The Winnipeg Jets have signed defenceman Logan Stanley to a one-year contract.
Defenceman Logan Stanley and the Winnipeg Jets have come to an agreement on a one-year contract worth $1 million, running through the coming 2023-24 NHL season.
The 25-year-old Waterloo, Ontario product was the penultimate Jets restricted free agent remaining for general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff to get under contract for the coming season. Now, just Manitoba Moose blueliner Declan Chisholm remains without a deal.
For Stanley, it has been another season of difficulty, as injury and time spent in the press box as the No. 7 or sometimes even the No. 8 defenceman on the team has prevented any thought of a considerable bump up in playing time.
Stuck behind Josh Morrissey, Neal Pionk, Brenden Dillon, Dylan DeMelo, Nate Schmidt, Dylan Samberg and sometimes Kyle Capobianco, Stanley only found his way into 19 games last season.
Having once been protected over DeMelo at the Seattle Kraken expansion draft, Stanley’s stock has taken a sizeable hit over the course of the past two seasons.
He had a goal and three points to go alongside 21 penalty minutes last year, which came on the heels of a one-goal, 13-point 2021-22 campaign. But having skated in just 77 total games, the former Kitchener Rangers standout is trending in the wrong direction.
A big body at 6-foot-7 and 230 pounds, Stanley just hasn’t been able to translate the early success he found in 2020-21 under head coach Paul Maurice. His displeasure with playing time and opportunity led to a March trade request, to which Cheveldayof has been unable to fulfill, thus far.
With Winnipeg yet to ship a defender elsewhere, it appears as though Stanley, Capobianco, Chisholm and Ville Heinola will enter training camp in a fight for that ‘extra’, seventh-man spot on the logjam that is the Jets’ blueline.