The Ducks have extended the contracts of defenseman Jackson LaCombe and winger Nikita Nesterenko, the team said in a news release on Monday.
LaCombe signed a two-year pact with an annual average value of $925,000, while Nesterenko’s deal is a one-year, two-way agreement that could pay him as much as $874,125.
LaCombe, 23, made the leap straight from the University of Minnesota to the Ducks at the end of the 2022-23 campaign and then appeared in 71 of 82 contests for the club last season. He registered 17 points but was not without growing pains in his own end, as reflected by his minus-24 rating.
Though he watched his former college teammate Brock Faber sail smoothly on a maiden voyage that left him as the runner-up to Connor Bedard for the Calder Trophy, LaCombe made progress later in the season. He weighed more defensively by the spring and also had four points in just seven April affairs, his most productive month on a per-game basis.
Nesterenko, 22, was acquired from the Minnesota Wild in 2022-23 before making his NHL debut with the Ducks that same season and then scoring his first professional goal. Last year, he scored his second in the second of three NHL games he played after compiling 37 points in 70 contests at the American Hockey League level. He could challenge for a spot in the Ducks’ bottom six for 2024-25.
With these signings, the Ducks have wrapped up their business with the restricted free agents that they qualified last month. They were likely done re-signing players, despite a handful of fringe unrestricted free agents (most notably defenseman Gustav Lindström) remaining unsigned.
That is not to say that their activity has concluded, however. After shooting wide of the net in free agency – the Ducks signed exactly zero players of note – and making a pair of modest trades to acquire defenseman Brian Dumoulin and forward Robby Fabbri, the Ducks were still without the items on General Manager Pat Verbeek’s wish list.
He had said on various occasions that balancing both his defense corps and forward group with more right-handed-shooting players would be an emphasis, and that he wanted to improve both his top-six forwards and top four defensemen. Thus far, the Ducks have only brought in left-handed shots who typically slot a bit lower in the lineup, with Dumoulin largely playing a third-pairing role of late and Fabbri slotting into the bottom six typically.
