Lightning sign Brandon Hagel to eight-year contract extension

For Tampa Bay, the team has now invested a significant portion of their available cap space for the rest of the decade into Hagel, betting that his strong form from 2022-23 will not only be maintained into future seasons, but built upon.

Hagel was originally a late-round draft choice by the Buffalo Sabres at the 2016 draft but was not tendered an entry-level contract by the team. He signed with the Chicago Blackhawks at the conclusion of his WHL career and made an instant impact with the team’s AHL affiliate in 2019-20, leading the team in goals with 19.

In 2020-21 Hagel became a full-time NHLer, scoring at a decent clip, 24 points in 52 games. In August 2021, the Blackhawks made the prudent choice to sign Hagel to a three-year, $1.5M AAV contract extension, a deal that paid immediate dividends.

Hagel’s scoring numbers in the NHL began to look quite a bit more like what one would expect from a former WHL star, and in 55 games with the team, he scored 21 goals and 37 points. Heading into a rebuild, the Blackhawks chose to cash in on Hagel’s breakout as well as the immense surplus value he provided on a $1.5M AAV deal and traded him to the Lightning, a cap-strapped team specifically targeting players who could outperform their cap hit by multiple degrees of magnitude.

Hagel had a slow start in Tampa, scoring just seven points in 22 regular-season games and six points in the team’s run to the 2022 Stanley Cup Final. But this past season, Hagel’s first full campaign in Tampa, he showed exactly why the Lightning surrendered two first-round picks and two young players in order to acquire him. He scored 30 goals and 64 points in 81 games, delivering consistent offensive quality in a top-six role.

He averaged 18:38 time-on-ice per game, a career-high, which ranked him fourth among Lightning forwards. Beyond just delivering offensive consistency and top-line production, Hagel’s two-way game also took a step forward. He averaged just a shade under two minutes per game on Tampa’s penalty kill and even got a fifth-place Selke Trophy vote for the NHL’s best defensive forward.

While this contract certainly carries some risk — Hagel has only been a true top-line forward in the NHL for one, maybe two seasons — it’s easy to see why Tampa has gambled on Hagel as a key part of their future. He’s been a healthy, productive, generally consistent all-around player who still has room to improve. The team isn’t buying any seasons in Hagel’s mid-to-late thirties with this deal, minimizing the room for this deal to age poorly in its later years.

While $6.5M places Hagel in the financial company of players such as Evgeni Malkin, Chris Kreider, Sam Reinhardt, Claude Giroux and William Nylander, forwards who have all reached higher offensive heights than Hagel, the cap hit should look more appropriate as the league’s upper limit rises in the near future.

Additionally, seeing as the Lightning likely believe Hagel still has room to grow offensively, there is always the possibility that Hagel makes this $6.5M price tag look like a steal down the line. If he can get even more regular time on the powerplay next to stars like Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point, Hagel could potentially score 40 goals or 70 points in the future. But even if that doesn’t come to pass, as the cap rises this $6.5M cap hit is an eminently reasonable price to pay for the prime years of a player like Hagel.

Adding this contract extension to the extensions signed by other ascending Lightning players, such as Erik Cernak, Mikhail Sergachev and Anthony Cirelli, it’s clear that Tampa Bay is working towards building a core group of players for the rest of the decade and beyond.

The team is intent on continuing to compete even as franchise icons such as Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman advance deeper into their thirties, and now with all of these extensions signed Tampa Bay has made sure that if those veterans ever get their names etched into the Stanley Cup for a third time, it will be alongside new core players, such as Hagel.