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

Waddell described Cole Sillinger as an intelligent, versatile center who fiercely competes on both offense and defense. He noted that Sillinger had participated in over 200 NHL games before the age of 21 and had just completed his most successful season. Waddell expressed anticipation for Sillinger’s ongoing development as a player and emphasized his crucial role in the club’s current and future success.

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 scored 32 goals and made 42 assists, totaling 74 points. He has also accumulated 105 penalty minutes and taken 398 shots on goal, while averaging 14:26 minutes on the ice per game. Sillinger was a first-round pick for Columbus, selected 12th overall in the 2021 NHL Draft.

The 6-foot-1, 199-pound forward achieved personal bests in a single season, recording assists, points, penalty minutes, and shots on goal in the 2023-24 season with the Blue Jackets. His statistics included 13 assists, 19 points, 32 goals, 46 penalty minutes, and 157 shots on goal across 77 games. He played his 200th career NHL game on March 5th in Pittsburgh. He is the third player in the Blue Jackets’ history to score 30 goals (32 in total) before turning 21, following Rick Nash (58) and Pierre-Luc Dubois (47). In the 2012-22 season, he scored the tied third-most goals (16, equal with Boone Jenner in the 2013-14 season) and the seventh-most points by a rookie in the history of the club, with 15 assists and 31 points in 79 games.

Sillinger, originally from Columbus, Ohio, was brought up in Regina, Saskatchewan. He accumulated 2 goals, 4 assists, and 6 points, along with 12 penalty minutes in 11 professional games with the Cleveland Monsters of the American Hockey League during the 2022-23 season. Prior to this, in the 2020-21 season, he played for the Sioux Falls Stampede in the United States Hockey League, where he scored 24 goals, made 22 assists, and had a total of 46 points in 31 games. His performance led to him being awarded the league’s Rookie of the Year. Sillinger also had a stint with the Medicine Hat Tigers in the Western Hockey League from 2018-2020, where he recorded 22 goals, 33 assists, 55 points and 22 penalty minutes over 52 games.

FULL COLE SILLINGER STATISTICS