Canucks free-agent targets: 6 mid-summer UFAs to consider as value signings
With the news this week that Artūrs Šilovs has signed a two-year deal, the Vancouver Canucks’ roster is full. It’s actually more than full.
Vancouver has 26 skaters who are either on one-way contracts or who spent the entirety of last season on the 23-man roster. The Canucks are also close to being pressed up against the 50-contract limit, with 48 active contracts on the books, according to PuckPedia.com.
Importantly for Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin, president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford and their staff, Vancouver is positioned cap-wise to be able to avoid utilizing long-term injured reserve (LTI). Utilizing LTI would permit the Canucks to exceed the $88 million upper limit of the salary cap by roughly the value of Tucker Poolman’s $2.5 million cap hit but would prevent Vancouver from tolling daily cap space, impinging on their cap flexibility ahead of the 2025 NHL trade deadline.
The Canucks very much want to avoid being in LTI if at all possible, but they’re also on the hunt for additional opportunities to improve. It’s telling, for example, that hockey operations leadership considers itself to have $3.5 million in additional cap flexibility this summer, a sum that reflects both the $1 million in cap space the Canucks would have with their 22 best skaters on the 23-man roster and the $2.5 in LTI space they could create with Poolman’s contract.
