The Nashville Predators and team captain Roman Josi have announced that they agreed to an eight-year contract extension expected to be worth north of $9 million a season.
At age 29, Roman Josi had a career-high 61 points in 2015-16 and has already amassed 13 points in just 11 games this season. Extending him has been a priority for the Nashville Predators front office all along. On Tuesday, Oct. 29, Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic confirmed he has signed an eight-year extension worth over $9 million a year.
The contract makes Roman Josi the third highest-paid defenseman in the NHL. The deal, according to the team, is worth $9.059 million a year.
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He has become the backbone of the team and as the captain hopes to get the Preds back to the playoffs again this season and hopefully get them to the ultimate goal of a Stanley Cup Championship.
He is currently on pace to smash his career-best numbers. He seems to be playing the best hockey of his career right now and the Predators front office must believe that he will continue this form of play for many years to come at that price tag.
Scoring defensemen are all the rage right now and it seems that Josi and Nashville have set the bar for the value of these kinds of defensemen.
Another of my Puck Prose cohorts is going to weigh in on the ramifications of this contract for the Preds now and in the future so I won’t dive into that. The important fact is that Nashville has secured one of the best scoring defensemen in the league for the rest of his career.
Once the exact details of the contract are released we can all nitpick the term, price, and value from there. Nashville wins in the short term no doubt about that right now. Roman Josi is not just a scoring defenseman, he’s a true leader for any franchise and that is worth the contract to me.
Josi has been a reliable player healthwise as well. He has never missed more than 10 games in a single season and has played either 81 or 82 games in three of his seven seasons with 48 games played in his first season when he was called up in 2012-13. He scored 18 points that season.
Since then he’s had at least 40 points every season and has regularly hung around the 50pt mark in five of his seven seasons. He very well could be in the running for a Norris Trophy this season if he stays at his current production rate. Time will tell.
Congratulations to Roman and the Predators! This makes for good speculation on what the other free agent to be players futures may hold. Alex Pietrangelo comes to mind right away.