The St. Louis Blues signed pending free agent defenceman Marco Scandella to a four-year contract extension worth $13.1 million, or $3.275 million per season. This contract carries him through the 2023-24 season.
BREAKING NEWS: Defenseman Marco Scandella has agreed to terms on a new four-year contract extension with the Blues. https://t.co/6KGjRhBLQ7 #stlblues
— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) April 16, 2020
Marco Scandella Signs Extension With St. Louis
Over his ten-year NHL career, Scandella has played for the Minnesota Wild, Buffalo Sabres, Montreal Canadiens, and Blues. He has put up 42 goals and 95 assists for 137 career points in 580 career games. He was originally drafted in the second round, 55th overall of the 2008 NHL Entry Draft by the Wild.
This season so far, he’s scored four goals and nine assists for 13 points. He also added 20 minutes in penalties. His possession numbers were 51.5 percent Corsi and a relative Corsi of -0.6 percent.
The financial terms of the contract are an initial report. Specific details are unknown as of publication.
What This Means for the Future
As Scandella enters his 30’s, he’s carved out quite a nice NHL career for himself. The former second-round pick has become a reliable all-around player for every NHL team he’s played for. What he lacks in speed he makes up for in his aggressive defensive positioning and shot, giving the Blues a big body to partner with players like Colton Parayko and Justin Faulk. However, Scandella has fallen victim to the injury bug multiple times, and signing him to a lengthy contract extension this late in his career attaches some risk of the Blues getting stuck with dead weight.
Notice how captain Alex Pietrangelo‘s name wasn’t mentioned with Parayko’s and Faulk’s. Pietrangelo is a pending free agent, and signing Scandella to this extension actually adds over a million dollars to what St. Louis was spending on him before. He was involved in a retained salary transaction, meaning that the Blues were only on the hook for half of his $4 million cap hit. This ‘raise’ certainly complicates re-signing Pietrangelo this offseason, which is a mystifying choice on behalf of the Blues.
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