- Blue Jackets signed veteran defenseman Carson Soucy to a professional tryout on Sunday
- Soucy has 441 NHL games with the Wild, Kraken, Canucks, Rangers and Islanders
- Read below for who Soucy has to beat out in Columbus and when he can debut
Carson Soucy has 441 NHL games on his resume and no guaranteed contract to show for it.
Columbus announced Sunday afternoon that the 32-year-old defenseman is coming to town on a professional tryout, with Blue Jackets camp opening Wednesday.
Soucy spent last season on both sides of New York. He opened with the Rangers and played 46 games there, then went to the Islanders in late January for a 2026 third-round pick. The two stops added up to 12 points in 76 games.
A tryout is a strange landing spot for a guy another team traded a real asset to get. Pro Hockey Rumors pointed out that AFP Analytics had projected Soucy for two years at around $2.15 million, and that his left-handedness worked against him in a summer where the right-shot veterans cleaned up.
The Blue Jackets do have a hole that fits him. Their penalty kill finished 28th in the league last season at 76.0 percent, and killing penalties is the part of Soucy’s game that has kept him employed across eight NHL seasons.
Getting to a contract is another matter, because the Columbus blue line is already full. Jake Christiansen is the name he is most directly up against.
The resume is the pitch. Minnesota took him 137th overall in 2013 and kept him around for four seasons, then Seattle grabbed him in the 2021 expansion draft. Soucy put up 10 goals and 21 points in the Kraken’s first year, numbers he has never matched since.
Two seasons ago in Vancouver he averaged 18:22 a night, the heaviest workload he has ever carried.
His first chance to make an impression comes Sept. 21, when the Blue Jackets host Detroit to open the preseason.
