Blue Jackets sign James Malatesta to contract extension

James Malatesta’s two-way extension says more about Columbus’s next layer than a simple depth move. The Blue Jackets kept a 23-year-old winger who has already shown he can score in Cleveland, bring bite to every shift and still push himself into NHL games when the door opens.

Columbus announced the one-year deal for the 2026-27 season on June 12, 2026, and general manager Don Waddell framed Malatesta as a hard-working, feisty player with room to climb. Waddell’s message was clear: if Malatesta keeps progressing, he can become an NHL regular. That is the real value here. This is not just a body for the depth chart. It is a bet that the Blue Jackets may be closer to having a usable call-up winger than people outside the organization realize.

The numbers back up the bet. Malatesta has 2 goals and 2 assists in 13 NHL games over two seasons with Columbus, but his more convincing case comes in the American Hockey League. In 154 career games with the Cleveland Monsters, he has 30 goals, 54 points, 215 penalty minutes and 311 shots on goal. Last season he led Cleveland in penalty minutes with 87, scored 10 goals and finished with 18 points in 57 games. As a rookie in 2023-24, he posted 12 goals, 10 assists and 22 points in 56 games, led the team’s rookies in goals and showed he could contribute offense without sanding off the edge that makes him noticeable.

That matters in Columbus because the organization entered the offseason with roughly $40 million to work with under a rising salary cap, and Malatesta was already on the list of depth free agents and RFAs the Blue Jackets had to sort through. Keeping him on a two-way deal preserves a plug-and-play option for Cleveland while protecting one of the few forwards in the system who has already proven he can handle pro pace, penalty-kill chores and the grind that comes with 57 or 60 games in the AHL. For the Monsters, it removes one more uncertainty from the wing rotation and keeps a young, call-up ready body in the ladder between Cleveland and Columbus.

Malatesta’s path has always suggested more than a standard depth profile. Columbus took him 133rd overall in the fifth round of the 2021 NHL Draft, after four seasons with the Quebec Remparts that produced 98 goals, 89 assists and 187 points in 214 games. He also helped Quebec win the 2023 QMJHL championship and Memorial Cup, winning both the Stafford Smythe Trophy as Memorial Cup MVP and the Guy Lafleur Trophy as QMJHL Playoffs MVP. That résumé fits what the Blue Jackets are trying to build: players who can handle pressure in one league and be trusted in the next.