s Dubas’ full statement on Muse’s appointment:

During this process, we met with many candidates who we felt would have been a fit as the next head coach of the Penguins, but ultimately, Dan Muse stood out as the best choice. What separated Dan was his ability to develop players, win at all levels where he has been a head coach and his consistent success coaching special teams in the NHL. From his success in developing college and junior players, to his impactful work with veteran players during his time in the NHL, Dan has shown a proven ability to connect with players at all stages of their careers and help them to reach their potential. Additionally, his leadership of special teams units at the NHL level in both Nashville and New York produced elite results consistently. His overall body of work, attention to detail and vision for our group showed us that he is the best coach to take our team forward. We’re excited to welcome Dan, and his family, to the city of Pittsburgh.

As for the Rangers, they’ll need to continue their coaching overhaul under new bench boss Mike Sullivan, whom Muse succeeds in Pittsburgh. They’ll have an entirely new bench staff next season after firing associate coach Phil Housley and losing assistant coach Michael Peca to Jeff Blashill’s staff with the Blackhawks.

New York Rangers| Newsstand| Pittsburgh Penguins Dan Muse

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Avalanche Sign Brock Nelson To Three-Year Extension

June 4, 2025 at 10:38 am CDT | by Josh Erickson 15 Comments

The Avalanche have signed pending UFA center Brock Nelson to a three-year extension, per a team announcement. The deal carries a $7.5MM cap hit for a total value of $22.5MM, reports Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.

In doing so, Colorado takes one of the top pivots off this summer’s open market. They paid a steep price to acquire the longtime Islander from New York at the trade deadline, surrendering their 2026 first-round pick along with center Calum Ritchie, their No. 1 prospect, along with some smaller assets to land him. Losing him for nothing, especially after the Avalanche suffered a first-round playoff loss to the Stars, would have been quite the blow.

Instead, they’ll get parts of four seasons out of the 33-year-old, assuming he plays out the rest of his deal. It’s an eye-popping price tag, especially since he’s coming off somewhat of a down season with 26 goals and 56 points in 80 games split between Denver and Long Island, and a noticeable raise over his previous $6MM cap hit. Nonetheless, he’ll be the solution to fill the second-line center gap for the next few years after searching for a consistent producer following Nazem Kadri’s departure in free agency in 2022.

Nelson’s point production this season didn’t shift considerably from team to team. He posted 43 points in 61 games for the Islanders (0.70 per game) before logging 13 in 19 for Colorado down the stretch (0.68 per game). Nelson added four assists and a plus-two rating in seven playoff games for the Avs, averaging a shade under 17 minutes per game in the postseason.

Notably, the contract he signed with the Avalanche is the same one offered to him by the Islanders before they opted to trade him, Stefen Rosner of The Hockey News reports. Amid a retool with new general manager Mathieu Darche at the helm, New York is likely still happy with the move to jumpstart what was one of the worst prospect pools in the league.

Nelson’s contract will be an important comparable as other top pending UFA centers like Sam Bennett and John Tavares continue to pursue extensions with their current clubs. The deal he ended up signing came in a fair amount above the roughly $7MM AAV projected for him on a three-year deal on the open market, according to AFP Analytics.

Avalanche GM Chris MacFarland now has his center group of Nathan MacKinnon, Nelson, Charlie Coyle, and Jack Drury all under contract through next season. Coyle and Drury will become eligible to sign extensions on July 1.

Still, the premium they paid to keep Nelson from testing free agency will cause some cap headaches for MacFarland to deal with this summer. They’re down to just $1.2MM in cap space for 2025-26, according to PuckPedia. While they have a mostly full roster, they still have four open spots between them and a cap-compliant 23-man roster.

Barring a significant cap-clearing trade, their notable pending UFAs, winger Jonathan Drouin and defenseman Ryan Lindgren, are not returning. Even if they only signed players to league-minimum deals, they’d only be able to ice a bare-minimum 20-player roster out of the gate with no flexibility for a recall.

Nelson’s deal runs through the 2027-28 season, after which he’ll be able to test unrestricted free agency if he so chooses at age 36. The 2010 first-round pick could play his 1,000th game late next season if he stays healthy. He’s at 920 entering the offseason.

Image courtesy of Talia Sprague-Imagn Images.

Colorado Avalanche| Newsstand| Transactions Brock Nelson

15 comments

Nikita Kucherov Wins Ted Lindsay Award

June 4, 2025 at 10:05 am CDT | by Josh Erickson 8 Comments

Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov has won this year’s Ted Lindsay Award for the league’s most outstanding player as voted on by his peers, the NHL announced Wednesday.

Kucherov wins the 2025 honors six years after his first win, when he led the league in assists (87) and points (128) in the 2018-19 campaign. He also won the Hart Trophy that year, which he’s a finalist for again this year alongside the Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl and the Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck.

This year, Kucherov was the only overlap between Lindsay and Hart finalists – the latter voted on by Professional Hockey Writers Association members. For the player-voted honors, Kucherov beat out Avalanche stars Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.

It’s not as if Kucherov needed any more hardware to cement his Hall-of-Fame case, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. The Russian superstar turns 32 later this week but is still fully in his prime, now capturing back-to-back league scoring titles in addition to his 2019 Art Ross. He becomes the 12th player in league history to win multiple Ted Lindsay (formerly known as the Lester B. Pearson) Awards, joining Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, and Alex Ovechkin as the only active players to do so.

The award stands as nice recognition to a season full of even more milestones for the two-time Stanley Cup champion. He recorded a league-high 121 points and 84 assists in the regular season, the latter of which made him just the fourth player in league history with three consecutive 80-assist seasons. He also led the league outright in points per game (1.55), primary assists (56), power-play points (46), and power-play assists (38) in 2024-25 while averaging 21:11 per game, the second-highest deployment of his career after last season.

Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images.

Newsstand| Tampa Bay Lightning Nikita Kucherov

8 comments

Vancouver Canucks Sign Derek Forbort To One-Year Deal

June 3, 2025 at 4:29 pm CDT | by Brennan McClain 2 Comments

The Vancouver Canucks will have some added continuity to their defensive core next season. Vancouver announced they’ve re-signed defenseman Derek Forbort to a one-year, $2MM contract.

Forbort’s new deal won’t have any negative side effects on other defensemen on the roster, but it likely spells the end of Noah Juulsen’s tenure in British Columbia. The Canucks now have seven defenseman signed through the 2025-26 season, including youngsters like Victor Mancini and Elias Pettersson.

He was as advertised for the Canucks this season. Injuries limited Forbort to 54 games played, yet he still scored two goals and 11 points, making for one of the better point-per-game metrics of his 10-year career. Despite the increased offensive (for his standards), Forbort missed the playoffs for the first time in five years.

Still, if the Canucks could make a move for another right-handed defenseman, Forbort represents a nice defensive option to place next to Tyler Myers in the bottom-pairing. He’s a like-sized blue liner who takes care of the puck in the defensive zone, as evidenced by his 46.4% CorsiFor% at even strength and 90.6% on-ice save percentage at even strength.

Unfortunately, retaining Forbort won’t help what plagued Vancouver this season. The Canucks boasted one of the top penalty kills, and had a respectable goals-against average, but their lethargic offense cost them dearly. Now that the defensive core is settled, the Canucks can spend the rest of the summer re-imagining their forward core.

Newsstand| Transactions| Vancouver Canucks Derek Forbort

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Flyers Sign Noah Cates To Four-Year Extension

June 3, 2025 at 9:40 am CDT | by Josh Erickson Leave a Comment

The Flyers have signed forward Noah Cates to a four-year, $16MM extension, according to a team announcement. The deal is worth $4MM against the cap and runs from the 2025-26 to 2028-29 campaigns. There’s no trade protection in the deal, reports Kevin Kurz of The Athletic. His year-by-year breakdown is as follows, per PuckPedia:

2025-26: $3.75MM base salary, $1.25MM signing bonus ($5MM total)
2026-27: $3MM base salary, $1MM signing bonus ($4MM total)
2027-28: $4MM base salary
2028-29: $3MM base salary

Cates, 26, was set to be an arbitration-eligible RFA this summer with a $2.625MM qualifying offer – equal to his previous cap hit. His new deal, which takes him through his age-30 season and will cover most of his prime, comes in well north of that at a roughly 50% increase.

It’s a worthy raise for Cates, though. Coming off his third full NHL season, he did well to re-establish himself as a middle-six shutdown forward after a difficult sophomore campaign. While a natural center, faceoffs have been an issue for Cates since the beginning, and while he’s improved since his rookie year, he’s still at a 44.6% win rate for a career-high, set this past season. That’s led to increased deployment on the wing, although he did spend a good portion of 2024-25 centering a unit with Bobby Brink and Tyson Foerster.

The 2017 fifth-round pick has averaged a 14-22–36 scoring line per 82 games in parts of four NHL seasons. He slightly outpaced those totals this year, finishing fifth on the team in goals (16), seventh in assists (21), and seventh in points (37) while logging 78 games played. His four absences were healthy scratches in a five-game window to begin the season. He also ended the year with eight points in his last eight games.

Cates finished 15th in Selke Trophy voting as a rookie in 2022-23 but had a brutal follow-up campaign, posting 18 points and a minus-eight rating in 59 showings last year. This season’s offensive rebound also included resurgent defensive and two-way impacts. The Flyers controlled 58.3% of expected goals with the Foerster-Cates-Brink line on the ice at 5-on-5, according to MoneyPuck. Philly also allowed just 2.26 goals against per 60 minutes with Cates on the ice at 5-on-5, the lowest mark of any Flyers skater with at least 250 minutes of ice time, per Natural Stat Trick.

While Cates plays more of a middle-six role at even strength, he averaged nearly 16 minutes per game this season due to fringe power play and routine penalty kill deployment. He averaged 1:33 per game shorthanded, the most among any Flyers forward who ended the season with the club.

That all makes his four-by-four extension come across as a rather reasonable one for a quality third-line contributor with some upward mobility in the lineup in his prime years. After getting extensions done with Cates and Foerster in the past few days, general manager Daniel Brière has a shade under $19MM in cap space to fill just four roster spots, according to PuckPedia. The team’s lone notable pending free agents, both restricted, are Jakob Pelletier and Cameron York.

Cates is the fifth Flyer signed through the 2028-29 season, joining Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, and Owen Tippett. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent when his deal expires.

Image courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.

Newsstand| Philadelphia Flyers| Transactions Noah Cates

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Jets’ Rasmus Kupari Signs Two-Year Deal With Switzerland’s HC Lugano

June 3, 2025 at 8:42 am CDT | by Josh Erickson 1 Comment

Jets pending RFA center Rasmus Kupari has agreed to terms on a two-year deal with HC Lugano of Switzerland’s National League, the club announced today. While Kupari obviously does not intend to return to the NHL next season, Winnipeg can still retain his signing rights through the 2026-27 season with a qualifying offer before the June 30 deadline.

Kupari, acquired from the Kings in 2023’s Pierre-Luc Dubois trade, was a regular on the Jets’ fourth line this year until the trade deadline. The acquisition of Brandon Tanev from the Kraken pushed him down the depth chart, plus concussion symptoms limited his availability for a good chunk of the remaining regular season. He was cleared to return for Game 2 of Winnipeg’s first-round series against the Blues but remained out of the lineup for the entirety of the postseason.

All told, the 25-year-old played 87 games for the Jets over the last two regular seasons combined. He was a frequent healthy scratch in the first year of his tenure, although he did miss nearly two months with a shoulder issue as well, leading to just 28 appearances that year.

A first-round pick by Los Angeles in 2018, Kupari has rarely been elevated out of a fourth-line role during his five NHL seasons and hasn’t sniffed his offensive ceiling as a result. He had a career-high 15 points in 66 games with the Kings in his final year there before the trade. After signing a two-year, $2MM contract with the Jets following his acquisition, Kupari mustered a 5-4–9 scoring line with a minus-six rating over the life of the deal while averaging just 9:54 of ice time per game.

What Kupari lacks in offensive production, he’s somewhat compensated for in other areas of his game. He’s averaged 97 hits per 82 games over his career, wins over 50% of his faceoffs, and had good possession metrics in heavy defensive deployment in 2024-25 (49.0 CF%, 50.0 xGF%, 76.1 dZS%) at even strength.

That’s not Kupari’s calling card, though. He’s flirted with the point per game mark in the AHL before and had 33 points in 43 games for Kärpät in Finland’s top league back in 2018-19 before coming over to North America. It’s sensible that he’d look for more opportunity than he’ll realistically land in Winnipeg or anywhere else in the NHL next season by heading back to Europe.

A two-year deal with Lugano will walk Kupari to unrestricted free agent status in the 2027 offseason unless the Jets reach a deal to bring him back to the NHL before July 1 of that year. He was owed a $1.1MM QO this summer, though, making him a legitimate non-tender candidate given his limited deployment.

Image courtesy of James Carey Lauder-Imagn Images.

NLA| Newsstand| Transactions| Winnipeg Jets Rasmus Kupari

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Lightning Sign Yanni Gourde To Six-Year Contract

June 2, 2025 at 11:50 am CDT | by Gabriel Foley 24 Comments

The Tampa Bay Lightning have committed to their core, signing center Yanni Gourde to a lofty six-year, $13.98MM contract extension. The deal will carry Gourde through his age-39 season and carries an annual average value (AAV) of $2.33MM.

Gourde will take a substantial pay cut for the benefit of term on his new deal. He concluded a six-year, $31MM contract – with an annual salary of $5.17MM – this season. The deal was originally signed with the Lightning in 2019, though he was claimed by the Seattle Kraken in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft. He wound up spending four years of his last deal in Seattle, before a trade at the 2025 Trade Deadline returned him to Tampa Bay alongside winger Oliver Bjorkstrand.

Now, Gourde will lock up his foreseeable future in Tampa Bay. He’s already won two Stanley Cups with the club; serving as a pivotal piece of the club’s back-to-back wins in 2020 and 2021. Gourde defined his dominant two-way style in playoff games with Tampa Bay, and added to it 14 points in 25 games of the 2020 run and seven points in 23 games of the 2021 run. All the while, he served a key role as the defensive backing to high-offense centers like Brayden Point and Steven Stamkos.

It’s that two-way, middle-six role that Gourde will continue in moving forward. He scored a modest seven goals and 31 points in 57 games this season, including 14 points in 21 games after returning to Tampa Bay. That scoring total put Gourde on pace for 45 points across the full season; a mark that would fall closely in-line with his typical scoring pace. He has routinely rivaled 40 points in his healthy seasons, and even managed back-to-back 48-point seasons with Seattle in 2021-22 and 2022-23.

Gourde’s career continues to stand as a testament to what a relentless mindset can earn. He was left undrafted through the 2010, 2011, and 2012 classes – and made his pro debut in 2012 on a minor-league contract. He earned a demotion to the ECHL for parts of the 2012-13 and 2013-14 season, but found unique ways to play through contact and make his 5-foot-9, 175-pound frame stick out. Gourde earned his way back into the AHL where he continued through the 2016-17 season.

Then, he broke out in a dazzling way. Even through Cup wins and a defined lineup role, Gourde’s first full season in the NHL in 2017-18 continues to stand as his career-year. He managed career-highs across the board, netting 25 goals, 39 assists, and 64 points while appearing in all 82 games of Tampa Bay’s season. The marks landed Gourde fourth on the team in total scoring at the end of the regular season, behind three players likely headed for the Hall of Fame in Nikita Kucherov, Stamkos, and Point.

Gourde caught lightning with his smooth-faced season in Tampa Bay – and has since found a way to turn it into 602 games and a decade-long career in the NHL. This new deal will carry him through the bulk of the next decade, and surely the entirety of his remaining career. No matter how Tampa Bay ebbs and flows over the next six years, Gourde’s growth from ECHL scorer to NHL lock will undoubtedly go down as a tremendous triumph against all odds.

Newsstand| Tampa Bay Lightning| Transactions Yanni Gourde

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