Out of all of the players having success for the Tampa Bay Lightning this season, the unlikeliest of them is Darren Raddysh. A healthy scratch at points early in the season, there was some speculation that he might not even make it to the new year on the roster. Not only did he stick around, he found himself on the top pairing and is having a career season.

So why is he a problem? Well. As far as Coach Jon Cooper is concerned, he’s not a problem. Having more good defenseman than you have spots for in the line-up is the type of good problem every coach wishes he could have. However, for his good friend and general manager, Julien BriseBois, figuring out what to do with the right-shot defenseman could turn into a headache as the GM tries to decide where his future resides. Raddysh is in the final season of a two-contract that has a cap hit of $975,000. Is it the best, non-entry level contract in the league. Folks are saying it might be.

With 17 goals and 51 points through 48 games, Raddysh has earned a sizable raise for his next deal. The big question will be if the Lightning are going to be the ones cutting the check. Mr. BriseBois, when asked about it during his mid-season fireside chat, wasn’t quite ready to commit to bringing him back in the summer.

““I hope his future is in Tampa. He’s been with us for a long time. One thing I take particular pride in is those guys that come into our organization with no fanfare, expectations are almost nonexistent, and they end up putting in the work, taking advantage of the resources and the support that we can provide them by putting in the work, believing in themselves and finding a way to get to the NHL and establishing themselves in the NHL. Darren is a great success story, because those success stories inspire other success stories.

I think we’re going to wait, not because it’s going to be a life-changing contract but because you look at his play the first year with us, his play last year, his play at the start of season, his play now, I’m going to need a bigger sample size to know exactly how to value that going forward. I think ultimately that’s what it comes down to. I don’t know what that dollar sign looks like. I know I want the player to stay here. We love the guy. He bleeds blue, and he’s helping us win.”

–Julien BriseBois, 1/08/26

It’s not very often that you hear him use the phrase “I don’t know”. The Lightning’s GM can be faulted for a lot of things, but being unaware of a solution for a problem is rarely one of them. The thing is, he’s not wrong to be a little flummoxed. There aren’t many cases like this in the NHL, and putting a price tag on Raddysh’s future isn’t going to be easy.

Raddysh was not drafted out of junior hockey, despite putting up some really good numbers with the Erie Otters, including an 81-point season in 2016-17. He was able to secure a couple of AHL contracts with the Chicago Blackhawks before finally signing his first NHL deal in the spring of 2018 as a 22-year-old. Less than a year later, and without appearing in a NHL game for them, Chicago dealt him to the New York Rangers for Peter Holland.

After a couple of seasons with the Hartford Wolfpack, Raddysh was a free agent once again. This time it was the Lightning that came calling, signing him to a one-year, two-way deal in the summer of 2021. Now 25, Raddysh came into the organization as a veteran presence to provide some stability at the AHL level. His first season was decent, with 7 goals and 18 assists in 61 games, but it was in 2022-23 that he broke out with an all-star performance, scoring 13 times and adding 38 helpers for the Crunch in 50 games.

He also made it into 17 games with the Lightning that year, scoring his first NHL goal. That earned him a two-year, one-way extension, and he would be a full-time NHL player from that point forward. Raddysh put up 12 goals and 57 assists over the next two seasons, bouncing up and down the line-up,

The rash of injuries this season opened up a spot on the top pairing and Raddysh claimed it. Victor Hedman’s injury left an opening on the top power play unit, and Raddysh stamped his name all over that. Of his 17 goals this season, 9 have come with the extra skater. Possessing one of the hardest shots in the NHL, Raddysh has become a one-timer machine for Nikita Kucherov on the power play.

His hardest shot this year has been recorded at a cool 100.13 MPH. No one in the league is even close to the number 90+ MPH shots. Raddysh has 62. Evan Bouchard is the closest and has 38. The shot is not only hard, it’s elusive. It’s extremely hard to beat NHL goaltenders cleanly from distance, but Raddysh seems to do it on a nightly basis.

One big difference this season, other than a generous increase in playing time both at 5v5 and on the power play, is the fact that he’s getting it on net more often. According to Hockey Reference, Raddysh’s shot-through percentage (the number of shot attempts that actually get on net) is at 44.6% this season. That’s up from 38.3% last season. So, not only is he shooting more (15.81 iCF/60 vs. 13.4 iCF/60 last season), he’s getting it on net more. He’s also riding a 13.39 SH%, more than double than his career best or average.

So, is he just riding a three-month hot streak or did he figure out something in his game and this is who he is now? Well, that’s the problem facing Mr. BriseBois right now. It isn’t like Darren Raddysh is 23 or even 26 years old. He’s turning 30 at the end of this month, and pretty much all the analytical data out there doesn’t speak kindly about players hitting that mark.

The two big questions the Lightning have to figure out are – how long to sign him, and for how much. Once they can figure that out, they can decide if he fits into their future plans. There just aren’t many similar cases out there where players had a breakout season at the age of 30.However, teams are always burning money for right-shot defensemen on the free agent market.

A quick glance at next summer’s free-agent market has Raddysh as the third or fourth best defender on the market depending on your opinion on Logan Stanley. Rasmus Andersson and Jacob Trouba will probably sign the biggest deals on July 1st, but teams that lose out on those right-shot blueliners will be calling Craig Oster, Raddysh’s agent.

Maybe the choice isn’t Mr. BriseBois’. Raddysh likely has one chance to sign a big contract, and, like Nick Perbix last summer, he’s willing to risk going to free agency to secure the best deal possible. A team desperate to improve their power play and offense from the blue line might be willing to go the extra year or extra million of dollars that aren’t in the Lightning’s budget.

Over the last year or so, the market for productive 30-year-old defensemen seems to be between $3.2 million (Shayne Gostisbehere – 3 years) and $5.25 million (Esa Lindell – 5 years). With the cap bump, and the assumption that they aren’t going to re-sign Oliver Bjorkstrand, the Lightning could make that work. It would also give Mr. BriseBois something he cherishes – cost certainty.

For fun, let’s say that Raddysh signs for 4 years at $5 million per season. That would give the Lightning five defensemen under contract through at least the 2028-29 season. Not many teams can boast that type of continuity on the blueline. While it’s not great news for defenders in the Lightning system, having players he’s familiar with is good news for goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy.

The Lightning have about $15 million in cap space next season according to PuckPedia with Raddysh and Bjorkstrand as their big unsigned free agents. There aren’t any major restricted free agents to worry about either. For once, the Lightning seem to be in a halfway decent cap situation moving forward. Granted, that could change depending on what they do at the trade deadline. Raddysh’s cap number doesn’t really start to get uncomfortable until six million or so. Can he command that on the free agent market? All it takes is one team to get a little desperate.

Signings like this don’t happen in a vacuum. Signing Raddysh would affect others in the line-up. Make no mistake, the only reason he got his shot is because Victor Hedman was injured. That allowed J.J. Moser to slide over to the left side and open up the spot on the right for Raddysh. To his credit, the Bald Eagle took that opportunity and excelled, but had Hedman stayed healthy, who knows where he would be now.

If the team commits term and money to Raddysh, do they also commit to him being on the top pair? If so, they would need buy-in from their captain to do so. Victor Hedman, third-pairing defenseman seems odd to say, but at the moment that seems to be the best for the team. The Big Swede has conceded his top spot on the power play before, as Mikhail Sergachev took the spot for a season.

Moving Moser off of the top pairing doesn’t seem feasible either. Whenever the Hedman/Raddysh pairing has been unleashed, it’s been…well…not great defensively. Yes, the team generated offense, but they also allowed plenty of chances for the other team. Just as surprising as his offensive output has been how well Raddysh has performed defensively. The Lightning are a better defensive team with him on the ice.

The Moser/Raddysh pairing is conceding just 1.37 GA/60 off of a 2.33 xGA/60 this season. There are a couple of pairings that have a slightly better xGA/60 (including the Charle-Edouard D’Astous and Erik Cernak combo at 1.86) but none of them also bring the offensive upside.

Is there any reason to believe that will go away over the next two seasons? It’s hard to say, and, honestly, that’s why Mr. BriseBois gets paid the big bucks. He’s the ultimate judge on if the juice will be worth the squeeze on a Darren Raddysh deal.

What’s our prediction? The Lightning sign him to a five-year deal at $4.7 million. They give him an extra year to get the deal under $5 million.