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Nick Perbix

Predators Sign Nick Perbix To Two-Year Deal

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The Predators are signing right-shot defenseman Nick Perbix to a two-year contract, TSN’s Bob McKenzie reports. He’ll earn $2.75MM per season, according to Anthony Di Marco of Daily Faceoff. The team has since confirmed the deal.

After acquiring Nicolas Hague from the Vegas Golden Knights yesterday, the Predators have now fully revamped their defensive core by adding Perbix. Offering more stability to their defensive core than their other internal candidates, Perbix is coming off a remarkably consistent three-year run with the Lightning.

Since debuting with the Bolts during the 2022-23 season, Perbix has scored 13 goals and 63 points in 220 career contests with a +27 rating, averaging 15:45 of ice time per night. For his metrics, Perbix offered a 51.2% CorsiFor% at even strength, and a 91.0% on-ice save percentage at even strength.

Still, it’s interesting that the Predators have chosen to invest more capital into their defensive core, rather than their offense. The team has a few defensive metrics that could have warranted NHL playing time in the upcoming season, and it’s reasonable to assume that netminder Juuse Saros has a bounce-back campaign. Their offense was the bigger concern last season, averaging 2.59 GF/G, the second-lowest mark in the NHL.

Despite finishing 27th in goals against per game, the team’s performance was hindered largely by Saros’s disappointing season. Nashville had the seventh-best penalty kill and finished 16th in shots against. The addition of Perbix and Hague will certainly help the team keep pucks out of their net, but they will still struggle to address the offensive issues that plagued the Predators last season.

PHR’s Brennan McClain contributed significantly to this article. 

Lightning Share Plans, Expectations For Free Agency

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The Tampa Bay Lightning are approaching July 1st with only three notable pending-free agents. That short list has made the summer easy to forecast for Bolts general manager Julien BriseBois, who broke down the team’s upcoming expectations to Diandra Loux of The Hockey News. He most notably shared that each of Cam Atkinson, Nicklaus Perbix, and Luke Glendening are expected to hit the open market on July 1st. All three players are set to become unrestricted free agents.

The season-long impact of the three names varied quite widely. Perbix served as a bottom-pair defender for 74 games of the regular season. He recorded a meager 19 points, 20 penalty minutes, and plus-eight while averaging just under 15 minutes of ice time each game. Glendening was also a nightly fixture of the Bolts lineup, stepping into 77 games as the team’s fourth-line centerman. He managed just seven points and a minus-nine on the year, but did offer a staggering 57 percent faceoff win-rate and 105 hits on the full year. Those marks were strong enough to hold down a role in Tampa Bay’s bottom-end – a sentiment that can’t be shared by 36-year-old winger Atkinson. Despite over-800 career games in the NHL, Atkinson found himself facing routine healthy scratches and assignments to the minor-leagues in the season’s second-half. He finished the year with just nine points and a minus-four in 39 NHL games.

Perbix should command a reasonable market in free agency. He’s far from the most explosive defender, but has rivaled 20 points and a positive plus-minus in each of his first three seasons in the NHL. He is only 26 years old, and could offer a new club with the prime years of his career on a new deal. While he negotiates that contract, Glendening and Atkinson will grapple with the thought of retirement. Both players turned 36 after the end of the season, and are now faced with the task of convincing a team they’re still worth depth money. Glendening could win that argument on the back of his continued faceoff wins, and physical role, but it could be an uphill battle for the undersized Atkinson. Atkinson has appeared in 13 seasons and 809 NHL Games, while Glendening has appeared in 12 seasons and 864 games.

BriseBois also shared that the team isn’t expecting to make much of a splash when the market opens up. He told Loux that they underwent a massive change last summer – swapping franchise icon Steven Stamkos for Jake Guentzel through a series of moves. The GM emphasized that teams can’t go through changes of that scale each season, which could lead to a “quiet” summer. Tampa Bay will enter July 1st with just $3.48MM in projected cap space, per PuckPedia. Without a cap-clearing move, it’s unlikely that budget is enough to swing much more than a depth contract before Tampa Bay begins thinking about a cap cushion for next season.

But while they won’t be too active on the open market, BriseBois continued by directly sharing that the Bolts do plan to re-sign defenseman Ryan McDonagh when he hits free agency in 2026. McDonagh has played through six seasons and 349 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning, as part of a career that’s spanned 15 seasons and 1,010 games. He posted an impressive 31 points, 22 penalty minutes, and league-high plus-43 while appearing in all 82 games of the 2024-25 season. It was yet another strong year for the iron-man McDonagh – who has posted at least 25 points and a high plus-minus through three of the last four seasons. McDonagh also recently turned 36 years old, but has so far shown no signs of slowing down. He averaged 19 minutes of ice time and scored three points through five postseason games. So long as he stays on course, it seems the Lightning are prepared to re-up McDonagh on a manageable and short-term deal at age-37 next summer.

Tampa Bay is set for a summer of budgeting and tough exits – but they’re changes the team should be able to turnover with a growing emergence of young prospects. Development camp could be the most notable piece of Tampa Bay’s season, as they look to maintain a roster that achieved the third-best record in the Eastern Conference last season.

Lightning’s Nick Perbix Will Test Free Agency

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There will be no extension keeping Lightning defenseman Nicklaus Perbix off the open market before July 1, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reports. The 27-year-old will instead look to cash in as the youngest option available among a thin class of right-shot defenders.

Perbix was a sixth-round pick of the Lightning back in 2017. Tampa retained his signing rights through his post-draft season with USHL Omaha and then during a full four NCAA seasons at St. Cloud State, where he won an NCHC regular-season title as a rookie and was named a First Team conference All-Star following his standout point-per-game senior season. That was enough for the 6’4″, 205-lb rearguard to land his entry-level contract with the Bolts.

The Minnesota native has essentially been a full-time NHLer since turning pro in 2022. Aside from a brief AHL stint to make his pro debut following the end of his senior year with St. Cloud State and a pair of minor-league contests the following year, he’s been a fixture on Tampa’s roster with utility up and down the lineup.

While he’s seen deployment as high as first-pairing duties with Victor Hedman, his overall ice time has been limited because he’s played under 100 minutes on special teams units in total over his three-year career. Perbix averaged 15:45 per game with the Bolts as a result. At 5-on-5, his most common partners over the last three years were Emil Martinsen Lilleberg (919:12), Hedman (893:26), and Mikhail Sergachev (570:12), according to Natural Stat Trick. Whether due to his time spent with more skilled partners in Hedman and Sergachev or not, Perbix’s point production has been solid considering his limited even-strength minutes. He’s consistently churned out 20-25 points, avoiding major injury troubles.

Nonetheless, it makes sense that the Lightning aren’t interested in retaining Perbix. He averaged just 14:41 per game last season, making it hard to justify matching the $2.65MM per season he’s projected to receive on a two-year deal on the open market, according to AFP Analytics. He totaled a 13-50–63 scoring line with a +27 rating in 220 games as a Bolt and will likely look to land somewhere where he has more of an opportunity to play both the power play and penalty kill.

USA Hockey Announces First 22 Players For 2023 Worlds

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The first 22 players that will compete for Team USA at the upcoming IIHF World Hockey Championship have been named, with an interesting mix of NHL experience and college excitement.

Lane Hutson is the youngest player in the group at just 19 years old, and he’ll be sharing the ice with 35-year-old Nick Bonino, the oldest. General manager Chris Clark released the following:

The depth of our player pool is reflected with our team and we’re excited about the group we have to represent our country at the world championship. We’ve got a great mix of experience and youth and most of our players have represented the U.S. before and know what it takes to be successful at a world championship.

The team will start training on Saturday in Munich, before a pre-tournament game on Tuesday. The tournament schedule for the U.S. begins next Friday, against Finland.

Here’s a look at the 22 players that have made the team so far:

G Casey DeSmith
G Drew Commesso
G Cal Petersen

D Henry Thrun
D Connor Mackey
D Ronnie Attard
D Dylan Samberg
D Scott Perunovich
D Lane Hutson
D Nick Perbix

F Samuel Walker
F Drew O’Connor
F Luke Tuch
F Nick Bonino
F T.J. Tynan
F Cutter Gauthier
F Sean Farrell
F Anders Bjork
F Matthew Coronato
F Conor Garland
F Alex Tuch
F Carter Mazur

East Notes: Senators, Horvat, Perbix

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There’s some good news and bad news on the injury front for Ottawa.  On the positive side, TSN’s Claire Hanna relays (Twitter link) that defenseman Artem Zub is expected to be ready to return after the All-Star break.  It has been a tough year on the ice for the 27-year-old who has been limited to just 21 games this season while missing time with three separate injuries, the current one being an upper-body issue.  It hasn’t been all bad, however, as he inked a four-year, $18.4MM extension with the Senators last month.

Meanwhile, Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch relays (Twitter link) that goaltender Cam Talbot might not be ready to return after the break.  He suffered a lower-body injury last Wednesday and it’s the second time this season that injuries have held him out of the lineup.  If the Senators are going to climb back into the playoff race, they’ll need him healthy while if they’re going to try to move him by the March 3rd trade deadline, he’ll need to get back and show potential suitors that he’s ready to go.

Elsewhere in the East:

  • Speaking with reporters including Harman Dayal of The Athletic (Twitter link) following today’s trade, Islanders center Bo Horvat indicated that there weren’t any discussions regarding a possible extension before the move was made. The 27-year-old is set to earn a significant raise on his current $5.5MM AAV and is well on his way to a career year as he already has 31 goals and 23 assists so far this season.  New York has a little over $67MM in commitments next season per CapFriendly and a new deal for Horvat would take up more than half of the space of what’s projected to be an $83.5MM cap for 2023-24.
  • Nick Perbix’s time in the minors was short-lived as the Lightning recalled him today, per the AHL’s transactions log. The defenseman was sent down yesterday when Rudolfs Balcers came off LTIR following the conclusion of his conditioning stint; Perbix had to go down to keep them cap-compliant.  Now that Balcers is off the roster (he was sent down after clearing waivers), the 24-year-old could be brought back.  Tampa Bay could have kept him down through the All-Star break if they wanted but there wouldn’t have been a cap benefit to do so as they’re still in LTIR where cap room can’t be banked.

Tampa Bay Lightning Extend Nick Perbix

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The Tampa Bay Lightning continue to turn late-round picks into valuable players, this time getting regular minutes out of sixth-round rookie Nick Perbix. They’ve rewarded the young defenseman with a two-year extension, which will carry an average annual value of $1.125MM.

Perbix, 24, was the 169th pick in 2017, coming out of the high school circuit. There was some early optimism during his year in the USHL but things didn’t really start taking off until he went to St. Cloud State. Over four years, Perbix racked up points while playing in all situations. He performed so well that in 2022, the U.S. Olympic team selected Perbix to join them.

It only took him a handful of AHL games to show that he was ready for a higher level, and in 29 outings for the Lightning this season has eight points. The 6’2″ right-shot defender has skated next to Victor Hedman and is averaging over 15 minutes so far.

For $1.125MM, there’s a lot of upside here for the Lightning with very little risk. If he continues to improve and stays in the team’s top four, he’ll be a huge bargain. If things turn and he struggles, the entire cap hit can be buried in the minor leagues.

Interestingly, because Perbix reached the NHL later than most prospects, he will actually be an unrestricted free agent at the end of this deal. With strong play, he could set himself up for a significant payday when he hits the open market just weeks after his 27th birthday.

Tampa Bay Lightning Recall Nick Perbix

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After signing him to an entry-level contract just a few months ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning are now giving Nick Perbix his first chance in the NHL. The sixth-round pick has been recalled today after the Lightning sent Trevor Carrick back to the minor leagues yesterday.

Perbix, 24, was drafted way back in 2017 but played a year in the USHL and then four seasons at St. Cloud State following his selection. Last year he joined the Syracuse Crunch down the stretch and played well, racking up eight points in 12 regular season games. The 6’2″ right-handed defenseman is a nice all-around depth piece for the team to be able to call on, and gives them four right-handed defensemen on the roster.

With Hayden Fleury and Philippe Myers both playing fewer than 13 minutes against the Pittsburgh Penguins over the weekend, there could be a couple of changes for the Lightning this week. Ian Cole has been reinstated following the league investigation into sexual assault allegations found no evidence, and now Perbix has been recalled after two games in the minor leagues.

Tampa Bay is 1-2 on the year and has given up 11 goals in those three games, including six against the Penguins.

Snapshots: Byron, Team Canada, Perbix

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Paul Byron can’t catch a break. The veteran forward has been limited to just 26 games this season due to injury. While many of these absences came while Byron was recovering from hip surgery, he has continued to be in and out of the lineup ever since he returned. The Montreal Canadiens announced that he was returning to the lineup on Tuesday night – but the return was short-lived. Less than two periods into the game, the Habs revealed that Byron has left the game and would not return due to a lower-body injury. Its unclear if this is another new injury or a reoccurrence of his hip issue. Either way, with just five games remaining in a lost season, it might be time for Montreal to simply shut Byron down for the year. Byron has one year remaining on his contract and will be back with the Canadiens in 2022-23 if he isn’t traded or bought out.

  • The Canadian entry into the upcoming IIHF World Championship may look very familiar to the fans of a Canadian NHL team. Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun writes that Senators head coach D.J. Smith, who will be an assistant for Team Canada, has recruited several of his star players to join the tournament. If healthy, Drake Batherson, Connor Brown, and Thomas Chabot will suit up for Canada. Health is a question though; Chabot is currently on the injured reserve with a fractured hand and Batherson and Brown have both missed time due to injury this season and may not rush to play extra games if those issues flare up.
  • Another notable name has entered the NCAA Transfer Portal. Defenseman Jack Perbix, an Anaheim Ducks fourth-round pick in 2018, is leaving the University of Minnesota. Most would have expected that if Perbix was leaving the Gophers, it would be for the NHL. Older brother Nick Perbix, a Tampa Bay Lightning prospect, signed his entry level contract last month after four years at St. Cloud State University. Rather than follow suit, Jack will instead stay in college for his senior year but will don a different jersey and have a different name on his degree.

Tampa Bay Lightning Sign Nick Perbix

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The Tampa Bay Lightning have added an Olympian to the mix, signing Nick Perbix to a one-year entry-level contract. The deal will start in 2022-23 and Perbix will play the rest of this season with the Syracuse Crunch of the AHL on an amateur tryout.

Perbix, 23, actually could have reached unrestricted free agency had he waited until the middle of August, but he’ll join the team that decided to spend a sixth-round pick on him five years ago.

Before he even played in the USHL, Tampa Bay grabbed the Elk River High captain 169th overall and have watched him turn into a star at St. Cloud State. This season, as a senior, he managed 31 points in 31 games and joined Team USA for the Olympics, suiting up four times.

Perbix’s brother, Jack Perbix, is also a prospect that may land an entry-level contract in the coming weeks. The younger of the two, Jack is a fourth-round pick of the Anaheim Ducks who will be in the Frozen Four as a key member of the University of Minnesota squad.

Nick Perbix though is a nice signing for Tampa Bay, especially because of how close he was to the open market. With a long history of drafting and developing NHL talent in the middle and late rounds, the Lightning will hope that his game can translate to the next level quickly.

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