Patrik Allvin is wheeling and dealing with just four days to go before the start of free agency. The Vancouver Canucks GM has been busy the past 24 hours, re-signing Teddy Blueger and Dakota Joshua, while shipping Ilya Mikheyev’s contract to Chicago.
There’s still a lot of work left to do, though.
The Canucks have $18.49 million in cap space but need to sign at least six more players to fill out a 23-man roster. As the chart shows below, they’re still missing a top-six winger, a pair of depth forwards, a top-four defenceman, a third-pair defenceman, and a backup goalie.
The chart below, courtesy of CapFriendly, assumes that Tucker Poolman will be on LTIR and includes dead cap money for Mikheyev ($712,500) and Oliver Ekman-Larsson ($2,346,667).
CapFriendly
It remains to be seen how they’ll fill out their roster, but there have been plenty of rumblings.
The Canucks are reportedly interested in signing Jake Guentzel in free agency, but the star winger is likely to command more than $9 million per season.
They have five pending unrestricted free agents left unsigned, but they won’t all be coming back. Elias Lindholm and Ian Cole seem like they’ll be heading elsewhere, but what about Nikita Zadorov and Tyler Myers?
Casey DeSmith could be back, based on multiple reports today. Prior to today, most assumed that Arturs Silovs, who is a restricted free agent, would be the one backing up Thatcher Demko.
Armchair Canucks GM
If the Canucks land Guentzel in free agency, how much money will be left to spend?
The answer: not much.
Let’s say the Canucks make Silovs the backup at $1 million, re-sign Myers at $3.5 million, and land Guentzel at $9.5 million.
It would leave Vancouver with less than $4.5 million in cap space to spend on three more players, and not enough money to bring back Zadorov.
Alternatively, if they prioritize bringing back Myers and Zadorov (let’s call his AAV $5.5 million), they would have under $8.5 to spend in free agency on three forwards but needing a top-six winger.
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