Today, Don Waddell, the President of Hockey Operations and General Manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets, announced that the club has signed center Cole Sillinger to a two-year contract. The deal, worth $4.5 million ($2.25 million AAV), will extend through the 2025-26 National Hockey League season.

“Cole Sillinger is an intelligent and versatile center who displays high levels of competition on both ends of the ice,” stated Waddell. “Having played over 200 NHL games before reaching the age of 21, and coming off his finest season yet, we anticipate continued development in his game. He will play a significant role in both the current and future success of this club.”

Since his NHL debut as an 18-year-old in the 2021-22 season, 21-year-old Sillinger has played 220 career games with the Blue Jackets. During this time, he has recorded 32 goals and 42 assists, totaling 74 points. He has also accumulated 105 penalty minutes and made 398 shots on goal, while averaging 14:26 on the ice per game. Sillinger was chosen by Columbus in the first round of the 2021 NHL Draft, as the 12th overall pick.

The forward, who stands at 6 feet 1 inch and weighs 199 pounds, achieved personal bests in the 2023-24 season with the Blue Jackets in categories such as assists, points, penalty minutes, and shots on goal. His stats for that season were 13-19-32 with 46 penalty minutes and 157 shots on goal in 77 games. He played his 200th career game in the National Hockey League on March 5, at Pittsburgh. He is also the third player in the franchise’s history to score 30 goals (32) before turning 21, following Rick Nash (58) and Pierre-Luc Dubois (47). In the 2012-22 season, he scored 16-15-31 in 79 games, which was the third-highest number of goals (tying with Boone Jenner in 2013-14) and the seventh-highest number of points by a rookie in the club’s history.

Sillinger was born in Columbus, Ohio and grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan. He played in 11 American Hockey League matches with the Cleveland Monsters in the 2022-23 season, scoring 2 goals and 4 assists for a total of 6 points, along with 12 penalty minutes. In the 2020-21 season, he played with the Sioux Falls Stampede in the United States Hockey League, where he scored 24 goals and 22 assists for a total of 46 points, and received 39 penalty minutes in 31 games. He won Rookie of the Year in the league that season. From 2018-20, Sillinger appeared in 52 games with the Medicine Hat Tigers in the Western Hockey League, recording 22 goals, 33 assists for a total of 55 points, and 22 penalty minutes.

FULL COLE SILLINGER STATISTICS