Raddysh's Long AHL Road Ends in an Eight Year Deal

Darren Raddysh played 241 regular-season AHL games before he got his first NHL shift. On June 19, he signed an eight-year, $68-million contract and was traded from Tampa Bay to Toronto for a fifth-round pick.

The 30-year-old defenseman from Caledon, Ont., went undrafted out of five seasons in Erie, signed an AHL deal with Rockford in 2017, then landed in Hartford after a 2019 trade to the Rangers. He was 25 and heading into free agency when the Lightning signed him to a one-year contract, with an assignment to the Syracuse Crunch all but guaranteed.

Skating was the knock. The shot was not. Raddysh fired 303 shots in 111 regular-season games with the Crunch, and Tampa Bay put its development staff to work on the rest. Director of player development J.P. Cote was a regular in Syracuse, and the AHL's weekend-heavy schedule meant two or three skills sessions a week on top of practice under then-Crunch coach Ben Groulx.

"Everyone's got the same mindset of helping guys get to the next level," Raddysh said of the organization. "It's just a testament to the whole organization as a whole. I think it was just the belief in your game and in yourself."

His NHL debut came Dec. 30, 2021. Rather than test the market again, he signed a two-year, two-way extension in 2022, and the breakthrough followed: 51 points (13 goals, 38 assists) in 50 games with Syracuse in 2022-23, First Team AHL All-Star honors, 17 games with the Lightning including his first NHL goal, and six playoff appearances.

He has not played in the AHL since. Raddysh signed another two-year extension before 2023-24 and played all 82 games that season. In 2025-26 he put up 70 points (22 goals, 48 assists) and a plus-21 rating in 73 games while averaging more than 22 minutes a night, tops on the Lightning.

Now he arrives in Toronto, roughly a 45-minute drive from where he grew up, for a training camp that opens this month with the Leafs coming off a season without a playoff berth.