Rangers sign Jonny Brodzinski to two-year contract extension
For most of his career, Jonny Brodzinski relied on two-way deals. That’s the life of a professional hockey player trying to make it.
The extension he signed with the Kings following his rookie season featured a second year that was one-way — meaning he’d get paid the same salary, regardless of whether he was in the NHL or AHL — for 2018-19, but Brodzinski missed most of that season anyway due to injury.
His next deal, that time with the Sharks, was two-way. Same with the next one.
They all stayed like that until Tuesday night when Brodzinski inked a two-year, one-way extension — which holds an average annual value of $787,500, The Post’s Mollie Walker reported — with the Rangers.
Talks started about a month ago, and negotiations between the Blueshirts and their 30-year-old center culminated in an agreement that’ll keep Brodzinski with the Rangers through 2025-26.
“Finally getting that is really great,” Brodzinski said of the one-way deal consumated after the Rangers beat the Stars. “It’s something that I have been working for.”
When the Rangers called him up in late November, Brodzinski didn’t try to predict how long his latest stint would last. “As soon as you get comfortable, bad things happen,” he said Wednesday, but this time he became a key piece of an emerging third line that clicked when Brodzinski paired with Will Cuylle and Kaapo Kakko.
They’ve become one of the Blueshirts’ most consistent units, and Brodzinski, a former fifth-round pick, has four goals and 15 points across a career-high 37 NHL games this season.
It’s his fourth deal since joining the Blueshirts, which started with a pair of one-year contracts before a two-year pact carried him through the current campaign.
Nothing led to consistent ice time at first as he played just 44 games with the Rangers across his first three seasons.
Instead, Brodzinski joined the Hartford Wolf Pack’s top line and power-play unit, adding to a 331-game AHL career.
He embraced that role. If he only played a handful of NHL games at a time, that “sucks,” he told The Post this month, but at least he’d carved out something he could return to in the minors.
The Rangers wanted him to play more center this season with the Wolf Pack — as opposed to his typical spot on the wing — just in case an opportunity emerged, and eventually, when Kappo Kakko suffered a lower-body injury in late November, it did.
Brodzinski stopped becoming the name in the transaction log that consistently shuttled back and forth.
He later centered Kakko — after the winger returned — and Cuylle on a third line that has produced 21 high-danger chances across their nine games together, according to Natural Stat Trick.
In their Stadium Series win Sunday, Brodzinski and Kakko assisted on the Rangers’ first goal, and Brodzinski has recorded six points across the past eight games.
“All of the tools and everything that he’s shown now, he’d had it,” center Mika Zibanejad said. “But it’s just a matter of being able to put it together and getting that trust, too, to get to play more minutes.”
The extension doesn’t secure Brodzinski’s spot on the third line, though.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the Rangers still won’t look to add before their push for the postseason.
Entering the trade deadline, center has emerged as a position of need for the Rangers, especially after Filip Chytil tried to return from a suspected concussion, suffered a setback and was ruled out for the rest of the season.
Chytil’s absence initially led to consistent ice time for Brodzinski.
He’s a “multi-functional” skater who could play different positions, kill penalties, spark power-plays and win faceoffs, head coach Peter Laviolette said. Because of that, the third-line center job became his.
“The price he’s paid over the years and spending a lot of time in the minors, to get a nod like that is nice,” Laviolette said.
That could all change by the March 8 trade deadline. It could all change by next season, too. But at the very least, Brodzinski turned his opportunity into a new contract.
