NHL Notebook: St. Louis Blues sign Pavel Buchnevich to eight-year extension
2 days ago
It’s been a busy period since the Stanley Cup Finals ended.
On top of numerous trades and the 2024 draft, the free agency period opened Monday. We covered that in the latest NHL Notebook, so this one will look at transactions that happened on Tuesday.
Let’s dig in!
Shane Pinto re-signs with the Senators
The Ottawa Senators have been busy in recent days. They traded a late-round first and more for former Bruins netminder Linus Ullmark, who won the 2022-23 Vezina Trophy. Moreover, they had a top 10 pick, selecting Calgary Hitmen defenceman Carter Yakemchuk.
Ottawa has also made two more trades since the free agency window opened. On Monday, they traded Jakob Chychrun for a 2026 third-round pick and defenceman Nick Jensen. At the 2023 trade deadline, the Senators moved a 2023 first-round pick and a 2024 second-round pick, only to miss the postseason both seasons they had him.
On Tuesday, the Senators traded Mathieu Joseph and a third-round pick in the 2025 draft to the St. Louis Blues for future considerations. Last season, the 27-year-old winger scored 11 goals and 35 points, the latter being a career-high while on a team-friendly contract ($2.95 million for two seasons). It seems odd they had to attach a pick.
They then used the savings to re-sign right-shot centre Shane Pinto to a two-year deal worth $7.5 million with an annual cap hit of $3.75 million. After missing the first 41 games due to a gambling suspension, Pinto scored nine goals and 27 points in 41 games, pacing to have a better season than he had the year prior when he scored 20 goals and 35 points in 82 games.
Pavel Buchnevich signed six-year extension with the Blues
Speaking of the Blues and re-signing players, the team re-signed Pavel Buchnevich to a six-year deal worth $48 million, or $8 million a season. The contract won’t kick in until the end of next season, as he’ll make $5.8 million on his pre-existing contract in 2023-24.
The 29-year-old Russian was a hot commodity at the 2024 trade deadline, with even the Oilers showing interest in him. It makes sense, as he scored 27 goals and 63 points in 80 games, and had been point-per-game the two prior seasons with 30 goals in 2021-22.
Of course, they also received a third-round pick in 2025 along with Mathieu Joseph, a solid middle-six player. However, they also traded with their divisional rivals, the Dallas Stars, acquiring Radek Faska in a cap dump for future considerations, who the Blues received earlier in the day from the Senators.
The Blues had the 16th overall pick in the 2024 draft, selecting Czechian defenceman Adam Jiříček. On Tuesday, they signed him to a three-year entry-level contract.
Victor Hedman re-signs with the Lightning
From a young defenceman who hasn’t started his career, to one of the best defencemen in the league, the Tampa Bay Lightning re-signed a four-year, $32 million contract with an annual cap hit of $8 million. Like Buchnevich, Hedman’s contract won’t kick in until the 2025-26 season, meaning that his cap hit for 2024-25 will be $7.875 million.
The Swedish left-shot defenceman scored 13 goals and 76 points in 78 games this past season, proving that despite his age, he’s still among the league’s elite defenceman. He started his career back in 2009-10, accumulating 156 goals and 728 points in 1052 games.
Hedman has played 165 postseason games, scoring 23 goals and 117 points, winning the 2020 Conn Smythe Trophy, along with two Stanley Cups in four trips to the finals. His only James Norris Trophy came in 2017-18, when he scored 17 goals and 63 points. Surprisingly, his career-best year in points came in 2021-22 when he scored 20 goals and 85 points.
He and Nikita Kucherov are the longest-serving Lightning players and make up their core alongside netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy and forward Brayden Point. Unfortunately, they lost their captain Steven Stamkos, as he signed with the Nashville Predators on Monday.
Ducks acquire Brian Dumoulin
There have been a handful of trades since free agency opened, with three of the five including either the Ottawa Senators or the St. Louis Blues (or both). On Monday, the Pittsburgh Penguins traded Reilly Smith to the New York Rangers for a second-rounder in 2027 and a fifth-rounder in 2025.
The other trade saw the Anaheim Ducks move a fourth-round pick in 2026 to the Seattle Kraken in exchange for defenceman Brian Dumoulin. The 32-year-old had a good season for the Kraken, scoring a career-high six goals, as well as 16 points in 80 games.
Starting his career in 2013-14, the left-shot defenceman has 25 goals and 155 points in 626 career games, mainly playing for the Penguins before signing with the Kraken during the 2023 off-season.
Interestingly, he, along with Brandon Sutter, and the eighth-overall pick in 2012 draft (Derrick Pouliot) were traded from the Carolina Hurricanes to the Penguins in exchange for Jordan Staal. Dumoulin won back-to-back cups in 2016 and 2017.
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