{"id":116300,"date":"2021-07-31T19:29:20","date_gmt":"2021-07-31T23:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=116300"},"modified":"2021-07-31T19:29:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-31T23:29:20","slug":"derek-stepan-contract-hurricanes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/07\/31\/derek-stepan-contract-hurricanes\/","title":{"rendered":"Carolina Hurricanes Ink Derek Stepan To One-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/07\/29\/carolina-hurricanes-sign-defenceman-brendan-smith\/\" target=\"_self\">Carolina Hurricanes<\/a> announced today they&#8217;ve inked veteran center <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/s\/stepade01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Derek Stepan<\/a> to a one-year, $1.35 million contract for 2021-22. The Hurricanes made the deal official themselves Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Welcome to Carolina, Derek!<\/p>\n<p>Details \u00bb <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/58myiL8F5G\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/58myiL8F5G<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QR74ICH9wc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/QR74ICH9wc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Canes\/status\/1421608039577235458?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 31, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Carolina Hurricanes Announce Derek Stepan Contract<\/h2>\n<p>Stepan enters the 2021-22 season after some injury issues over the past few seasons that have severely impacted his offensive performance. Once a solid bet for 50-60 points per year, Stepan&#8217;s produced under 30 during both the past two seasons, including just six last year. Over a career of 759 NHL games, Stepan&#8217;s registered 168 goals and 317 assists for 485 points. Stepan is still a decent play driving forward at this point in his career, but a lack of finishing ability over the past few years has cost him a lot of offensive production.<\/p>\n<h3>What This Means Moving Forward<\/h3>\n<p>Stepan will look to reclaim past performance this year with Carolina. A combination of injuries and declining finishing ability at age 31 don&#8217;t bode well for the longevity of Stepan&#8217;s career. With this contract, though, both Stepan and Carolina are betting on some sort of bounceback here.<\/p>\n<p>He could be more valuable in even more limited minutes. If Stepan does in fact stay at centre, it&#8217;s unlikely he&#8217;d play anything above fourth-line minutes. He&#8217;ll be stuck on the depth chart behind\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=ahose01,ahose02&amp;search=Sebastian+Aho&amp;utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sebastian Aho<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/t\/trochvi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vincent Trocheck<\/a><\/strong>, and\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/s\/staaljo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jordan Staal<\/a><\/strong>. He&#8217;ll likely form a fourth line centring <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/martijo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jordan Martinook<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/l\/leivojo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Josh Leivo<\/a><\/strong>. Martinook re-signed with the team after briefly testing the open market, while Leivo joins the squad after a year with the Calgary Flames.<\/p>\n<p>Carolina hopes that Stepan can add to a core that&#8217;s gaining more playoff experience every season. While their roster will return next season looking a lot differently, they hope Stepan can add another veteran presence in the room. The contract is fair value for a player in his situation, and he still could indeed have something to offer to the Canes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Carolina Hurricanes announced today they&#8217;ve inked veteran center Derek Stepan to a one-year, $1.35 million contract for 2021-22. The Hurricanes made the deal official themselves Saturday afternoon. Welcome to Carolina, Derek! Details \u00bb https:\/\/t.co\/58myiL8F5G pic.twitter.com\/QR74ICH9wc \u2014 Carolina Hurricanes (@Canes) July 31, 2021 Carolina Hurricanes Announce Derek Stepan Contract Stepan enters the 2021-22 season after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3006,"featured_media":116301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4547,34,4548],"tags":[1353],"class_list":["post-116300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hurricanes","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","tag-derek-stepan"],"modified_by":"Josh Erickson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3006"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}