The Kraken have agreed to terms with top RFA center Matthew Beniers on a seven-year contract, the team announced Tuesday. It’s worth $50M, working out to a $7.14M cap hit through the 2030-31 season. Per PuckPedia, the deal carries a total salary of $7.15M in every season except its last, where it decreases to $7.1M. $5M worth of his annual salary will be paid out via signing bonuses in 2024-25 and 2025-26.
Beniers, who turns 22 in November, has spent his brief NHL career as the expected future face of the Kraken. He wasn’t just the No. 2 overall pick in the 2021 draft; he was the first selection in Kraken history. Coming off his entry-level contract, Beniers was a free agent for the first time this summer and the length of negotiations to this point implied the two sides were likely hammering out a complex long-term commitment. Talks on Beniers’ next contract have been ongoing since early June, per a report from David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period at the time.
The Massachusetts native is coming off quite a questionable 2023-24 season at first glance, however. Expectations were high after Beniers was thrust into first-line minutes in his rookie season, posting 24 goals, 57 points and excellent possession quality numbers en route to taking home the Calder Trophy. While his two-way impact remained positive last year, his offense fell off a cliff. In 77 contests, the 6-foot-2 pivot was good for only 15 goals and 37 points despite a slight uptick in ice time. Among forwards who averaged at least 17:30 per game last season, his 0.48 points per game were tied for fourth-lowest.
But there were some silver linings. He improved significantly in the dot, bumping his FOW percentage to 47.4 after a brutal 42.2 percent showing in 2022-23. He also attempted more total shots, but fewer got on goal. When they did reach the netminder, his shooting percentage dropped to a more projectable 11.3 percent, down from 16.2 percent the year before.
However, concerns about Beniers’ ceiling as a true first-line center have followed him since his draft year with the University of Michigan. His two-way game appears to have arrived as promised, but his offensive showing thus far suggests he’s likely better suited as a high-end second-line center long-term.
The Kraken likely agree with that assessment, seeing as a $7M AAV is fair value for an above-average 2C, especially as the salary cap continues to rise. Rather than signing Beniers to a bridge deal and giving him a chance to prove them wrong with a significant offensive breakout in the next couple of years, general manager Ron Francis has opted to follow the trend of long-term commitments for core pieces early on and get him signed through most of his prime.
It’s still a gamble that Beniers can consistently produce 15-to-25 goals and 55-to-65 points, more in line with his rookie-year totals. Seattle improving its power play, which has ranked 28th in the league since the franchise’s inception three years ago, should help boost his totals. Seventy-five of Beniers’ 103 career points have come at even strength.
He isn’t the team’s highest-paid player after this deal. That honor still goes to defenseman Vince Dunn and his $7.35M cap hit. But it is tied for the largest total value contract the Kraken have doled out since entering the league, joining recent UFA signing Brandon Montour.
Beniers will have a 12-team no-trade list during the last two years of the contract, per PuckPedia. It’s the only period he was eligible to receive trade protection.
Cap-wise, the Kraken now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. The team checks in with a projected cap hit of $88.77M with a roster size of 22, per PuckPedia, over the $88M upper limit. They can become cap-compliant by assigning a player with a league-minimum salary to the minors, such as UFA additions Josh Mahura or Ben Meyers. Still, they’d only have room for one extra player on the roster with less than $10K in daily flexibility to open the season. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Seattle pursue a cap-clearing move before training camps get underway.