TAMPA BAY – The Tampa Bay Lightning have signed defenseman Charle-Edouard D’Astous to a one-year, two-way contract for the 2025-26 season, vice president and general manager Julien BriseBois announced today.
D’Astous, 27, skated in 49 games with Brynäs IF of the Swedish Hockey League this season, recording 12 goals and 39 points with a plus-26 rating to help lead the club to a first-place finish in the regular season before falling to Luleå HF in the Swedish Championship Final. D’Astous finished the regular season tied for second for goals and points among all SHL defensemen while ranking first for penalty minutes (67), second for plus/minus (plus-26) and fifth for assists (27). During the postseason, D’Astous skated in all 17 contests for Brynäs IF and led all SHL D-men with four goals and 38 penalty minutes. He finished the playoffs with eight points and a plus-7 rating, both of which were tied for second place among all SHL defensemen.
Prior to his time in Sweden, D’Astous spent the previous two seasons from 2022-24 with KooKoo of the Finnish Elite League. Over the course of 110 games in Finland, D’Astous recorded 24 goals and 69 points, leading all KooKoo defensemen for goals (tied in 2022-23), assists and points in each of his two seasons. In 2023-24, he received the Pekka Rautakallio Award as the League’s best defenseman, along with the Juha Rantasila Trophy as the League’s leading goal scorer among defenders.
D’Astous has played parts of three seasons of professional hockey in North America, appearing in 23 American Hockey League games with the Grand Rapids Griffins and Colorado Eagles, recording two goals and six points, as well as skating in 98 ECHL contests with the Toledo Walleye and Utah Grizzlies, logging 29 goals and 79 points. The 6-foot-2, 187-pound defenseman scored 26 goals with Utah in 2021-22 to lead all ECHL D-men and was named the League’s defenseman of the year.
A native of Rimouski, Quebec, D’Astous played four seasons of junior hockey with the Rimouski Oceanic of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, serving as an alternate captain in 2017-18 before captaining the club in 2018-19. Over his 244-game career in the QMJHL, D’Astous registered 49 goals and 181 points with a plus-47 rating. In 2018-19, he took home the Emile Bouchard Trophy as the League’s defenseman of the year, leading all QMJHL D-men for assists (52) and points (66). That same season, D’Astous also received the Canadian Hockey League’s Humanitarian of the Year Award following his work as an ambassador for the Rimouski Regional Hospital Foundation and several other local charities.
