[UPDATE: According to Jon Rosen, the five other RFAs listed below (Jordan Weal, Nick Shore, Vincent LoVerde, Nic Dowd, and Andrew Crescenzi) have all been re-signed, or at least, have agreed to terms. Most importantly, Weal comes in at one year, 632.5K and Shore at two years, 600K per]
The Los Angeles Kings issued qualifying offers to all of their remaining unrestricted free agents two weeks ago.
Per Kings, have issued qualifying offers to : Andreoff, Crescenzi, Dowd, LoVerde, Shore, Weal.
— lisa dillman (@reallisa) June 29, 2015
The first to re-sign from the group of six: the guy who spent the longest period of time in LA last year, Andy Andreoff. From the team’s official press release:
The Los Angeles Kings have signed restricted free agent forward Andy Andreoff to a two-year contract, Kings President/General Manager Dean Lombardi announced today.
The 24-year-old Andreoff (born on May 17, 1991) is a 6-1, 206-pound native of Pickering, Ontario who appeared in 18 regular-season games last season with the Kings. He registered three points (2-1=3), a plus-1 rating and 18 penalty minutes.
A third-round (80th overall) selection of the Kings at the 2011 NHL Draft, Andreoff appeared in his first NHL game last season on Oct. 14 vs. Edmonton. He tallied his first goal, March 16 vs. Arizona. The goal was also the game-winning goal, becoming the first Kings player to have his first career goal also be the game-winning goal since Jordan Nolan did so on Feb. 12, 2012 at Dallas. In the last game of the season, Andreoff recorded his first multi-point game (1-1=2), April 11 vs. San Jose. His assist that night also marked his first career assist.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: Andreoff won’t play 82 games for the Kings next season. Along withShore, who’s expected to grab a bottom-six center spot, Weal is going to push for playing time, and Kyle Clifford, Trevor Lewis, Dwight King, and Jordan Nolan aren’t going anywhere.
The deal makes perfect sense when looking at the $$$ though: $1.175 million over two years is not a lot of money. We don’t yet know if it’s a one-way or a two-way deal, but as the potential last man on the roster, the low cap hit of $587,500 is nice. In fact, it’s less than every forward under contract in LA or Manchester, other than Brian O’Neill. And if another forward comes out of nowhere to steal his spot and he ends up in Manchester, Andreoff’s low cap hit makes him an attractive short-term fill-in in case of injury.
TL;DR: fine deal for a 14th forward, and the mates are excited.
Congrats @andyandreoff #amigo #missyou
— Tyler Toffoli (@tytoff16) July 15, 2015
Congrats @andyandreoff on the new deal! #youkiddingme #roomie
— Brayden Mcnabb (@nabber03) July 15, 2015