The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Sound Tigers re-sign Helgeson, Kubiak, Brown; add Pastujov
They don’t know when the new American Hockey League season will start, but the Bridgeport Sound Tigers announced Thursday that three familiar players will return on AHL contracts when it does, and they added a fourth familiar to their parent organization.
Veteran defenseman Seth Helgeson will be back for a fourth season with the Sound Tigers, the team announced, on an AHL contract this time; he’d been on an NHL deal with the New York Islanders for the first three.
Centerman Jeff Kubiak returns for a third full season, and forward Erik Brown will be back for a second, though he lost his rookie year out of RIT to injury.
The Sound Tigers also signed forward Nick Pastujov, who was the Islanders’ seventh-round draft pick in 2016, though those rights expired in August. Pastujov, 22, just completed four years at the University of Michigan, playing 136 games with 60 points.
Helgeson, 30, has played 213 out of 215 Sound Tigers games the past three years, a physical mainstay on defense. Kubiak, who turns 27 in January, has become a regular the past two seasons, a solid two-way centerman.
Brown, 25, was a standout at RIT for four years, scoring 29 goals as a junior, and made his pro debut with the AHL’s Toronto Marlies in the spring of 2019. He signed an AHL deal with Bridgeport last summer but suffered a season-ending lower-body injury in the Sound Tigers’ first preseason game.
The league announced Wednesday that its new target date to start the season is Feb. 5. Last season ended March 12 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.