Morning Notes: Sandin Pellikka, Hedman, Erixon
Red Wings rookie defenseman Axel Sandin Pellikka was scratched for a sixth straight game in last night’s 3-1 win over the Canadiens. While the 2023 #17 overall pick hit the ground running this season as Detroit’s second-pairing righty behind Moritz Seider, his complete lack of usage after the team acquired Justin Faulk to fill that role at the deadline was weeks in the making. He has 19 points in 63 appearances but has seen his ice time slashed significantly dating back to New Year’s, averaging 13:27 per game in a 22-match stretch. He’ll no doubt make a push to leapfrog pending RFA Jacob Bernard-Docker on the depth chart next season to step back into a regular role, but his defensive results this year – a -21 rating, a 47.8% expected goals share, and a 45.2% scoring chance share at 5-on-5 – aren’t great.
Here’s more from around the NHL:
- Lightning captain Victor Hedman didn’t play the last two periods of the Bolts’ 6-2 drubbing of the Canucks last night, but there isn’t a huge cause for concern. Head coach Jon Cooper told reporters postgame that while he is a bit banged up, the decision to pull him was illness-related, per Benjamin Pierce of NHL.com. It’s long been known that the 35-year-old isn’t at 100% this season – he’s missed over 30 games due to elbow surgery and an undisclosed lower-body issue. It shows in his performance, averaging a career-low 18:52 per game while limited to a 1-16–17 scoring line and a -1 rating in 33 outings.
- Former NHL depth piece Tim Erixon has retired, he told Nathalie Vinroth of Swedish newspaper Sundsvalls Tidning this week. The 23rd overall pick by the Flames in the 2009 draft, he went on to play 93 games in parts of four years with the Rangers, Blue Jackets, Blackhawks, and Maple Leafs. He last saw NHL ice in 2015 and last played in the minors in 2019 before returning home to bookend his career in the Swedish Hockey League. The 35-year-old won an SHL championship with the Växjö Lakers in 2021 and has been with Timrå IK ever since, although he’s played just six games since the beginning of 2024-25 due to ongoing back issues aggravated by a foot fracture.
Ryan Johansen Announces Retirement
Ryan Johansen announced his retirement in an episode of the Predators’ official team podcast released Thursday afternoon. The 33-year-old center steps away after an NHL career that spanned 13 seasons and included an All-Star nod and a Western Conference championship with Nashville in 2017.
Johansen played his junior hockey with the WHL’s Portland Winterhawks, where he rode a 69-point rookie season to a fourth overall selection by the Blue Jackets in the 2010 draft. After a standout performance for Portland the following season, he arrived in Columbus as a full-time NHL talent beginning with 2011-12. He struggled to produce from the hop, posting 14 goals in 107 games across his first two seasons. He fully arrived as the centerpiece of the Jackets’ attack in 2013-14, though, erupting for 33 goals and 63 points while leading the franchise to just its second playoff appearance in team history at the time.
An RFA the following summer, it took Columbus until October to get Johansen signed. Even then, the two sides could only end up settling for a three-year, $12MM bridge deal. It immediately became one of the best contracts in the league as Johansen followed up his breakout with a career-high 71 points, leading the team with 45 assists while representing Columbus at the All-Star Game and winning MVP honors there.
While it looked from there like Johansen would be the Jackets’ second great offensive star after Rick Nash, his time in the organization was already near its close. With Columbus in need of defensemen, they cut bait quickly with Johansen the following season when he got off to a sluggish start. Halfway through the 2015-16 campaign, he was dealt to the Predators in what ended up being one of the most consequential one-for-one deals of the decade for Seth Jones.
Johansen immediately assumed duties as Nashville’s top center. While he never topped the 70-point mark again, he was a major part of the most successful stretch in franchise history that saw the Preds win playoff series in three consecutive years from 2016-18, making the Cup Final in 2017 and winning the Presidents’ Trophy the following season.
At age 24, Johansen had put up four straight 60-point seasons and played a pivotal role on a team that came just two wins short of a Stanley Cup, although he missed the Final after developing acute compartment syndrome in his left thigh. It seemed like a no-brainer for Nashville to commit long-term when he was an RFA again that summer, inking him to an eight-year, $64MM contract.
Johansen’s offensive consistency would fall off significantly after he put pen to paper on that deal. He only hit the 60-point mark twice more in his career and only averaged 18 goals and 54 points per 82 games for the Preds after signing the contract. His ice time steadily decreased throughout the deal, bottoming out with a 15:46 figure in 2022-23 that also saw him limited to 28 points in 55 outings with a -13 rating. At that point, the Predators had just missed the playoffs for the first time in nine years and hadn’t won a series in five.
Looking to clear money in a flat-cap environment and get out of what was becoming an increasingly undesirable contract, the Preds put him on the trade block. The Avalanche, looking for reclamation stopgap projects down the middle in their middle-six after losing Nazem Kadri the summer prior, took Johansen on for virtually nothing while Nashville retained half his cap hit to offload him.
The move only accelerated Johansen’s jagged but now aggressive decline. He was a non-factor in Colorado and had fallen out of a top-six role by the trade deadline, posting 13 goals and 23 points in 63 games for his worst offensive showing since his teenage years. The Avs were able to offload the last year and a half of his contract by trading him to the Flyers in that year’s Sean Walker deadline deal, but he never played a game for Philadelphia. The Flyers attempted to waive him and assign him to the AHL, but that was later nullified when he failed his physical due to a nagging hip injury.
The Flyers likely planned on buying him out that summer if he was healthy. Since he wasn’t cleared to play, that wasn’t an option. They then moved to place him on unconditional waivers later in the summer to terminate his contract for what the team called a “material breach,” likely due to his failure to report the issue to team doctors before the trade. Johansen appealed, and the process lasted through the entire 2024-25 campaign anyway before an independent arbitrator ultimately ruled in favor of the Flyers.
It was essentially a foregone conclusion at that point that Johansen’s hip issues would prevent him from playing again, but he now makes it official. He tallied just over 900 career games with a 202-376–578 scoring line. His 362 points in a Nashville uniform rank sixth in franchise history. PHR congratulates Johansen on his lengthy career and wishes him the best in retirement.
Image courtesy of Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images.
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare To Retire
After 10 NHL seasons and parts of another 14 seasons in pro leagues in Europe, Pierre-Édouard Bellemare is retiring. The French national team captain, whose first Olympic appearance came to an end this morning with a quarterfinal loss to Germany, told reporters postgame that “this is it” for his international career, per Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.
Bellemare, 40, last played in the NHL with the Kraken in 2023-24. He’s spent the last two seasons with HC Ajoie in Switzerland, playing a pivotal role in helping them avoid relegation to the second-division Swiss League last year. His offensive production is greatly diminished this season, with just one goal and 10 points in 32 National League games, and he has a -15 rating. With only five regular-season games left on Ajoie’s schedule this year and locked into last place in the league, it’s unclear whether Bellemare plans to return to the team after his Olympic performance or make a clean break now.
Bellemare’s pro career began in 2002-03, as a 17-year-old with Rouen in France’s top league, then called the Super 16. He became one of the league’s top producers over the next few years, making his first appearance on the national senior team at the 2004 World Championship, but didn’t attract any NHL interest. He made the jump to a more competitive circuit with Sweden’s Leksands IF in 2006, playing in the second-division HockeyAllsvenskan. He spent three years there, leading the league in goals in 2008-09, before making another jump to Sweden’s top flight with Skellefteå.
Only after another five seasons with Skellefteå, where he won two SHL championships and was arguably the league’s top defensive forward, did Bellemare finally land an NHL contract. In 2014, he landed a two-way deal with the Flyers and, at age 29, immediately became a fourth-line, penalty-killing fixture in Philadelphia. He was never the offensive threat he was in Sweden, averaging just six goals and 12 points per 82 games, but rarely missed time and even garnered some outside Selke Trophy consideration by his third year in Philly.
Bellemare was ticketed to become an unrestricted free agent in 2017. The Flyers tried to avoid that by signing him to a two-year, $2.9MM extension in March, but they left him unprotected in that year’s expansion draft, and the Golden Knights picked him up. He wasn’t one of the many assets Vegas flipped following the draft, instead staying with the club through its storybook inaugural season in a familiar role as their fourth-line center. He hit double-digit assists in the regular season for the first of three times he’d do so in his career, before adding three points and a +6 rating in 20 playoff games in Vegas’ miracle run to the 2018 Stanley Cup Final.
A free agent again in 2019, Bellemare would spend the rest of his career on short-term deals. He first signed a two-year pact with the Avalanche, where he hit a career-high 22 points in 69 games in his first year, before landing another two-year deal with the Lightning on the heels of their back-to-back Stanley Cup championships. He made it back to the Final with the Bolts in 2022, only to lose to his old teammates in Colorado. After being limited to 13 points and a career-worst -9 rating in 73 games for Tampa in 2022-23, he hit the open market again and signed a league-minimum contract in Seattle.
Only in Bellemare’s last year in the league did he fall out of regular usage. He served as more of a 13th/14th forward for the Kraken than a fourth-line fixture, only suiting up 40 times while averaging 9:50 of ice time per game. After notching four goals and seven points for Seattle, he made it clear he wanted to extend his NHL career for at least one more season. With no guaranteed offers, he returned to the Avs on a professional tryout, but was released late in training camp. He then headed to Switzerland, where he had 10 goals and 28 points in 34 games for Ajoie last season before his age finally seemed to catch up with him in 2025-26.
While Bellemare’s offensive utility was limited, he’s arguably one of the most durable pros of his generation and is, by all accounts, an incredibly well-liked teammate. He also developed into a legitimate asset in the faceoff dot after a rough start to his career in that regard in Philly. From 2017 onward, Bellemare won 53.4% of his draws in over 4,500 attempts. His ability to stay in the lineup also provided incredible peace of mind for lineup cards. From 2014 to 2023, only 34 players logged more appearances than Bellemare’s 660.
Bellemare finishes his career with 138 points and a +22 rating in 700 games. He nearly broke even in shot attempts at even strength – an impressive feat for a defensive specialist – and also averaged 72 hits per 82 games. He garnered an estimated $11.3MM in career earnings, per PuckPedia. All of us at PHR congratulate Bellemare on an excellent career and wish him all the best in retirement.
Image courtesy of Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images.
Derek Ryan Announces Retirement
Center Derek Ryan has decided on retirement, he told Bob Stauffer of Oilers Now on 880 CHED yesterday.
“I’m retiring. We, my family, are back home in Spokane,” he told Stauffer. “The kids started at their new school here today. I didn’t actively look for a job this off-season. Europe could’ve been an option, maybe other NHL teams, but if it wasn’t going to be Edmonton, I didn’t want to move the family again. As the kids get older that gets harder. We had good roots in Edmonton, and, shoot, I’m almost 40. It’s nice to settle in here in Spokane. We have our house, friends, and family. It’s nice to be home.”
Not only is Ryan from Spokane, but it’s where he began his junior career with the WHL’s Spokane Chiefs all the way back in 2004. His three-year run there preceded one of the most unique pathways to becoming an NHL fixture in recent memory.
Undrafted, Ryan opted to enter the Canadian university system when his junior eligibility ran out in 2007. That’s not uncommon in and of itself, but it’s not a pathway many future NHLers undertake. Those who do rarely spend a full four years there, but that’s exactly what Ryan did. He played for the University of Alberta from 2007 to 2011, leading the CIS West in scoring in his senior season with a 17-30–47 line in 28 games.
Ryan, already 25 years old at the time, then decided to make the jump overseas instead of pursuing a professional career stateside. It was in Europe that the 5’10”, 185-lb center unlocked offensive dominance. He spent three years in the EBEL (now ICEHL), Austria’s top league, playing with Villacher SV (2012-14) and Hungarian club Fehérvár AV19 (2011-12). He recorded 199 points in just 158 EBEL games over that span, including a spectacular 2013-14 campaign that saw him lead the league with 38 goals in 54 games to earn MVP honors.
He then made the jump to higher-level European pro hockey in Sweden, a decision that finally put him on the NHL’s radar. He spent one year with the SHL’s Örebro HK, where he erupted for a 15-45–60 line in 55 games to lead one of Europe’s top leagues in assists and points, being named the SHL’s MVP and Forward of the Year.
Ryan finally landed a two-way deal with the Hurricanes – inking his first NHL contract at age 28 – the following summer. He was immediately named the captain of the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers, their minor-league affiliate at the time, and was an AHL All-Star with 55 points in 70 games. He also got his first taste of NHL hockey late in the season, scoring his first goal in his first game of a six-game call-up.
That trial run kicked off an NHL career spanning over 600 games, most of which were played after his 30th birthday. He quickly established himself as a defensively responsible third-line pivot in Carolina, scoring 69 points in 153 games for the club while averaging over 15 minutes per night. He reached unrestricted free agency in 2018 and got rewarded by the Flames, signing a three-year, $9.375MM contract to return to the province where he played college hockey.
Ryan’s first season in Calgary was arguably the best of his career. He recorded a 13-25–38 scoring line in 81 games and, while he saw a reduction in ice time, won a team-high 58.2% of his faceoffs and added a +21 rating. That earned him Selke Trophy consideration, landing a fifth-place vote for the only time in his career.
While Ryan’s productivity and usage declined steadily over the course of his tenure with the Flames, that didn’t mean he was in an unfettered downward spiral. He still landed a multi-year deal in free agency from the cross-provincial rival Oilers in 2021, signing a two-year, $2.5MM pact to round out their fourth line.
That kicked off a four-year run for Ryan in Edmonton, the longest of his three NHL stops and a run that concluded just a few months ago. He was a regular from 2021 to 2024, appearing in at least 70 games for his first three years there, but was relegated to the press box for a good chunk of last season and even landed on waivers. He totaled 29 goals and 60 points in 261 games for Edmonton, appearing in 19 games in their run to the 2024 Stanley Cup Final but no playing time last postseason. He scored one goal and six points in 36 NHL games last season and also had eight points in 13 games for AHL Bakersfield after clearing waivers, his first minor-league action in nearly a decade.
Ryan ends his rather remarkable pro career with 82 goals, 127 assists, and 209 points in 606 NHL regular-season games with a +14 rating. He was also one of the better faceoff-takers of the last decade, winning 55.3% of his draws.
PHR congratulates Ryan on his persevering career and wishes him the best in his post-playing future.
Image courtesy of Walter Tychnowicz-Imagn Images.
Aaron Dell Announces Retirement
Goaltender Aaron Dell announced his retirement late last night. The 36-year-old wrote on his Instagram page that he’s hanging up his skates after a lengthy professional career that included seven NHL seasons.
“After 13 seasons of professional hockey the time has come for me to hang up the skates and leave my playing days behind me,” Dell wrote. “I wanted to thank all of the people that believed in me and supported me throughout my career. Lots of ups and downs. An undrafted 6 foot tall goalie that was given a chance by the San Jose Sharks organization. When I look at some of the names I had the privilege of working with like Nabokov, Thornton, Pavelski, Marleau, Couture, Karlsson, Burns and so many great players that I will always consider friends, I feel very fortunate.”
The Alberta native began his pro career with the Central Hockey League’s Allen Americans in 2012 after a three-year stint at the University of North Dakota. He split the following season with ECHL Utah before formally joining the Sharks organization in 2014-15, landing a deal with their AHL affiliate at the time in Worcester. After he exploded for a .927 SV% in 26 games for the Woo Sharks down the stretch, Dell landed his first NHL contract and signed a two-way deal with San Jose.
He spent the following year back in the AHL, this time with the San Jose Barracuda, but won a spot on their opening night roster for 2016-17 as Martin Jones‘ backup. That began a four-year run for Dell as the Sharks’ primary No. 2 option, including a standout rookie season. He only made 17 starts and three relief appearances behind the workhorse Jones but was excellent when relied upon, posting a .931 SV% and 2.00 GAA with an 11-6-1 record in his first taste of NHL action.
That would end up being the peak for Dell, who was already 27 when he burst onto the scene. He remained a serviceable backup for the coming years and even cracked 30 starts in 2019-20, but by the time he hit free agency that fall amid the pandemic, his averages over his four years in San Jose were a .908 SV% and 2.76 GAA – right around league average for that period.
Dell’s play dipped after that. He signed with the Maple Leafs in 2020 but was claimed by the Devils off waivers before ever playing a game for them. In seven games as New Jersey’s No. 3 option in the shortened 2021 season, he only managed a .857 SV% and 4.14 GAA. From that point forward, he spent most of his time back in the AHL, although he did have brief stints back in the NHL with the Sabres in 2021-22 and a second go-around with the Sharks in 2022-23 as a call-up option. He spent most of 2023-24 on an AHL contract with the Ontario Reign but got an NHL deal from the Kings at the trade deadline to serve as an emergency recall option in the postseason.
Last season, Dell returned to the Sharks organization for a third time on an AHL deal with the Barracuda. He had an .890 SV% and a 3-3-3 record in 10 games for them and a .914 SV% and a 6-6-1 record in 13 games for their ECHL affiliate, the Wichita Thunder.
Dell put a pin in his playing career after recording a .905 SV%, 2.92 GAA, five shutouts, and a 50-50-13 record in 130 NHL appearances. He also had a .912 mark and 11 shutouts with a 70-57-20 record in 155 AHL games in parts of eight seasons.
We at Pro Hockey Rumors congratulate Dell on his career and wish him the best in his post-playing endeavors.
Tyson Barrie Announces Retirement
Amid his participation in yesterday’s Avalanche alumni game, defenseman Tyson Barrie confirmed to Nathan Rudolph of the DNVR Avalanche podcast that he’s retired.
A third-round pick of the Avalanche in 2009, Barrie was a highly intriguing offensive option out of the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets and quickly looked like he could be something of a steal. He led the league in assists by a defenseman in his post-draft year and was named the WHL’s top defenseman as a result, but concerns about the righty’s size and defensive acumen meant he returned for a fourth and final season of junior hockey before making the jump to the pro ranks in 2011-12. Even then, he spent most of that year in the minors and only received 10 NHL games.
He slowly worked his way up the Avs’ depth chart, seeing less and less AHL time each season before earning his final recall in November 2013, early in his age-22 season. While he checked in as a fringe top-four option at even strength, he overtook Erik Johnson as Colorado’s top power-play quarterback and ended up recording a 13-25–38 scoring line in 64 games over the balance of the campaign. Those 0.59 points per game placed him inside the top-15 among NHL rearguards that year.
The 2014-15 campaign marked Barrie’s true coming of age. He broke the 50-point plateau – the first of four times he’d end up doing so in his career – while serving as Colorado’s de facto No. 1 option for a good portion of the season with Johnson injured. He would continue averaging north of 21 minutes per game for the remainder of his Colorado tenure, twice earning fringe votes for year-end All-Star honors.
Colorado didn’t have a ton of team success during Barrie’s six-year run as a full-timer there, though, only making the playoffs three times and winning a round once. His struggles away from the puck played a significant role in that. Only once, his final season in Denver, did Barrie manage to record a positive expected rating based on shot quality generated and allowed when he was on the ice at even strength. He posted a negative actual plus/minus rating in his last four years for Colorado, including a league-worst -34 mark in the Avs’ disastrous 22-win season in 2016-17.
Entering the 2019-20 season, Barrie was a pending unrestricted free agent and had been made redundant with Cale Makar‘s emergence in the preceding postseason. That kicked off the latter journeyman phase of his career, beginning with a July 1 blockbuster that sent him to the Maple Leafs in exchange for Nazem Kadri. It didn’t work out all that well for Barrie or Toronto. He was no longer his club’s top power play option, sitting behind Morgan Rielly on the Leafs’ power play pyramid, and his offensive output declined to a more pedestrian 5-34–39 scoring line in 70 games as a result.
With Barrie’s point production his only real calling card, the fit in Toronto obviously wasn’t going to be a long-term one. They let him become a free agent during the COVID-laced 2020 offseason, and he proceeded to land a one-year, $3.75MM “prove-it” deal with the Oilers.
Barrie was plopped onto a top power-play unit in Edmonton with the two-headed monster of Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid – the league’s two leading scorers in the shortened 2021 season – and responded with the best campaign of his career. He recorded 48 points in the truncated 56-game schedule, leading the NHL in scoring among defenders. His defensive deficiencies remained quite visible, though. He only managed a +5 rating compared to regular partner Darnell Nurse‘s +27 mark, and as Edmonton was swept in the first round of the playoffs, Barrie became the first defenseman in league history to lead the position in scoring while not receiving a single Norris Trophy vote.
While Barrie remained a fine puck-mover for the Oilers, his production never quite found that gear again. His minutes began to drop back below the 20-minute mark, and at the 2023 deadline, he was sent to the Predators in the deal that landed Edmonton two-way dynamo Mattias Ekholm.
Nashville marked the last real turning point in Barrie’s career, and it wasn’t for the better. While he was still quite effective for the Preds down the stretch after the trade, recording 12 points in 24 games, that didn’t last very long. In 2023-24 – the final year of a three-year, $13.5MM extension he signed with Edmonton – Barrie tumbled down Nashville’s depth chart and ended up becoming a routine healthy scratch by the time the season ended. As such, he was limited to just one goal and 15 points in 41 games and only drew into the Preds’ playoff lineup once in their first-round loss to the Canucks.
Ahead of his age-33 season and with his value at an all-time low, Barrie ended up needing to settle for a professional tryout with the Flames to participate in an NHL training camp last fall. He did convert that into a $1.25MM contract in early October, but the fit wasn’t quite what Calgary hoped for. He only logged 13 appearances for the club and even ended up on waivers and cleared, seeing his first AHL action in over a decade with the Calgary Wranglers.
Barrie was a free agent this summer, and there was no reported interest in him on the open market. He hangs up his skates with 822 games played in 14 seasons, 23rd among his rather stacked draft class. He scored 110 goals and added 398 assists for 508 points, 10th in the league among defensemen since he debuted back in the 2011-12 season. He averaged just over 21 minutes per night for his career and made $47.85MM in estimated total earnings, per PuckPedia.
All of us at PHR congratulate Barrie on his fine career and wish him the best in his next steps.
Image courtesy of Sergei Belski-Imagn Images.
Minor Transactions: 8/4/25
As we creep a little closer to training camps starting up, there have been a handful of minor moves around the hockey world recently. We’ll run through those here.
- Veteran goaltender Anton Khudobin has announced his retirement at the age of 39, Shaiba.kz relays. Khudobin spent parts of 14 seasons in the NHL, compiling a 114-92-33 record with a 2.52 GAA and a .916 SV% with six different teams. After spending most of 2022-23 in the minors, he opted to play in Russia but didn’t play much at the VHL or KHL levels. Khudobin didn’t suit up at all last season but has now made his retirement official.
- The Hurricanes’ affiliate, the Chicago Wolves, announced (Twitter link) the re-signing of center Nikita Pavlychev and the signing of defenseman Jacob Friend to one-year contracts. Pavlychev had his best AHL performance last season, picking up 25 points in 63 games after primarily playing in the ECHL for the previous four years. As for Friend, he split last season between playing in Austria and Germany but has three years of playing in the minor pros in North America.
- After being moved in the KHL just a few days ago, Matvei Guskov has a new team once again as he has signed with HK Sochi. The Wild drafted Guskov in the fifth round back in 2019 but he has struggled since then, especially last season where he had just four goals in 38 games spread between three other KHL teams. Sochi’s rosters usually aren’t as deep so Guskov may have a pathway to a bigger role and more production now with this move. Minnesota continues to hold his NHL signing rights indefinitely.
- AHL Rockford, affiliate of the Blackhawks, announced the signing of defenseman Tyson Feist to a one-year deal. The 24-year-old only played in six AHL games last season, spending most of the year with ECHL Orlando where he had 17 points in 57 appearances. However, Feist saw action in 32 AHL contests in 2023-24 and will be looking to see more regular action at that level in 2025-26.
Nathan Beaulieu Announces Retirement
Former first-round pick Nathan Beaulieu has announced his retirement from professional hockey, according to the NHLPA.
Beaulieu, 32, hangs up his skates after playing 471 NHL games for the Canadiens, Sabres, Jets, and Ducks. The longtime bottom-pairing defenseman last appeared with Anaheim in the 2022-23 season, spending the last two campaigns in Europe but playing sparingly due to injuries.
The Ontario native was the No. 17 overall pick of the 2011 draft by Montreal from the QMJHL’s Saint John Sea Dogs after helping guide the team to a Memorial Cup championship and being named to the tournament’s All-Star team. He was a tantalizing junior prospect, never outright dominating offensively but still putting up strong point production with dominant defensive impacts while playing a highly physical brand of hockey.
While his physicality translated to the professional level, the other parts of his game only did so in short bursts. Beaulieu only ever topped 20 points in a season once, making a career-high 74 appearances for Montreal in 2016-17 while receiving significant power-play deployment for the only time in his career. He averaged 19:29 per game for the Habs that year, putting together a 4-24–28 scoring line with 102 blocks.
Aside from that, he was still a serviceable bottom-pairing piece for the Habs for a few years after emerging as a full-time NHLer in 2014-15. He ended up recording 60 points and a +19 rating in 225 games for the team that drafted him before he was traded to the Sabres in the 2017 offseason.
After the trade, Beaulieu was firmly relegated to being a No. 7 option. He never made more than 60 appearances in a season after that relative breakout of a 2016-17 campaign, averaging 15:27 per game for Buffalo, Winnipeg, and Anaheim over his final six NHL seasons.
Beaulieu’s final NHL season saw him thrown to the wolves on a severely understaffed Ducks defense in 2022-23, recording four points and a -23 rating in 52 games with ghastly possession numbers. That tanked his value the following summer and led to his move overseas to Switzerland’s EHC Kloten, where he only had two points in 13 games before a hand injury ended his season.
The veteran lefty signed on with Barys Astana of the KHL for 2024-25, but was released after eight games with financial issues forcing the club to part ways with all of its import players. He quickly landed with HC Nove Zamky of the Slovak Extraliga but did not make an appearance for them due to injury.
Beaulieu finishes his career with 12 goals, 86 assists, 98 points, and a -14 rating in 471 regular-season games while averaging 16:18 per night. He also had five points in 21 playoff games with Montreal and Winnipeg. All of us at PHR wish him the best in retirement.
Jaroslav Halak Announces Retirement
Veteran goalie Jaroslav Halak is ending his playing career, telling Tomas Prokop of the Slovak website Dennik Sport that he’s officially retired.
Halak, 40, hasn’t played anywhere in the last two seasons aside from a brief tryout with the Hurricanes that didn’t result in game action early in 2023-24. A ninth-round pick in the 2003 draft, his 17-year NHL career included time with the Canadiens, Blues, Capitals, Islanders, Bruins, Canucks, and Rangers, last playing in New York’s final game of the 2022-23 regular season.
Montreal was the team that drafted him 271st overall from the QMJHL’s Lewiston MAINEiacs, and that’s where Halak got his start in the NHL three years later. He emerged as another young complement in the Canadiens’ pool alongside young star Carey Price, even taking over the starter’s role in the 2009-10 season and backstopping the team to a surprise run to the Conference Finals before being traded to St. Louis for Lars Eller the following summer.
Halak never spent more than four years with a club in his prime and was prone to year-to-year inconsistency, but he was an arguable top-10 goalie in the league at his absolute peak with multiple seasons of save percentages above .920. He was always more of a 1A option than a true starter, only playing more than 50 games four times, but he ends his career as a one-time All-Star, two-time Jennings Trophy winner, and he finished top-10 in Vezina Trophy voting twice.
After serving as the 1A option for the Blues from 2010-14 and on Long Island from 2014-18 with a brief post-deadline stop in Washington in between, Halak spent the twilight years of his career as one of the league’s better backup options for Boston (2018-21), Vancouver (2021-22), and the Rangers (2022-23). He’s been an unrestricted free agent since then, with no items of note on his NHL future since being released from his aforementioned PTO with Carolina in November 2023.
In 581 regular-season appearances, the Bratislava native posted a 2.50 GAA and .913 SV% with a 295-189-63 record and 53 shutouts. One of the best undersized netminders (5’11”, 189 lbs) of his generation, he posted an even better .919 SV% and 2.48 GAA in 39 playoff games in six trips to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
All of us at PHR wish Halak the best in retirement.
Image courtesy of Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images.
Pat Maroon To Retire After The Season
Blackhawks winger Pat Maroon is in his 14th NHL season but there won’t be a 15th. The veteran revealed to CHSN during today’s pregame show (Twitter link) that he plans to retire at the end of the season, citing a desire to start a new chapter with his family.
Maroon is in his first season with Chicago after signing a one-year, $1.3MM contract with them in free agency last summer. He was brought in to play a mentoring role while taking a regular shift on the fourth line and has done just that, getting into 59 games this season where he has 16 points, 95 hits, and 81 penalty minutes in 11:37 of playing time per outing.
It felt like the 36-year-old was going to be a candidate to be moved at the trade deadline earlier this month to a team looking to add some extra depth and experience for the stretch run. However, he indicated to the team last month that his preference was to remain with Chicago rather than be on the move for the second straight deadline.
Maroon was a sixth-round pick by Philadelphia back in 2006, going 171st overall. He spent parts of four seasons in their farm system but never got a chance to play with the Flyers, eventually being traded to Anaheim in 2010.
While Maroon saw a bit of NHL action with the Ducks after the move, it took until the 2013-14 campaign for him to become a regular player for them at the age of 25. He wound up spending parts of five years with them before he was traded to Edmonton at the 2016 deadline. With the Oilers is where he had his best success offensively, notching 86 points in 154 games over parts of three years before being moved to New Jersey at the 2018 trade deadline.
Maroon then signed with St. Louis the following summer, winning a Stanley Cup with them in 2019 before moving on to Tampa Bay where he won two more in consecutive seasons. Along the way, he went from being more of a second-line option as he was with Edmonton to more of an energetic bottom-six piece, one that spent parts of four years with the Lightning before being picked up at the deadline by Boston last season.
All told, Maroon has 125 goals and 195 assists along with 1,583 hits and 1,071 penalty minutes in 839 regular season games across eight different organizations heading into today’s action. He also has suited up in 163 postseason contests, in the top 75 in NHL history in that regard where he has 53 points and those three Stanley Cup rings. While Maroon has a few more weeks to add to those regular season numbers, it has certainly been a very solid career for someone who wound up being a late bloomer after working his way up from a long stint in the minors.
Photo courtesy of Perry Nelson-Imagn Images.