Today, it was announced that the Blue Jackets re-signed William Karlsson to a two year extension.The two year deal will be worth one million annually, totaling two million over the course of the contract. The young Swede broke into the league permanently last year after having an impressive training camp. He only amassed twenty points on the season, an okay mark and played most of his time near the bottom of the team’s lineup. The question remains, what should we be expecting of Karlsson?
Looking at his underlying stats, they aren’t too bad. His FF% at 5v5 is good at just over 50% and his CF% is slightly below average at 49.6% but I would attribute that to playing on the fourth line for large chunks of the season. Some of the lineups the Jackets rolled out this season weren’t doing him any favors. Karlsson could see a bigger role on the team as they try to move some contracts this off-season, that remains to be seen. The highest role he could see at the time of this writing, would be as a bottom six center. He had a low PDO this past season and still put up a decent amount of points for a depth player. I am interested to see how he progresses over the course of this contract as he could end up being a real contributor to the team. He could move from expendable to valuable in short order.
A couple months back, The Coach had an article showcasing what each CBJ player should make this summer in free agency. One of the most common comparison’s for William Karlsson was with Markus Granlund who got a two year, 900k dollar a year deal.
The general rule of thumb on these type of contracts is that you don’t want to overpay your bottom six so you can spend on elite talent elsewhere. The Jackets still have to sign Seth Jones and are up against the cap to do so. It is a distinct possibility that the signing of Karlsson is the first domino to fall in a long line of moving pieces.
As the great Samuel L. Jackson said in Jurassic World: “Hold onto your butts.”
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