The Jets acquire Paul Stastny from the Golden Knights

Paul Stastny is a Jet again.

The team confirmed on Friday that they had acquired Stastny from the Golden Knights in exchange for defenceman Carl Dahlstrom and a conditional fourth-round pick in 2022.

Stastny was acquired by the Jets back at the 2018 trade deadline. He had an excellent run with the team, scoring 13 points in 19 regular season games and 15 more during the team’s playoff run to the Western Conference Final.

After that, Stastny signed a three-year deal in free agency with the Golden Knights. During his two years in Vegas, Stastny scored 30 goals and 80 points over 121 games.

He was a solid player for Vegas, but the team badly wanted to move on from his cap hit so that they could have the room to make a run at marquee free agents like Alex Pietrangelo and Taylor Hall. Stastny is in the final year of that aforementioned three-year deal with a cap hit of $6.5 million. Winnipeg will take on the entirety of his salary in 2020-21.

This is a nice move for the Jets as they add a familiar face to the team. Given the fact that Bryan Little will likely never play again, the Jets needed to add a veteran pivot to replace his presence in the lineup. In Stastny, Winnipeg gets a good, veteran player who already has chemistry with other forwards on the team.