Penguins sign Alex Nedeljkovic to two-year contract extension
The Pittsburgh Penguins have announced that they’ve signed goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic to a two-year contract extension with a $2.5 million cap hit.
Welcome back, Ned!
The Penguins have re-signed goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic to a two-year contract.
The contract runs through the 2025.26 season and carries an average annual value of $2.5 million.
Nedeljkovic was signed to a one-year, $1.5 million contract for the 2023-24 season, and was set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st. With this new extension, the Penguins lock him up until he’s 30 years old at 2.99% of the 2024-25 salary cap.
There are currently no details on the signing bonuses or no-trade/no-move clauses that come with the extension.
Nedeljkovic’s closest cap hit comparable is former Penguins goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who also comes in at a $2.5 million cap hit on his one-year contract extension with the Minnesota Wild that starts in 2024-25.
Nedeljkovic is coming off of a solid season working in tandem with Tristan Jarry, where he had an 18-7-7 record, a .902% save percentage, a shutout, and a 0.57 goals saved above expected in 38 games played, and had brief runs as their starting goalie. It was a significant improvement on his previous two seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, where he struggled in the crease and eventually was sent down to the minors.
Nedeljkovic is a former second-round pick by the Carolina Hurricanes in the 2014 NHL Draft, making his debut with the team in the 2016-17 season and playing the occasional games at the NHL level over the next four years before establishing himself as a regular in the 2020-21 season, where he was a finalist for the Calder trophy. The Canes then dealt his restricted free agent rights to the Red Wings, where he spent two years before the Red Wings opted to let him walk to free agency in 2023, where he then signed with the Penguins.
Nedeljkovic is the Penguins first notable signing of the offseason, as up to this point they’ve mostly spent the offseason signing prospects and AHL players. They currently have about $10.7 million in cap space with only three other players on their NHL roster to re-sign this offseason, as Jansen Harkins set to be a UFA on July 1st while Emil Bemstrom and Pierre-Olivier Joseph are RFAs.