{"id":442896,"date":"2024-07-25T14:02:23","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T18:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=442896"},"modified":"2024-07-25T14:02:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T18:02:23","slug":"oliver-wahlstrom-free-agency-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2024\/07\/25\/oliver-wahlstrom-free-agency-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Islanders Ink Forward to a New Contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Islanders<\/a> have made a decision make on their pending RFA Oliver Wahlstrom. The team’s former 11th overall pick from 2018 has a new contract<\/a>. He will be in place for one year.<\/p>\n

The Islanders drafted Oliver Wahlstrom<\/a> with high hopes, the hope that he would develop into a consistent top 6 forward eventually. However, while showing flashes of his great shooting ability at times it hasn’t happened. After being tendered last year for $894k, it doesn’t look like the Islanders will do it again. The 23-year-old will most likely have a new home next season.<\/p>\n

Wahlstrom Has New Contract With Islanders<\/h2>\n

What did he do last year?<\/h3>\n

For Wahlstrom, the 2023-24 season was underwhelming, similarly to how his entire Islanders tenure has gone. Coming off an ACL tear that cut his 2022-23 season short after a promising start on the first line,\u00a0 where he developed chemistry with Mathew Barzal<\/a>, scoring 16 points in 35 games. He needed a bounce back season this year but it didn’t happen, scoring just 6 points in 32 games. After making the opening night roster he played just 19 games through December, coach Lane Lambert<\/a> platooned him in the lineup with Julien Gauthier.<\/a> When Patrick Roy<\/a> took over he promised to play Wahlstrom more consistently. He scored 1 point and recorded only 8 shots in 9 games playing on the third line before he was out of the lineup again. Roy must’ve liked what he saw from Kyle Maclean<\/a> and Simon Holmstrom<\/a> more as they got the consistent playing time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What does it mean for his new team?<\/h2>\n

The Wahlstrom contract makes sense for the club. For the Islanders, they will be getting a player who has the talent to play in the NHL if given the playing time. When Wahlstrom did get a chance in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons he didn’t play that bad and many Islanders fans thought he’d stick. He had 21 points in 44 games in 2020-21. Following that up with 24 points in 73 games the next season. While he might be better suited as a third liner instead of a top 6 guy, he is still very young and has room to grow into a better player given the chance. The Islanders have struggled to develop young talent before like, Joshua Ho-Sang<\/a>, Michael Dal Colle<\/a> and Kieffer Bellows<\/a> to name a few. So there is a chance that it could’ve been the situation and not the player. Although, he will get another chance to prove himself.<\/p>\n

Main Photo: Dennis Schneidler-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Islanders have made a decision make on their pending RFA Oliver Wahlstrom. The team’s former 11th overall pick from 2018 has a new contract. He will be in place for one year. The Islanders drafted Oliver Wahlstrom with high hopes, the hope that he would develop into a consistent top 6 forward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5162,"featured_media":446251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_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":[4548,17,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nhl","category-islanders","category-news"],"modified_by":"Tommy Bennett","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442896","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\/5162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}