Jeff Skinner signs one-year contract with Swiss club EHC Biel-Bienne

After more than 1,100 games across parts of 16 NHL seasons, unrestricted free agent forward Jeff Skinner agreed to terms on a one-year contract with Swiss National League club EHC Biel-Bienne on Friday.

Skinner, 34, appeared in 32 games with the San Jose Sharks during the 2025-26 NHL regular season, collecting six goals and 13 points. He played sparingly across the first half of the season and eventually became a consistent healthy scratch, leading to the Sharks and Skinner mutually agreeing to release him from his contract on Feb. 16, more than a month after his last game.

EHC Biel-Bienne announced the news of Skinner’s signing through their social media channels on Friday, specifying that his new contract runs through April of 2027.

An immensely talented offensive player at his peak, Skinner recorded six 30-goal seasons during his NHL career, which he spent primarily with the Carolina Hurricanes and Buffalo Sabres before joining the Edmonton Oilers and Sharks for one-year stints.

The Hurricanes originally selected Skinner with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2010 NHL Draft. The former Kitchener Rangers standout immediately made the jump from the OHL to the NHL after being drafted, scoring 31 goals and 63 points in 82 games as an 18-year-old rookie and being named both an NHL All-Star and the winner of the Calder Memorial Trophy.

Skinner spent the first eight seasons of his NHL career with the Hurricanes before being traded to the Sabres in 2018. He started his tenure in Buffalo with a bang, scoring a career-high 40 goals in the 2018-19 season, causing the Sabres to sign him to an enormous eight-year contract extension worth $9 million per season. Skinner ultimately played five more seasons in Buffalo, with wild fluctuations in his year-to-year production, before being bought out by the club in 2024.

As an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his career, Skinner signed a one-year contract with Edmonton for the 2024-25 season. The Oilers had just reached Game 7 of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final and made another deep playoff run in 2025, with Skinner appearing in the postseason for the first and only time of his long career. Relegated to more of a depth role, Skinner skated in five out of 22 playoff games and collected two points as the Oilers lost to the Florida Panthers in the Final for the second consecutive year.

In 1,110 career NHL games split between Carolina, Buffalo, Edmonton, and San Jose, Skinner has amassed 379 goals, 712 points, and 491 penalty minutes. With EHC Biel-Bienne, he’ll join a handful of NHL alumni, including Gaetan Haas, Lias Andersson, Victor Soderstrom, and Harri Sateri.