Just when you might have been thinking all of the big money was spent in this year’s free agency season, the Tampa Bay Lightning dropped a five-year, $26.5 million deal on Ondrej Palat.
On 14 July, the two sides came to an agreement that keeps the left winger in the
Bolts’ Left Wing Ondrej Palat – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
Sunshine state for five years.
The agreement, coming two weeks after the frenzy, helped both parties avoid a potentially messy arbitration route to a contract.
“His value is probably greater than if you just look at the goals and assists,” Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman said on a conference call. “He’s really a complete player. He plays in all situations for us, and he’s very effective in all situations. Whether we’re on the power play, killing a penalty, 5-on-5, we’re up a goal, down a goal, late in the game it’s tied — he’s going to be in in all those situations, and he plays really hard.”
Pailat played in 75 games for the Bolts this past season and tallied 17 goals and 52 points on the campaign’ he was a +8 for the year.
This means that Yzerman has successfully locked up the Triplets for the foreseeable future in Tampa with Tyler Johnson and Nikita Kucherov also in the fold with similarly structured and [paid contracts.
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