October 29 (UPDATE): Maroon may have settled for a below-market deal to stay in Tampa Bay, but he did get some added assurances that he won’t be leaving the Bolts any time soon. CapFriendly reports that Maroon’s contract contains a full No-Trade Clause in 2020-21 and a 16-team trade list in 2021-22. It is worth noting that a full NTC is not equivalent to a No-Movement Clause, so Maroon will not be automatically protected in the 2021 NHL Expansion Draft.
October 29: Weeks after this news broke, the Lightning have officially announced the contracts for both Maroon and Schenn. As originally reported, Maroon has signed a two-year deal with an average annual value of $900K, while Schenn re-ups for one year and $800K. Tampa Bay reportedly waited to formalize the contracts until after the deadline for restricted free agents to accept their qualifying offers, after which the team re-gained some salary cap space. The Bolts still have yet to move out any of the considerable amount of salary they must be rid of in order to sign those RFA’s.
October 9: The Tampa Bay Lightning may end up bringing back some of their Stanley Cup depth, as Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reports they are close to re-signing both Pat Maroon and Luke Schenn. Frank Seravalli of TSN tweets that Maroon will sign a two-year deal worth a total of $1.8MM while Schenn will be back on a one-year, $800K deal.
Maroon has been looking for a multi-year deal over the last few offseasons and finally will get a little bit of stability in his career. After winning back-to-back Stanley Cup championships with two different teams, Maroon will stay put in Tampa Bay. His salary though will stay extremely low, giving the Lightning a veteran depth piece for close to the league minimum.
Schenn too is a depth piece that showed he could still fill a certain role, especially for such an inexpensive contract. With Tyler Johnson on waivers and the team looking to trade Braydon Coburn, a little bit of cap space has been freed up to sign these depth players and the Lightning restricted free agents.