Matt Martin Announces Retirement, Joins Islanders Front Office
Longtime Islanders enforcer Matt Martin has announced his retirement, per a club announcement Tuesday. He’ll join the club’s front office as a special assistant to general manager Mathieu Darche.
A fifth-round pick by the Isles as an overager in 2008, Martin rose the ranks quicker than expected for his draft slot and made his NHL debut in February 2010 amid his first professional season. He became a fourth-line fixture in his second season. He maintained that role through the 2015-16 campaign, eventually forming one of the most recognizable checking lines of the decade with Casey Cizikas and Cal Clutterbuck. While never a huge scorer, he did have 10 goals in the final season of his first stint on Long Island and averaged a remarkable 379 hits per 82 games over his first seven NHL seasons.
Martin left Long Island for the Maple Leafs in free agency in 2016, signing a four-year, $10MM contract. While that value indicated Toronto was looking for him to play an increased role compared to his fourth-line deployment in New York, the opposite happened. After averaging around 11 minutes per game with the Islanders, he averaged just 8:33 per game over two seasons in Toronto. He sat as a healthy scratch for much of the 2017-18 season and was traded back to the Islanders the following summer.
Injuries became more of a theme for Martin in his second go-around with the Isles, but he regained his role alongside Cizikas and Clutterbuck and was a lineup fixture when healthy. He was still quite effective as a checking forward up to a few years ago, even matching his career-high 19 points in 2022-23. His ice time and deployment saw a reduction beginning in 2023-24 as his already minimal offensive value disappeared, and he appeared in just 32 games last season after pondering retirement but landing a PTO and subsequent one-year deal to return to New York for his 16th NHL season.
Martin retires as the Islanders’ all-time leader in hits with 3,489, and his 3,936 career checks are 93 short of the all-time record held by his longtime teammate, Clutterbuck, who also recently announced his retirement after not playing in 2024-25. His 855 games played are the eighth-most in franchise history.
All of us at PHR wish Martin the best in retirement and congratulate him on a career that will permanently cement him with the latest iteration of Islanders hockey.
Image courtesy of Tom Horak-Imagn Images.
Hockey Hall Of Fame Announces 2025 Class
The Hockey Hall of Fame has officially announced its 2025 class in a series of X posts. The former NHL players headlining the class in their first year of eligibility are Zdeno Chára, Duncan Keith, and Joe Thornton, while Alexander Mogilny has finally been inducted after a decades-long wait.
The full class of new Hall of Famers, including women’s players and builders, is as follows:
Chára: A seven-time All-Star who captained the Bruins to the Stanley Cup in 2011, the 6’9″ defenseman was also a six-time Norris Trophy finalist and won the award in 2009. Known more for his two-way prowess than his pure offense or shutdown ability, he was a top-four threat well into his 40s and sits seventh on the all-time leaderboard with 1,680 regular-season appearances, passing Chris Chelios for most among defensemen in his final season with the Islanders three years ago. He’s already in the IIHF Hall of Fame and helped his native Slovakia to silver medals at the 2000 and 2012 World Championships. (X link)
Keith: Like Chára, Keith was one of the most dominating two-way defenders of the salary cap era. While he doesn’t have the career length or end-to-end consistency Chára boasted, Keith’s peaks were higher, particularly offensively, and he was the Blackhawks’ undisputed top defender on their Stanley Cup wins in 2010, 2013, and 2015. He played 17 NHL seasons, the first 16 of which came in a Chicago uniform. He averaged over 23 minutes per game in all of those seasons and was a two-time Norris finalist, winning it on both occasions in 2010 and 2014. He fell short of breaking Doug Wilson‘s record for all-time points by a Blackhawks defender but ranks second with 625 in 1,192 games. It’s worth noting his 421 even-strength points are more than Wilson’s 408, though. (X link)
Thornton: One of the best playmakers of all time, he’s the only men’s player in the class to not win a Cup and is arguably the best player of all time with that dubious distinction. It won’t stop him from being a first-ballot Hall of Famer, though. The four-time All-Star led the league in assists for three straight seasons coming out of the 2004-05 lockout and won the league scoring title in 2005-06, recording 96 assists in 125 points in a season that involved one of the most consequential trades in league history, sending Thornton from Boston to San Jose. Thornton remained with the Sharks in 2020 before ending his career on a pair of one-year deals with the Maple Leafs and Panthers. He ranks sixth in league history with 1,714 games played, seventh in assists (1,190), and 14th in points (1,539). Thornton’s 96 assists were the most in a single season in the salary cap era until Nikita Kucherov and Connor McDavid each hit the century mark in 2023-24. (X link)
Mogilny: Mogilny, one of the game’s true trailblazers, finally gets the call to the Hall in his 17th year of eligibility. The boxcar case was always pretty strong: a two-time All-Star, a Stanley Cup with the Devils in 2001, and 1,032 career points in only 990 games cemented him as one of the top scorers of the 1990s and early 2000s. Yet, Mogilny’s off-ice impact led to the most puzzlement about his frequent omission from the HHOF classes. He was the first player to defect from the Soviet Union and join the NHL successfully, joining the Sabres as a 20-year-old for the 1989-90 season. Aside from the NHL-run 1996 World Cup of Hockey, he never represented Russia internationally after doing so. Nonetheless, he won Olympic and World Championship gold medals as a teenager and is thus one of seven Russian members of the Triple Gold Club. He now serves as the president of Amur Khabarovsk of the Kontinental Hockey League. (X link)
Jennifer Botterill: One of the most decorated Canadian women’s players of all time, Botterill retired in 2011 before professional women’s hockey truly took off. Nonetheless, she won five World Championship gold medals (1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2007) and was a two-time MVP at the tournament. She also helped Canada to Olympic gold in 2002, 2006, and 2010, posting a 4-11–15 scoring line in 21 games there. She also recorded 340 points in just 113 games during her four-year NCAA career at Harvard. (X link)
Brianna Decker: Decker, 34, is one of the few women’s players to get in on her first year of eligibility. She retired in 2022 after representing the United States at the Olympics for the third time, winning gold there back in 2018. She also won six World Championships (2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019) and won an Isobel Cup championship with the Boston Pride of the National Women’s Hockey League in 2016. She scored 60 points in 33 NWHL games over two seasons and also added 58 points in 35 games in the CWHL. (X link)
Jack Parker: Already in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder, the 80-year-old Parker now gets the call to the Hall 12 years after his retirement. He’s one of the winningest coaches in NCAA history, serving as Boston University’s head coach from 1973-74 all the way until his retirement – a 40-year run. He was a seven-time Hockey East champion with the Terriers and won NCAA Coach of the Year honors in 1975, 1978, and 2009. (X link)
Danièle Sauvageau: Sauvageau makes history as the first woman to be inducted into the HHOF as a builder. She was also the first woman to coach in the QMJHL when she was named an assistant with the Montreal Rocket for the 1999-00 season. She currently serves as the GM of the PWHL’s Montreal Victoire and coached Canada to a gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics. (X link)
Image courtesy of Anne-Marie Sorvin-USA TODAY Sports.
Rangers To Send 12th Overall Pick To Penguins
The New York Rangers have decided to send the 2025 12th overall pick to the Pittsburgh Penguins, per Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic. The Rangers were on the hook for sending either their 2025 or 2026 first-round pick to the Penguins to complete a mid-season trifecta of trades. New York originally traded the pick to the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for J.T. Miller, as part of a multi-player trade. The Canucks then flipped the pick to the Penguins in a move that landed them defenseman Marcus Pettersson and forward Drew O’Connor in another multi-player deal.
The Rangers landed on this decision after finding more value in holding onto their 2026 first, per NHL.com’s Dan Rosen. It’s not necessarily a statement on New York’s behalf that they’re resigned to missing the postseason again in 2026 after falling out of the playoff frame this past season. Even an early elimination and a pick in the 16-20 range in 2026 likely holds equal or more value than this year’s No. 12 selection due to an anticipated deeper class of prospects to choose from next year.
Pittsburgh’s own pick is No. 11 overall, so they’ll have the opportunity to make back-to-back selections to add depth to a middle-of-the-pack prospect pool amid their retool. The Penguins’ system was labeled 20th in the league by The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler in January. However, they’ve since added 2024-25 SHL Rookie of the Year Melvin Fernström and 2021 first-rounder Chase Stillman to their pool in separate trades, although the latter has really struggled to adjust to the pro game.
Now equipped with two picks in the top 15, it wouldn’t be shocking to see Pittsburgh at least consider packaging the two selections or parting ways with one of them to move higher up in the draft order. They’ve got a fair amount of depth in their pool in the form of a few mid-to-late first-round choices and some high-value second-round picks, but lack a true blue-chip piece. While there likely won’t be one available to them at 11th or 12th overall, they could snag one if they manage to sneak into the top seven or eight selections.
Flyers Recap Trevor Zegras Trade, Eyeing More Moves This Off-Season
As has become custom in the wake of big roster trades, Philadelphia Flyers general manager Daniel Brière sat down with the media to discuss the team’s acquisition of Trevor Zegras on Monday morning. Brière most notably shared that the Flyers had already engaged the Ducks in talks around a trade for Zegras, shares ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski. Brière went on to share that previous talks fell through because of Philadelphia’s lack of assets and Anaheim’s lack of desire to rush a move.
That sentiment will ring loud as the Flyers spark their off-season with a big swap. Ryan Poehling – the only skater featured in the return package – filled an important third-line role for the Flyers this season. He scored a career-high 31 points in 68 games and was often the champion of the simple tasks, supporting Philadelphia’s jump up the ice or surge to regain possession. It’s possible that the team couldn’t be pried away from their impactful depth forward until after the season concluded, and they had a full summer to properly assimilate Zegras into his new role.
But what that role will look like still remains a glaring question mark. Brière spoke candidly about the team’s lack of depth down the middle and shared that he hopes Zegras can eventually return to his role at center. But he made sure to note that the final decision will rest with new head coach Rick Tocchet, per Charlie O’Connor of PHLY Sports.
Zegras looked more comfortable on the wing in the time leading up to his first-round selection in the 2019 NHL Draft, but Anaheim invested significant development into shifting the skillful forward over to the middle lane. The center role supported Zegras to the two highest-scoring seasons of his career, when he combined for 46 goals and 126 points in 156 games. But the Ducks had to bear through his dismal 40.6 percent faceoff success rate in that span – a mark that ultimately landed him back on the flanks in the last two seasons.
Brière acknowledged that Zegras’ dip in scoring is why he was available on the open market. The recently turned 24-year-old winger fell to just 32 points in 57 games this season, far off his career-high mark of 65 points set in the 2022-23 campaign. In the end, Brière says that the bet on Zegras returning to strong scoring is a risk the Flyers are willing to take, even if it was difficult to give up Poehling.
Even more exciting, Brière went on to say that the acquisition of Zegras is meant to be just one piece of a big puzzle this summer, shares O’Connor. The team wants to improve through shrewd additions on the trade or free agent market. But they’ll make those decisions with caution, and particularly don’t want to part with any of their three first-round picks in Friday’s 2025 NHL Draft, per Jordan Hall of NBC Sports Philadelphia. The club could land an impactful player in each of the three position groups in this year’s first round, and was predicated to draft center Jake O’Brien, defender Kashawn Aitcheson, and goaltender Joshua Ravensbergen in PHR’s 2025 Mock Draft. All three players have warranted plenty of attention for their explosive and reliable performances this season.
It’s not clear the exact extent to which Brière wants to build up the Flyers this summer. They ranked dead last in the Eastern Conference last season and have already undergone multiple layers of change this summer. It may be overeager to push the team towards playoff contention next season, though a few more high-upside and young additions like Zegras could go far towards catapulting Philadelphia’s rebuild forward. That momentum, spurred by a trio of top prospects, could push the Flyers into closer contention with future standouts like the San Jose Sharks and Columbus Blue Jackets.
Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images.
Bruins Sign Mason Lohrei To Two-Year Extension
4 PM: The details of Lohrei’s contract have been revealed. He will make a $2.95MM salary, and carry a $250K signing bonus, in the first year of his deal. In year two, the signing bonus will be lumped into his salary, earning him $3.2MM on the year. Contract details come courtesy of PuckPedia.
10 AM: The Bruins signed pending RFA defenseman Mason Lohrei to a two-year extension on Monday, per a club announcement. He’ll count $3.2MM against the cap for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 campaigns for a total contract value of $6.4MM.
Lohrei, 24, lands a bridge deal coming off his first full NHL season. The 2020 second-round pick has shown promise as a puck-mover and a potential top-four option on Boston’s left side to complement Hampus Lindholm, but he’s not fully there yet.
A knee injury that ended Lindholm’s season in November meant Boston had to play Lohrei in more minutes than they would have liked. He was always meant as a longer-term project with some raw defensive details in his game, and that was extremely apparent in 2024-25. Averaging over 19 minutes per game, Lohrei actually led Boston defensemen in scoring with 33 points (5 G, 28 A) in 77 appearances but earned the distinction of having the worst plus-minus mark in the league this year, checking in at a gnarly -43 mark. While that figure is a bit exaggerated due to poor goaltending, he still only managed a 47.5 xGF% at 5-on-5 according to Natural Stat Trick – a pedestrian figure, even compared to his Bruins teammates.
Lohrei wasn’t Calder-eligible because he split 2023-24 somewhat evenly between Boston and AHL Providence. He put up a 4-9–13 scoring line with a minus-two rating in 41 games in his first taste of NHL action last year, averaging a hair under 17 minutes per night.
He’s shown the ability to be more of a two-way threat at the collegiate and AHL levels, and the Bruins are banking on him discovering how to translate that to the NHL in what they hope can be more sheltered minutes next season. That’s where virtually all of his upside lies – despite boasting a 6’5″, 220-lb frame, he’s not a particularly physical defender. He only logged 25 hits this year. If he can’t become a well-rounded enough player to convert into a top-four fixture, they’re not taking much of a risk today by only making a short-term commitment with a reasonable qualifying offer upon expiry in 2027.
The extension takes Lohrei up to his last summer of team control. A one-year extension on the end would walk him right to unrestricted free agency in 2028. As for Boston’s cap situation, they still have over $23MM left to spend, but still have another notable RFA to sign in breakout forward Morgan Geekie. They also have only 27 standard contracts signed throughout the active roster and non-roster lists for 2025-26.
Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images.
Flyers Acquire Trevor Zegras From Ducks
The Flyers are nearing a deal to acquire forward Trevor Zegras from the Ducks, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports. Anaheim will receive center Ryan Poehling, the Blue Jackets’ 2025 second-round pick (No. 45 overall), and Philadelphia’s 2026 fourth-rounder in return, Friedman adds. The Flyers have since made the trade official.
That’s a relatively quick ascent from Friedman’s report under two hours ago that the Ducks were in deep talks with multiple clubs on a Zegras move. While it didn’t appear anything was particularly imminent at the time, that’s now changed.
While Zegras has spent the past two seasons mostly on the wing, he’ll presumably shift back to his natural center position in Philadelphia. The Flyers have been on the hunt for a young, established NHL center with a top-six projection for a while now. They were previously connected to pending Wild RFA Marco Rossi, but his cost uncertainty and desire for a long-term deal made those talks stall. Instead, they’ll opt for a player with a slightly riskier projection in Zegras, but land someone signed through next season at a cheaper cap hit than what a Rossi contract would have cost them.
Injuries have robbed Zegras of nearly half his potential workload over the past two seasons in Anaheim since signing a three-year, $17.25MM contract in 2023. He’s had just an 18-29–47 scoring line in 88 games during that time, but still averaged over 17 minutes per game and saw his defensive performance improve significantly this past season with positive relative possession numbers in less sheltered offensive deployment at even strength.
That offensive regression was still highly disappointing considering how Zegras burst onto the scene. In his first two full NHL campaigns, Zegras hit the 20-goal and 60-point marks on both occasions and finished as the Calder Trophy runner-up to Moritz Seider in 2022. It looked like he was fully set to hit on the upside the Ducks thought he had when selecting him ninth overall in 2019, but his subsequent injuries and contract stalemate two years ago threw that plan off course.
He now gets a fresh start in Philly for an acquisition cost that Flyers general manager Daniel Brière certainly won’t lose any sleep over. While Poehling was a high-end fourth-line piece for them, they have plenty of internal replacement candidates for that role and still have three second-round choices in this year’s draft after dealing away the Columbus pick.
While it’s an underwhelming return for the Ducks considering where his value and projection were two years ago, it’s presumably more than they could’ve gotten him had they cut bait following Zegras’ 15-point showing in just 31 games in 2023-24. They also gain $3.85MM in cap space and more roster flexibility among their top-nine forwards as they pursue a major free agent addition this summer.
Giving Zegras top-six minutes will allow names like Bobby Brink and Noah Cates to serve in more comfortable third-line minutes in Rick Tocchet‘s first season as head coach. Whether the high-ceiling playmaker gets deployed on a unit with 2023 No. 7 overall pick Matvei Michkov out of the gate remains to be seen, but his pickup suddenly offers Tocchet a much more offensively dynamic center-winger duo than he could have otherwise constructed.
While Zegras is entering the final year of his contract, he’ll be a restricted free agent in 2026 and still has another year of team control left after that. Swapping out Poehling for Zegras does drop the Flyers to a still-comfortable $15.1MM in available cap space with notable RFAs Jakob Pelletier and Cameron York still to sign and two other roster spots to fill, per PuckPedia.
Poehling actually had a standout offensive showing in 2024-25, posting a career-best 12-19–31 scoring line in 68 games while averaging 13:53 per game. He was nonetheless expendable with Cates recently receiving an extension and 2024 first-rounder Jett Luchanko pushing for an NHL job next year. He also shot at a 16.9% rate that will presumably regress in Anaheim.
He’s still a solid bottom-six pickup for the Ducks, even if the futures they’re receiving are underwhelming. He’s a 2026 UFA at a cap hit of just $1.9MM and could be flipped at the deadline for a decent return if things don’t pan out the way Anaheim hopes they will next year. He’s a short-term upgrade down the middle over a name like pending RFA Isac Lundeström and could push him or someone like Ryan Strome to a spot on the wing.
Image courtesy of Jeff Curry-Imagn Images.
Blackhawks Buy Out T.J. Brodie
June 22: Brodie has cleared unconditional waivers and will have the final season of his contract bought out, Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic confirms. There are no new pending buyouts today.
June 21: The Blackhawks have placed Brodie on unconditional waivers for buyout purposes, per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman. In doing so, they’ll be able to buy out the final year of his contract on Sunday, assuming he’s not claimed.
June 18: The Blackhawks will likely buy out defenseman T.J. Brodie when the first window opens later this week, reports Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times. The vast majority of his $3.225MM total compensation for next season was via a $2.45MM signing bonus, which is unaffected by a buyout.
He’ll only see a reduction in his base salary from $775K to $517K, which will be paid out over two years, and he will become an unrestricted free agent. Brodie will still count $3.23MM against the cap for Chicago in 2025-26, savings of $517K on his original $3.75MM cap hit, but will only incur a $258K penalty in 2026-27 before coming off the Hawks’ books.
Brodie, 35, signed a two-year, $7.5MM contract with Chicago in free agency last summer. The $3.75MM cap hit was an understandable expense given his long track record of success as an excellent two-way option in the top four for the Flames and Maple Leafs, but a multi-year commitment raised some eyebrows. Brodie was aging, coming off an underwhelming performance in Toronto in 2023-24 that meant the team had no trouble letting him hit the market, and there were questions about how his declining speed would hold up on a much thinner Blackhawks blue line.
The fears of the deal were realized as Brodie’s 2024-25 season was his worst as an NHLer. He only posted a 2-8–10 scoring line in 54 games, and his defensive impacts declined further following a sharp dropoff with the Leafs the year prior.
While Chicago initially signed him as a support piece for their emerging young defensemen, he was entirely removed from the lineup in March. He didn’t log a single appearance for the club after the trade deadline, serving as a healthy scratch for the final 22 games of the season. That was even after the club traded top righty Seth Jones to the Panthers, and the left-shot Brodie had spent most of the year in a familiar spot on his offside, where he’s spent most of his career.
As it stands, the Blackhawks enter the offseason with established NHLers Alex Vlasic and Connor Murphy set to be joined by a complement of high-end prospects to round out their top six on defense, including Nolan Allan, Kevin Korchinski, Artyom Levshunov, and Sam Rinzel. Levshunov, Murphy, and Rinzel are all righties, giving the Hawks an even three/three split on handedness.
That also doesn’t include potential roster players Louis Crevier and Wyatt Kaiser, both of whom are pending RFAs needing new deals. There simply isn’t a spot for Brodie on next year’s roster, at least not one that involves significant playing time. Instead, they’ll allow him to pursue other opportunities on a new, cheaper deal instead of being saddled with the burden of an overpriced contract and likely ending up in the minors.
Connor McDavid In No Rush To Sign Max-Term Extension With Oilers
The Edmonton Oilers have turned their sights towards July 1st following the end of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They face a loaded plate, with top defender Evan Bouchard in need of a new contract and franchise superstar Connor McDavid eligible for an extension when July rolls around. Both tasks will be top-list items for the Oilers, but it doesn’t seem McDavid is in the same rush to solidify his long-term future. Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic reports that McDavid will want to hear out Edmonton’s plans for the future before signing a new deal. When that deal does come, LeBrun adds that there’s no certainty it’s an eight-year contract, pointing towards the four-year contract that Auston Matthews signed last summer.
Matthew and McDavid are both represented by Judd Moldaver and Wasserman Hockey. Moldaver also represents Columbus’ Zach Werenski and New Jersey’s Brett Pesce, who are each on six-year contracts with their clubs. In fact, Moldaver’s only client on an eight-year deal is Nashville Predators captain Roman Josi, who made a point about staying in Music City for life when he signed his extension in 2019.
This news may seem like a wrench in Edmonton’s machine, but it’s little more than McDavid doing his due diligence before signing a deal that will likely carry him through the majority of his remaining career. Winning a Stanley Cup is a luxury afforded to only a few NHL legends, and McDavid is coming off the heels of back-to-back squandered opportunities.
The connection between McDavid and the Oilers franchise is as strong as any bond across the league. His name has become synonymous with all-time great Wayne Gretzky, whom McDavid routinely chases in both the regular season and playoff scoring records. With 1,082 points in 712 games, McDavid’s 1.52 points-per-game clock in as the third-most in NHL history, behind only Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. He’s a true great, who any team would make a dire effort to keep when faced with any chance of losing him.
But then again, Gretzky’s career spanned tenures with four separate clubs, even after he won four Cups and set all-time scoring records with the Oilers. His move away from Edmonton – and to the West Coast – was perhaps the greatest news to ever hit the league, and reports connected to McDavid suggest a similar pattern could emerge should the modern great ever want to change clubs. LeBrun shares that the Los Angeles Kings and former Oilers general manager Ken Holland are closely monitoring McDavid’s status up North. If any signs of a move shine through, the Kings could once again snatch a perennial superstar from under Edmonton’s nose. LeBrun further adds that the Chicago Blackhawks, Dallas Stars, and New York Rangers could join what’d likely be a small-group race to steal McDavid from the Oilers.
The Oilers are, luckily, just about as far from a decision as they can be. McDavid still has one year left on his current contract. He’s already scored 826 points in 503 games of his current deal, including an incredible 64-goal, 89-assist, 153-point performance in the 2022-23 season. A lot can happen in a year’s time, especially with the talent and assured scoring that McDavid brings to the lineup. Strong lineup additions and a return to the depths of the Stanley Cup Playoffs could go far in swaying McDavid’s confidence in sticking with the Oilers through the end of his career. But, another early exit on the back of a lineup that’s not full strength could sever the ties. The NHL will be entering near-unprecedented territory as McDavid eyes the structure, price tag, and location of his next contract – a deal almost guaranteed to set the new record in league salary.
Blackhawks Acquire Andre Burakovsky
The Kraken and Blackhawks have made a swap of underperforming forwards. Chicago has acquired winger Andre Burakovsky from Seattle in exchange for center Joe Veleno in a one-for-one move. Both teams have confirmed the trade.
Burakovsky became a key secondary scorer when he was acquired by Colorado back in 2019. Over three seasons with the team, he had two seasons of more than 40 points while his last one with them saw him record a career-best 61, allowing him to hit unrestricted free agency for the first time while being one of the better options available on the open market.
That helped him land a five-year, $27.5MM contract with the Kraken in 2022 and the deal has not gone particularly well thus far. The 30-year-old produced at a similar rate in 2022-23 from a points per game perspective but while he had 39 points in 49 games, missing 33 outings due to injury made for a disappointing year. 2023-24 was more of the same on the injury front as he once again missed 33 games, but to make things worse, his output fell considerably, down to just seven goals and nine assists.
This past season, Burakovsky was able to rebound a bit. For starters, he was able to play in 79 games, one shy of his career best in that regard. Meanwhile, while he didn’t get back to the type of production he had back in Colorado, he was able to chip in with 10 goals and 27 assists.
Last summer, Chicago added wingers Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teravainen in free agency, giving themselves some upgrades up front and some veterans to work with their young forward core. This move appears to follow that same idea while they’ll be taking on the final two seasons of Burakovsky’s deal at a $5.5MM price tag to make that happen.
As for Veleno, he’s on the move for the second time in a matter of months. The 25-year-old spent parts of five seasons with Detroit after being a late first-round pick by the Red Wings back in 2018 but he was moved to the Blackhawks at the trade deadline in exchange for goaltender Petr Mrazek.
This past season, Veleno played in 74 games between the two teams, notching eight goals and nine assists in a little over 12 minutes per night of playing time. It was the first time in three years that he failed to reach the 20-point mark with his career high in that regard coming in 2023-24 when he had 28. While he was a productive scorer at the junior level, Veleno has been more of a checker at the professional ranks.
Veleno has one year left on his contract at a $2.275MM cap charge and joins a center group that is starting to become a bit crowded. They already have Matty Beniers, Chandler Stephenson, and Shane Wright down the middle while Jared McCann, a natural center, is already on the wing. Top prospect Berkly Catton is expected to push for a roster spot in training camp as well. While the Kraken solved one logjam by moving out Burakovsky following the recent acquisition of Mason Marchment, they’ve created another with this move.
Speculatively, Seattle has a relatively easy way to solve it. If they’re primarily looking for cap flexibility and can’t move Veleno in the coming days, he could become a buyout candidate. Since he’s still 25, the cost of buying out that final year would only be one-third, not the standard two-thirds. That would cost the Kraken a cap charge of $795.8K next season and $295.8K in 2026-27, allowing them to effectively remove the majority of Burakovsky’s $5.5MM cost from their books. Alternatively, they could give Veleno a chance to lock down the center spot on the fourth line as he has shown himself to be useful in that role for several years now and see what happens from there. Either way, their early offseason shakeup continues.
Photos courtesy of Walter Tychnowicz (Burakovsky) and David Banks (Veleno)-Imagn Images.
Dallas Stars Sign Mavrik Bourque To One-Year Deal
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.