Blues re-sign Patrik Berglund for five years, $19.25 million
The St. Louis Blues have re-signed forward Patrik Berglund to a five-year contract extension worth $19.25 million, the team announced Friday.
This comes out to a $3.85 million salary cap hit per-season and reportedly includes a partial no-trade clause. The 28-year-old Berglund is in the final season of a three-year, $11.1 million contract and was slated to be an unrestricted free agent in the offseason. He currently ranks second on the Blues in goals with 17 and 10th in points with 24. St. Louis also uses Berglund a bit on the power play where he has averaged 1:18 of ice-time per-game on the season, and on the penalty kill where he plays 1:14 per-game.
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From a puck possession perspective, Berglund has held a 52.14 adjusted 5-on-5 CF% along with a plus-2.00 adjusted 5-on-5 CF% rel.
With Beglund under contract for next season, the Blues currently have a total of $60,494,167 dedicated to the 2017-18 salary cap.
“I’ve loved what Bergy has brought to the table,” coach Mike Yeo said last week according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I feel between him and I that we’ve got something good going on here, and I think it started before I became the head coach. He’s got a real strong sense of what he is as a player, what he needs to do, what he needs to bring night after night, and when he does those things, he adds an awful lot to our group.
“I think it’s just his identity as a player, knowing the things he needs to do to be successful. I would look at him and say that it’s pretty simple to picture what his best games look like. When you think about Bergy being physical, when you think about him controlling pucks in the offensive zone, getting to the net, these are things that make him extremely difficult to defend and I think he’s doing that very consistently right now.”
St. Louis’ re-signing Berglund takes a decent-sized name off the list of potential unrestricted free agents this offseason and keeps the team’s forward core together. Still, the Blues face some decisions in advance of next week’s trade deadline – such as what to do with defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk, a pending unrestricted free agent who appears unlikely to re-sign in St. Louis.
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Recently it was reported the Blues had agreed to a trade of Shattenkirk to the Tampa Bay Lightning several weeks ago, but the defenseman couldn’t work out a new contract with the team. It was reportedly the second time a trade of Shattenkirk was shot down because he couldn’t agree to a long-term contract with another team – the first time was with the Edmonton Oilers last June.
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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper
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