The Devils came to terms today with unrestricted free agent forward Tomas Tatar. He signed a two-year contract worth an average annual value of $4.5 million.
The contract is worth $9,000,000 and the breakdown is $3,750,000 in 2021-22 and $5,250,000 in 2022-23.
The 30-year-old was with the Montreal Canadiens for the last three seasons starting in 2018. Last season, he played in 50 games and scored 10 goals and 20 assists (totaling 30 points) and was third in scoring among the Habs’ forwards.
He has participated in 625 games over his ten-year career with the Detroit Red Wings, Vegas Golden Knights and Canadiens. He has 176 goals and 201 assists for 377 points (a .60 point per game clip) to go with 224 penalty minutes.
He had seven straight years of 19 or more goals coming into this season (a shortened year) according to the Devils’ PR team who put out the press release. Over that seven-year span, he also had eight or more power play points (19 in 2014-15 was his career high).
The Ilava, Slovakia-native was the Wings’ second round pick, 60th overall in 2009. He played in the Detroit system with the Grand Rapids Griffins (AHL) before hitting the NHL. He won a Calder Cup with the Griffins in 2013, winning the Jack A. Butterfield Trophy as playoff MVP along the way.
Before coming to the NHL, he played with HK Dukla Trencin and HK Dubnica in his native Slovakia. He also played for Slovakia internationally at the 2009 and 2010 World Junior Championship, the 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2019 World Championship where he won a silver medal in 2010 and 2012. He was an alternate captain for the Slovaks in the other years. He also participated in the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2016 World Cup of Hockey – he was on the runners-up, Team Europe).