Blue Jackets – Columbus has signed forward prospect James Malatesta to a one-year, two-way contract extension for the 2026-27 season, keeping the development path open after a 2025-26 AHL campaign with the Cleveland Monsters.
Saturday brought a small but meaningful stay of execution for James Malatesta’s next chapter in Columbus.
The Blue Jackets retained the forward prospect by signing him to a one-year, two-way contract extension for the 2026-27 season. The deal is set at an NHL salary of $850,000 and an AHL salary of $95,000, with PuckPedia listed as the source for those figures.
Malatesta spent the entire 2025-26 campaign with the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters. where he produced 10 goals and eight assists for 18 points across 57 games. He also led the club with 87 penalty minutes. underlining the kind of competitive edge he has brought to the professional game. For context, that season was his first since turning pro without appearing in an NHL game.
At 5-foot-9 and 190 pounds, Malatesta has appeared in 13 career NHL contests with Columbus over the previous two seasons. In those games, he recorded two goals and four points, along with five penalty minutes and 47 hits.
Offense has been the part of his profile that still hasn’t fully leveled into consistency. With Cleveland in 2024-25, he tallied eight goals and 14 points in 41 games, then finished this past season with 18 points. The scoring didn’t always arrive in the same steady way. but the physical side of his game has been hard to miss.
Over the last three seasons with the Monsters, Malatesta accumulated 215 penalty minutes in 154 games—his highest total on the team during that stretch, and more than 50 minutes ahead of the next-closest player, Roman Ahcan.
Before turning professional, Malatesta put up major offensive numbers in the QMJHL with the Quebec Remparts. From 2020 to 2023, he totaled 142 points in 155 games, ranking as the third-most points by a Remparts player since 2020 behind Theo Rochette and Zachary Bolduc.
The one-year contract extension keeps Columbus’s bet on that combination of offense and intensity alive—giving Malatesta another season to keep developing with Cleveland while continuing to work toward earning additional NHL opportunities with the Blue Jackets.
Columbus Blue Jackets James Malatesta NHL AHL Cleveland Monsters contract extension 2026-27 two-way deal
Two-way meaning he’s in the minors most of the time right? Cool I guess.
850k for a guy who barely plays in the NHL sounds kinda wild. But hey if he hits a lot maybe that’s what we need.
Wait so he has 13 NHL games and 2 goals total? That’s not nothing but also not exactly a game changer lol. I don’t get why they’re extending for only 1 year unless they’re just stashing him.
Penalty minutes leader?? Sounds like he’s gonna be suspended every other week. Also 2026-27 extension like… doesn’t the season even start already? I saw the headline and assumed it was about the 2025-26 roster changes. Maybe I’m wrong but Columbus always does this stuff and then nothing happens.