Golden Knights sign veteran defenseman Jeremy Lauzon to six-year extension

The Vegas Golden Knights have signed defenseman Jeremy Lauzon to a six-year extension, according to Darren Dreger of TSN. The contract is reported to carry an AAV of $4M, as reported by Elliotte Friedman with Sportsnet.ca.

Lauzon, 29, was set to hit unrestricted free agency on July 1 after playing out the final year of the four-year, $8M deal ($2M AAV) he signed with Nashville in 2022. He was acquired by Vegas alongside Colton Sissons last June 30 in a deal that sent Nicolas Hague and a conditional 2027 third-round pick to the Predators.

A solid third-pairing defensive defenseman over his eight-year NHL career, Lauzon brings a steady physical presence on the back end and ranks among the most prolific hitters of his era, having led the NHL in hits in 2023-24 when he set what was then the single-season record with 383, breaking Matt Martin‘s previous mark of 382 from 2014-15 (the record has since been broken again by Yakov Trenin). In his first season with the Golden Knights, he posted 13 points (one goal, 12 assists) in 68 games. He missed the final six weeks of the postseason after taking a wrist shot from Pavel Dorofeyev to the head in Game 6 of the first round, but returned for Game 1 of the Final against Carolina, where he was paired with Dylan Coghlan. Head coach John Tortorella praised his positional game throughout the run, calling him a defender who “does his job each and every shift.”

A 2015 second-round pick (52nd overall) by Boston, Lauzon spent four seasons in the Bruins organization before Seattle selected him in the 2021 expansion draft. He was later flipped to Nashville in March 2022 for a second-round pick, where he developed into a full-time NHL regular before landing in Vegas last summer. Carrying just a $2M cap hit on his outgoing deal, he’d developed into exactly the kind of cheap, playoff-tested toughness clubs covet on the third pair, and rather than test that market, Vegas locked him up to keep it in-house.