Islanders Avoid Arbitration With Nelson

The New York Islanders re-signed their last key restricted free agent on Monday afternoon, giving forward Brock Nelson a 1-year, $4.25 million deal.

Nelson, 26, had arbitration rights and had a hearing booked for August 3rd, but the two sides came together long before they had to go through the nasty process of making their case for their side.

In the 2018 season, Nelson regressed in his scoring numbers, dropping down to 19 goals and 35 points in all 82 games from 45 points in 81 games the season previous.  He was still pool worthy, ranking 170th among all forwards on the year, but his value has dropped a little bit.

The early projections for him will meet somewhere in the middle, as the lineup shuffles to the loss of John Tavares in this off-season.  Nelson found himself playing a lot with Andrew Ladd last season, which may or may not change, but it's hard to see where the offense really is going to stem from on a consistent basis in Brooklyn during the 2019 season.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Jordan Eberle	6.000	Johnny Boychuk	6.000	Thomas Greiss	3.333
Andrew Ladd	5.500	Nick Leddy	5.500	Robin Lehner	1.500
Josh Bailey	5.000	Thomas Hickey	2.500
Brock Nelson	4.250	Ryan Pulock	2.000
Anders Lee	3.750	Adam Pelech	1.600
Cal Clutterbuck	3.500	Scott Mayfield	1.450
Casey Cizikas	3.350	Sebastian Aho	0.770
Leo Komarov	3.000
Valtteri Filppula	2.750
Matt Martin	2.500
Jan Kovar	2.000
Ross Johnston	1.000
Anthony Beauvillier	0.894
Mathew Barzal	0.863

There's a big lump of salary cap space left on the board for the Islanders today, as I am showing the team with $10.5 million in space, which was probably earmarked for someone special this summer.