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Nick Bjugstad

Blues Sign Nick Bjugstad To Two-Year Deal

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The Blues announced they’ve signed center Nick Bjugstad to a two-year, $3.5MM contract worth $1.75MM per season.

Scouring the free agent market for a third-line center, the Blues have found their man in Bjugstad. The former first-round pick of the 2010 NHL Draft is coming off a two-year stint with the Arizona Coyotes, and subsequently the Utah Mammoth, where he recorded 30 goals and 64 points in 142 games, averaging 15:04 of ice time per game and managing a 48.8% success rate in the faceoff dot.

Still, it was truly a tale of two years for the 13-year veteran. Bjugstad had the second-highest scoring output of his career during the 2023-24 campaign, only to see it fall to his fourth-worst last season. Furthermore, his 47.4% faceoff rate was the lowest of his career since his brief 13-game stretch with the Pittsburgh Penguins during the 2019-20 season.

His scoring depression has certainly led to the slight drop in salary compared to his last contract. However, Bjugstad displayed strong possession metrics in his last year in Salt Lake City, maintaining a 51.5% CorsiFor% at even strength, and quality defensive metrics with a 90.8% on-ice save percentage at even strength.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon, the Blues will be limited by their financial flexibility. Unless another move is made, Bjugstad will likely play between Jake Neighbours and Mathieu Joseph on the team’s third line.

PHR’s Brennan McClain contributed significantly to this article. 

West Notes: Bjugstad, Bortuzzo, Jeannot, Duchene

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For the next few weeks, there will be plenty of speculation about which teams will add which players. However, most of the noise leading up to July 1st will be about which players’ teams won’t keep, and the Utah Mammoth reportedly has a few. According to Craig Morgan of The Sedona Conference, the Mammoth are likely to let forward Nick Bjugstad and defenseman Robert Bortuzzo pursue other options this summer.

Given the more than $20MM available to the Mammoth this offseason, letting both players walk is more about performance and team-building rather than money. Bjugstad is inarguably the most valuable of the two, coming off an eight-goal, 19-point performance in 66 games for Utah during the 2024-25 campaign, averaging 12:19 of ice time. Still, it’s a far cry from his performance from a year ago, when Bjugstad registered 22 goals and 45 points in 76 games in a second-line role.

Meanwhile, there’s a legitimate chance that Bortuzzo is seriously contemplating retirement after completing the 14th season of his professional career. Limited by injuries this past season, Bortuzzo finished with two assists in 17 games, while mostly playing as the team’s seventh and sometimes eighth defenseman. The Mammoth already has eight defensemen signed through next season, leaving little room for Bortuzzo on the roster.

Other notes from the Western Conference:

  • Along similar lines, Russell Morgan of Hockey Royalty reports that the Los Angeles Kings aren’t expected to offer Tanner Jeannot a contract for the upcoming season. Jeannot has seen his stock drop precipitously in recent years, going from scoring 24 goals and amassing 318 hits with the Nashville Predators in the 2021-22 season, to a 13-point campaign in 67 games for the Kings this past season. He can still be relied upon for physicality, but Jeannot will have a difficult time finding a similar salary on the open market this summer.
  • On the cusp of reaching the open market and objectively becoming one of the top centers available, Matt Duchene instead chose to re-sign with the Dallas Stars on a four-year deal worth $18MM, likely leaving several million dollars on the table. In a new interview with Lia Assimakopoulos of The Dallas Morning News, Duchene indicated how easy a choice it was, saying, “First of all, any guy I’ve talked to wants to come back, so that’s great. I mean, it’s such a desirable place. I think it’s a place that anybody in the league would be lucky to play. And most guys in the league want to play for our team, and that speaks to the culture that the organization has created.“

Utah Hockey Club Activates Nick Bjugstad From IR

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The Utah Hockey Club has activated forward Nick Bjugstad off injured reserve, but the veteran will remain a healthy scratch, per Cole Bagley of KSL Sports.

It’s been a tough season for the 32-year-old veteran, who has fought injuries and posted only five goals and 15 points through 53 games. He landed on the IR on March 1 with an upper-body injury, which marked his second stint on IR on the year after missing the first eight games of the season with an additional upper-body injury.

As Utah continues to soar up the standings – aided by a 6-2-2 record over their last 10 games – and sits just two points out of a wild card spot, it stands to reason they wouldn’t want to make a roster change at this time. Bjugstad is in the final year of his deal that comes with a $2.1MM cap hit.

The disappointment in Bjugstad’s season is only heightened by his success for the franchise just a year ago. In 76 games in Arizona last year, he put up 22 goals, 23 assists and 45 points, the second highest total of his now 13-year NHL career.

Still, Bjugstad’s veteran presence and experience in the playoffs could serve as a positive for the team moving forward. A veteran of 747 career NHL games, Bjugstad sports a 0.44 career points per game total and has added six goals in 27 career playoff games.

Utah Hockey Club Places Nick Bjugstad On Injured Reserve

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The Utah Hockey Club will have one missing forward for tonight’s game against the Detroit Red Wings. Utah announced they’ve placed center Nick Bjugstad on the injured reserve due to an upper-body injury.

Earlier in the week, multiple outlets reported that Bjugstad was dealing with an illness. Although the events are mutually exclusive, we know that Bjudstad is dealing more with a physical ailment than an illness.

No distinction has been made, but Utah will likely make the injury designation retroactive to Bjugstad’s most recent game on March 1st. The team had a long four-day break between games, and making the IR placement retroactive to last Saturday would make Bjugstad eligible for activation after tomorrow’s game against the Chicago Blackhawks.

Still, it won’t be a major missing piece for Utah over the next couple of games. The team has relegated Bjugstad to a third-line role after spending much of last season in the team’s top six. He’s scored five goals and 10 assists in 53 games, averaging 12:39 of ice time. The 2024-25 campaign will be Bjugstad’s lowest-scoring season since his dreadful 2021-21 season with the Minnesota Wild.

Utah has been busy over the last 24 hours in locking up their pending unrestricted free agents to new extensions. Given that the team hasn’t appeared motivated to do the same with Bjugstad, there was an outside chance that the team would look to move him ahead of tomorrow’s deadline. There’s still a non-zero chance Bjugstad is moved, but his poor production and injury may have nixed any remaining chance.

Kailer Yamamoto Clears Waivers, Utah Expected To Activate Nick Bjugstad

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Saturday: Yamamoto has cleared waivers, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports.  The team announced he has been sent to Tucson.

Friday: The Utah Hockey Club has winger Kailer Yamamoto on waivers today for the purposes of assignment to AHL Tucson, the team announced. After he clears or is claimed tomorrow, they’ll have an open roster spot to activate center Nick Bjugstad from injured reserve, per Brogan Houston of Deseret News Sports.

It’s a tough break for Yamamoto, who hasn’t converted a strong training camp into a regular-season impact in Salt Lake. The 26-year-old was non-tendered by the Kraken at the end of last season and didn’t receive any guaranteed offers, instead landing a PTO with Utah for training camp. They signed him to a one-year, two-way deal the day before opening night rosters were due, and Bjugstad was slated to start the year on IR.

Even with Bjugstad out, though, there hasn’t been much opportunity for Yamamoto in the lineup. He was a healthy scratch for the first five games of the season before playing in each of Utah’s last three. He was held off the scoresheet, posting a -1 rating and taking just one shot on goal while averaging 10:40 per game.

On a two-way deal, there could be some interest in Yamamoto’s services on the waiver wire. The 2017 first-round pick is only one year removed from a 10-goal, 25-point campaign with the Oilers in 58 games, and he had a career-high 20 goals the year before that. That type of production from Yamamoto would require giving him consistent middle-six, if not top-six, minutes though, and he hasn’t done enough in the past couple of years to justify that ice time. Last year in Seattle, he averaged just under 12 minutes per game and saw his production suffer with 19 points (8 G, 8 A) in 59 games with a -9 rating.

Meanwhile, Bjugstad is set to make his season debut tomorrow against the Kings. It’s a little earlier than scheduled for his return, with a report from ALL City Network’s Craig Morgan at the beginning of the month stating he wouldn’t be back until Nov. 1.

He’ll be a boon to a Utah offense that has gone cold, scoring only twice in its last three games. The first-year club has dropped to a 4-3-1 record after a 3-0-0 start, dragged down by long-term injuries to defensemen Sean Durzi and John Marino. Bjugstad, 32, is coming off one of the best offensive seasons of his career, posting 22 goals and 45 points with a +11 rating in 76 appearances last season for the Coyotes.

Injury Updates: Dunn, Bjugstad, Steel, Eklund

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Kraken defenseman Vince Dunn missed a game last week due to an upper-body injury and now he’s banged up again.  Kate Shefte of the Seattle Times notes that the 27-year-old is listed as day-to-day after being injured in Friday’s victory over Philadelphia; he didn’t play in the final 23 minutes of the contest.  Head coach Dan Bylsma didn’t have a timeline for his return, stating that Dunn is still waiting on further evaluation.  Dunn is off to a solid start to his season with a goal and two assists in his first four appearances while logging a little under 19 minutes per night.

Other injury news from around the NHL:

  • Utah HC center Nick Bjugstad is seven to ten days away from returning, per Belle Fraser of The Salt Lake Tribune (Twitter link). The 32-year-old has yet to play this season due to an upper-body injury that kept him out at the start of training camp.  He’s coming off one of his best seasons offensively after putting up 22 goals and 23 assists in 76 games with Arizona and was originally expected to miss all of October.  Now, it appears he might be able to beat that by a game or two.
  • Stars center Sam Steel was injured on his final shift on Thursday against Washington and is listed as questionable for Saturday’s contest versus Edmonton, mentions team radio analyst Bruce LeVine (Twitter link). The 26-year-old has a goal and an assist through his first five appearances this season.  With Tyler Seguin already out, Dallas would need to bring up a forward if Steel can’t play.  However, they can’t even afford a recall making $800K per PuckPedia which will limit their options.
  • Sharks forward William Eklund missed tonight’s game due to an upper-body injury, relays Max Miller of The Hockey News. He had been listed as a game-time decision on Thursday but he managed two assists in the loss; head coach Ryan Warsofsky acknowledged postgame that the 22-year-old isn’t fully healthy.  With that in mind, holding him out of a back-to-back certainly made sense.

Central Notes: Boldy, Middleton, Marino, Bjugstad, Kaiser, Barlow

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The Wild have upgraded winger Matt Boldy’s status from week-to-week to day-to-day, head coach John Hynes said Tuesday (via NHL.com’s Jessi Pierce). He hasn’t been ruled out of Friday’s preseason game against the Blackhawks, a strong sign he’ll be available when Minnesota opens its regular season against the Blue Jackets on Oct. 10.

Boldy was initially termed week-to-week on Sep. 23 with a lower-body ailment, but the team wasn’t concerned he’d miss any regular-season action. That appears to be the case. He’s been skating since Saturday.

His presence is crucial for the Wild. The 23-year-old set career highs last season with 40 assists and 69 points in 75 games, finishing second on the Wild’s 21st-ranked offense in scoring. With most of their bottom six either declining or overtaxed in offensive roles, he’s an irreplaceable source of secondary scoring behind Kirill Kaprizov, at least until Minnesota’s next wave of prospects hits their stride.

It’s not all good injury news for the Wild today, though. Defenseman Jacob Middleton is now day-to-day with bruising, Hynes added, but isn’t expected to miss their season opener, which is still nine days away.

There’s more from the Central Division:

  • The Utah Hockey Club may be without a top-four stalwart on defense for its first-ever game. John Marino’s availability for the season opener is now in doubt after missing all of training camp to date with an upper-body injury, per ALL Utah Hockey’s Craig Morgan. The team will know more about his timeline for a return next week, Morgan added, but for now, he hasn’t been ruled out of any action past then and is still day-to-day. They’re also not expecting center Nick Bjugstad back until Nov. 1, per Morgan. He’s out with an upper-body injury, but his absence isn’t new. He was already ruled doubtful for the start of the season last week.
  • Defenseman Wyatt Kaiser has been mysteriously absent from Blackhawks camp thus far, but that’ll end soon. The Blackhawks told the Chicago Sun-Times’ Ben Pope that an undisclosed concern popped up during his pre-camp physical that required “some invasive testing.” He’s passed all of them, though, and will begin ramping up to game speed. The 22-year-old is a strong candidate to land on the opening night roster after posting seven assists and an even rating in 32 games with Chicago last year.
  • Jets prospect Colby Barlow has officially requested a trade in the OHL from the Owen Sound Attack, Postmedia’s Greg Cowan reports. Winnipeg returned Barlow, the No. 18 overall pick in 2023, to Owen Sound on Sunday. The 19-year-old left winger had 40 goals in 50 games last year but recorded only 18 assists for 58 points, placing him fourth on the team in scoring overall. He won’t be reporting to Owen Sound’s camp at all, Cowan adds, so expect him to be on the move before the start of the OHL regular season.

Utah’s Nick Bjugstad Expected To Miss Start Of Season

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Utah center Nick Bjugstad is expected to miss the franchise’s first-ever regular season game with an upper-body injury, a source tells ALL Utah Hockey’s Craig Morgan. The 32-year-old pivot has yet to participate in training camp due to the injury and was listed as week-to-week when it opened last week.

It’s a tough break for a solid veteran fixture that’s done well to shed his injury-prone label. Bjugstad has appeared in 70-plus games in each of the past two seasons, his first time doing that on back-to-back occasions since the 2013-14 and 2014-15 campaigns.

The Minneapolis native spent the last two years with the Coyotes, aside from a brief post-trade deadline stint with the Oilers in 2023, returning to Arizona as a free agent the following offseason. He’s entering the second season of a two-year, $4.2MM deal and followed the rest of the former Coyotes roster to Utah this summer.

Last season marked a career resurgence for Bjugstad, a first-round pick of the Panthers back in 2010. His 22 goals, 23 assists, 45 points, and +11 rating in 76 games were all his best totals since posting a career-high 49 points with Florida in the 2017-18 season. He also logged a career-high 17:27 per game for the Yotes last year, finished seventh among qualified Arizona skaters with a 49.4 CF%, and finished fifth on the team with 118 hits.

The 6’6″, 209-lb pivot is projected to be an all-around fixture for Utah in its first season when he returns to health. But for now, his absence is a good indication that 22-year-old Josh Doan, who finished last season with five goals and nine points in 11 games for the Coyotes after a call-up from AHL Tucson, should crack the opening night roster and take the ice on Oct. 8 for their home opener against the Blackhawks.

In better injury news, defenseman John Marino has been upgraded from week-to-week to day-to-day with his upper-body injury, Morgan said. Marino, acquired from the Devils in a trade for draft picks on June 29, also has yet to skate in training camp. The 27-year-old posted 25 points (4 G, 21 A) with a -6 rating in 75 games for New Jersey last year, averaging over 20 minutes per game for the fifth straight season to begin his NHL career. He’ll slot into Utah’s top four to begin the season.

2024 King Clancy Trophy Nominees Announced

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Today, the NHL announced the 32 nominees for the King Clancy Memorial Trophy, annually presented to “the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community.”

Each team submitted their nominee; they are as follows:

Anaheim Ducks: Cam Fowler
Arizona Coyotes: Nick Bjugstad
Boston Bruins: Linus Ullmark
Buffalo Sabres: Alex Tuch
Calgary Flames: Andrew Mangiapane
Carolina Hurricanes: Jaccob Slavin
Chicago Blackhawks: Connor Murphy
Colorado Avalanche: Cale Makar
Columbus Blue Jackets: Zach Werenski
Dallas Stars: Jake Oettinger
Detroit Red Wings: Dylan Larkin
Edmonton Oilers: Darnell Nurse
Florida Panthers: Aleksander Barkov
Los Angeles Kings: Kevin Fiala
Minnesota Wild: Marc-Andre Fleury
Montreal Canadiens: Nick Suzuki
Nashville Predators: Roman Josi
New Jersey Devils: Jack Hughes
New York Islanders: Anders Lee
New York Rangers: Jacob Trouba
Ottawa Senators: Brady Tkachuk
Philadelphia Flyers: Scott Laughton
Pittsburgh Penguins: Bryan Rust
San Jose Sharks: Luke Kunin
Seattle Kraken: Jaden Schwartz
St. Louis Blues: Brayden Schenn
Tampa Bay Lightning: Nick Paul
Toronto Maple Leafs: Auston Matthews
Vancouver Canucks: Quinn Hughes
Vegas Golden Knights: Jack Eichel
Washington Capitals: Tom Wilson
Winnipeg Jets: Josh Morrissey

Unlike most awards which are voted on by the players or media, the winner of this award is selected by a committee consisting of Commissioner Gary Bettman and former winners of the King Clancy Memorial Trophy and the NHL Foundation Player Award, one that was awarded from 1997-98 through 2016-17.

Last year’s winner was Calgary’s Mikael Backlund.  The winner for this season will be revealed in late June.

Coyotes’ Travis Dermott Out For The Season With Injury

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The Arizona Coyotes have announced that defenseman Travis Dermott will be sidelined for the rest of the season with an upper-body injury. Forward Nick Bjugstad is also facing an upper-body injury, carrying a day-to-day designation (Twitter link). The Coyotes have five games remaining in their season, including a Tuesday night matchup with the Seattle Kraken.

Dermott has been limited to just 50 games this season, with a month-long absence in November headlining an injury-plagued year. It’s been a disappointing start to Dermott’s time in Arizona after he signed a one-year deal with the team this summer. It was his first time signing a free-agent contract, with all of his previous deals coming with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Dermott certainly found an improved role in the desert, averaging 17:17 in ice time that flirted with his career-high. But it didn’t lead to improved scoring, as he managed just two goals and seven points, matching the measly scoring he posted in 60 games last year. Dermott will be set to re-enter free agency this summer, with this injury likely not helping his bid for a new team if the Coyotes don’t re-sign him.

Rookie Maksymillian Szuber is expected to make his NHL debut in Dermott’s place. Szuber has recorded six goals and 24 points in 67 games as an AHL rookie, after spending the last three seasons in Germany’s DEL. He’ll become the first skater selected outside of 2022’s top two rounds to play in the NHL. Szuber moving into the lineup removes Arizona’s extra defender, though the team could recall an option like Victor Soderstrom or Vladislav Kolyachonok for added depth.

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