Before the NHL’s trade deadline yesterday, the Nashville Predators made their second move of the year for a depth defender, acquiring Alex Biega from the Toronto Maple Leafs. Biega—an AHL addition—was flipped for future considerations.
The 33-year old defender stands at just 5’10” and played his first NHL game in the 2014-15 season with the Vancouver Canucks after a collegiate career at Harvard while a draftee of the Buffalo Sabres.
Since then, he’s had stops in Detroit and Toronto, totaling 243 games of NHL experience and 382 games of AHL experience. He’s by no means a prolific scorer from the blue line, even in the AHL, with a career-best point total of 25 (scored in 2012-13), but he does play an engaged, physical style of hockey that this organization cherishes from top to bottom.
With some key injuries in the forward group in Milwaukee (Rocco Grimaldi and Cole Schneider), Admirals’ general manager Scott Nichol bolstered that group by sending Frederic Allard to the Los Angeles Kings for high-scoring forward Brayden Burke. Biega is coming in to add a little more veteran presence on the back end lost by Allard and Matt Tennyson’s recall to Nashville.
Biega comes with a cap hit of $750,000 and will be an unrestricted free agent this summer.
With 15 regular-season games remaining, Milwaukee’s blue line looks like Marc Del Gaizo, David Farrance, Philippe Myers, Dylan Blujus, Alex Biega, Matt Donovan, Josh Healey, and Jeremy Davies.
All statistics are courtesy of eliteprospects.com; all contract information is courtesy of capfriendly.com.