Breaking Here We Go:Kessel signs two-year contract extension deal sealed
St. Louis Blues President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Doug Armstrong announced today the team has signed defenseman Matthew Kessel to a two-year, one-way contract extension worth $1.6 million ($800,000 AAV).
Kessel, 23, has dressed in 23 games for the Blues this season, recording three assists and eight penalty minutes. He has also played in 34 games for the Blues’ AHL affiliate, the Springfield Thunderbirds, tallying seven points (two goals, five assists) and 16 penalty minutes.
The Scottsdale, Arizona, native has spent the majority of the past three seasons in the AHL, totaling 43 points (seven goals, 36 assists) and 90 penalty minutes in 120 regular-season games
Long before they reached Saskatoon and the 2024 U Sports national women’s hockey championship tournament, the Varsity Blues experienced what was an impromptu team-building exercise early one September morning at 2 a.m.
As head coach Vicky Sunohara tells it, the team was on its way to New Jersey for an exhibition game when the Blues’ team bus got stuck behind an accident. That caused a rather lengthy delay. Eventually, the bus driver ran out of hours to legally drive.
With their bus sitting in a parking lot, the Blues brought out a ball — not pucks — and patiently killed some time.
Our season journey started in a parking lot outside of New Jersey, playing spike ball at 2 in the morning,” recalled Sunohara, whose Ontario University Athletics conference runner-up will face the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds in U Sports national championship quarterfinal action Friday night in Saskatoon.
Sunohara, a former three-time Olympic medalist for Canada, tells the story.
We were travelling to play Princeton in New Jersey. We were behind an accident on the highway leaving Toronto, so it put us behind schedule,” Sunohara related. “Our bus driver run out of hours so he pulled off the highway in front of this closed, dark gas station just outside (New Jersey) and we waited probably an hour and 40 minutes there for a replacement bus driver. It ended up being a super-late, late night. You can’t make those things up. We talk about it. People were miserable at the time, but it was just a small bump in the road.