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Tampa Bay Lightning Sign Luke Schenn

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Monday: The Lightning have officially announced the deal, adding Schenn at the expected bargain rate of $700K for one year. Schenn may end up being a fantastic value for Tampa Bay this season on a new look blue line.

Sunday: When Luke Schenn arrived in Vancouver late in the 2018-19 season it looked as though he might soon be pushed out of the league entirely. After surprising down the stretch though a market has materialized for his services and now he could be joining a Stanley Cup contender. Frank Seravalli of TSN reports that Schenn is expected to sign a one-year contract worth around $700K when free agency opens on July 1.

Schenn, 29, ended up just cracking our list of the Top 50 UFAs despite his down year, mostly because of those final 18 games with the Canucks. He played a total of 26 last season counting the eight times he suited up with the Ducks, and his routine as a part-time player might continue in Tampa Bay. The Lightning don’t desperately need him to step right into a major role, but are likely losing Dan Girardi and Anton Stralman as veteran defensive options. Schenn doesn’t have much (if any) offensive upside, but can at least play a little in his own end and contribute a physical presence.

Even though his stock has crashed dramatically since being drafted fifth overall in 2008, Schenn still ranks fourth in games played among all players selected that year. Trailing just Drew Doughty, Josh Bailey and Steven Stamkos, he has figured out a way to stay relevant in a league that quickly moved to a different style of defense. Probably born an era too late, the 6’2″ bruising defenseman has suited up for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Philadelphia Flyers, Los Angeles Kings, Arizona Coyotes, Ducks and Canucks.

Vancouver Canucks Sign Tyler Myers, Jordie Benn

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The Vancouver Canucks decided not to qualify both Derrick Pouliot and Ben Hutton last week, letting them become unrestricted free agents and able to sign elsewhere. In their place, the team is set to add three pieces with a little more experience. The team has signed Tyler Myers to a five-year, $30MM deal and Jordie Benn to a two-year, $4MM deal. They also added Oscar Fantenberg in another deal. Myers’ contract includes a huge amount in signing bonuses, including $6MM due this September 1. GM Jim Benning released a statement on his new highly-paid defender:

Tyler is a proven competitor and an important addition to our roster. His experience, character, and size are qualities that will help our team. We are excited to have Tyler and his family join our team.

Myers, 29, came into free agency as one of the very best defensemen available after five relatively successful seasons with the Winnipeg Jets. Last year saw him record 31 points in 80 games, though his role with the team started to decline given the emergence of Jacob Trouba. Trouba is gone now as well, leaving Winnipeg with a glaring hole on the right side of their defense, but Vancouver isn’t complaining. They’ll commit long term to the 6’8″ Myers, who will now become one of the highest-paid players on the entire team.

Benn meanwhile comes to the Canucks after a career-best 22 points in 2018-19, the only time he’s really been considered anything but a depth option. The 31-year old has now played 473 games in his NHL career but had previously been asked to handle a limited role in Dallas and Montreal. That might be where he’s headed again in Vancouver given their glut of defenders, with Alexander Edler and Quinn Hughes ahead of him on the left side.

With their eyes on the playoffs, the Canucks have now rebuilt their blue line with these three additions along with an expected full season from young phenom Hughes. That immediately begs the question of whether one of their other veterans could be on the move, with Chris Tanev becoming the most obvious possibility. Tanev is on the final year of his contract and has been in trade rumors for years. With Myers likely stepping into a large role on the right side, the team may need to move someone out of town.

Penguins To Sign Brandon Tanev To Long-Term Contract

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The Pittsburgh Penguins were not expected to be major players in free agency, but have apparently fallen in love with one particular two-way forward. TSN’s Darren Dreger initially reported the deal, and the Penguins have now confirmed the signing of Brandon Tanev to a six-year contract with a $3.5MM AAV.

That’s a significant commitment to a player who made just $1.15MM last season and whose best season was 14 goals and 29 points, but the 27-year-old provides more than offense on the ice as Tanev finished with a career-high in hits with 278. That physicality, to go with the ability to show some offense and the fact that Tanev continues to improve every year suggests that Pittsburgh believes that his best years are still to come. The hope is that Tanev can provide the team with an energy booster in the bottom-six, but who can also help those lines add some offense.

Pittsburgh likely wouldn’t have been able to make a deal like that work, but general manager Jim Rutherford freed up quite a bit of cap room in the last week by trading off defenseman Olli Maatta as well as finding a trade partner for Phil Kessel and his $8MM salary.

The Jets were thrilled with the 27-year-old’s play, but with Tanev having received quite a bit of attention on the open market, Winnipeg realized early on that they wouldn’t have enough money to keep him in the fold considering the team would already be up against the cap once the team re-signs some of their core, including Patrik Laine, Kyle Connor and Neal Pionk.

Vancouver Canucks Sign Oscar Fantenberg

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The Vancouver Canucks have signed defenseman Oscar Fantenberg to a contract, according to TSN’s Darren Dreger. NHL.com’s Brennan Klak reports the deal is a one-year deal for $850K.

The 27-year-old blueliner signed with the Los Angeles Kings in 2017 out of the KHL. While just playing 27 games that season, he played in 46 games with the Kings before they shipped him off to Calgary for a 2020 fourth-round pick at the trade deadline. With the Flames, Fantenberg played 15 games, putting up just one assist and was scoreless in three playoff games.

In Vancouver, he should add some much needed depth to the team’s blueline. The team has reportedly signed both Tyler Myers and Jordie Benn to play more significant roles for next season, but even with a full season of Quinn Hughes, the Canucks still needed more depth to fill out their blueline.

UFA Notes: Donskoi, Benn, Varlamov

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Free agent frenzy came early this year, with details leaking out on many of the top names a day early. Teams are not supposed to actually discuss specific financials, but cap hits and terms have poured out all evening. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet tried to summarize all of the day’s leaks and also reported some new information on a few names. One of those is Joonas Donskoi, who is still expected to sign with the Colorado Avalanche for an average annual value between $3-4MM. Friedman doesn’t give a suggestion on the term of the deal.

Donskoi ranked 21st on our list of the Top 50 UFAs after a quietly effective campaign, where we projected him to sign a three-year, $9.6MM deal with the Avalanche. The former San Jose Sharks forward may be able to outperform even that if given a bigger role in Colorado alongside some of their other talented forwards. Some other notes on pending free agents:

  • Tyler Myers and Jordie Benn are both expected to sign with the Vancouver Canucks according to Friedman, though obviously nothing is finalized until tomorrow afternoon. Myers has been linked to the Canucks for some time and may very well challenge for the biggest contract given out to a defenseman tomorrow. Benn meanwhile is also coming off a career season and has set himself up for a nice payday, though it shouldn’t come close to the money handed out to Myers. Vancouver allowed Derrick Pouliot and Ben Hutton to hit the market by not issuing them qualifying offers, and apparently have already found some veteran replacements.
  • The league-wide game of goalie musical chairs continues, with Friedman suggesting that Semyon Varlamov could be heading to the New York Islanders. The Islanders have been unable to come to terms with pending free agent netminder Robin Lehner despite his outstanding season, and since it looks like they missed out on Sergei Bobrovsky as well they needed an established goaltender to come in and help Thomas Greiss next season. No details on what Varlamov will be signing have emerged yet, but we projected just a two-year, $6.5MM deal for him in our ranking.

Vancouver “Still In The Mix” For Gustav Nyquist

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The Vancouver Canucks have had quite the interesting offseason so far, highlighted by the retirement of Roberto Luongo placing more than $3MM of cap recapture penalties on their books. To combat that the team placed will buy out Ryan Spooner to open up some more cap space for potential free agent signings and new contracts for their own RFAs. While Vancouver has been routinely linked to free agent defenseman Tyler Myers, Rick Dhaliwal of Sportsnet reports that the team is currently “still in the mix” for Gustav Nyquist as well.

Nyquist, 29, was acquired by the San Jose Sharks at the deadline and fit in quite well with them, scoring 22 points in 39 games including a solid postseason. Even with the good fit he may end up being too pricey for the team to retain after they made Erik Karlsson the highest-paid defenseman in the league and need to get Timo Meier under a new deal. That opens him up for a bidding war on the open market as one of the top second-tier free agent forwards, something Vancouver is obviously interested in.

Coming off a four-year $19MM deal signed with the Detroit Red Wings in 2015, Nyquist is undoubtedly looking for a raise on the $4.75MM cap hit he carried last season. After recording a career-high 60 points his market won’t be small, and there has been plenty of speculation on where that might lead him. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet suggested recently that the Columbus Blue Jackets may be a fit, which would make sense given Aaron Portzline of The Athletic’s reporting (subscription required) that they have been focused on free agent forwards.

If Vancouver does get involved with Nyquist, they’re going to have to make sure they don’t overextend themselves while Brock Boeser is still without a contract. The 22-year old forward should be getting a healthy raise on whatever deal he signs, and is much more important to the team’s future than a free agent forward who will be 30 before the season begins.

Pittsburgh Penguins Trade Phil Kessel To Arizona Coyotes

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The Pittsburgh Penguins announced they have traded forward Phil Kessel to the Arizona Coyotes, finally ending a long saga in which Pittsburgh has been trying to unload the unhappy veteran. The Penguins will send Kessel, prospect Dane Birks and a 2021 fourth-round pick to Arizona for forward Alex Galchenyuk and prospect Pierre-Olivier Joseph.

“First and foremost, I want to thank Phil Kessel for his contributions to the Penguins. He was a key component to our success in winning back-to-back Stanley Cups. We couldn’t have done it without him, and for that, we are grateful,” said Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford. “With that being said, we are excited to welcome a young, skilled player in Alex, and add depth to our defense with first-round draft pick Pierre-Olivier Joseph.”

Kessel’s name has been in the news all offseason as the team is interested in moving the veteran forward and the three years remaining on his deal at $6.8MM and with some bad blood between Kessel and the Penguins, general manager Jim Rutherford was looking to move him. Rutherford said that Kessel requested to be traded several times during last season and then changed his mind, although Kessel denies that, according to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski. The Penguins attempted to trade Kessel to Minnesota in May in a package that included Jason Zucker, but Kessel, who has a modified no-trade clause where he can pick eight teams that he can be traded to, rejected the deal as he had no interest in going to Minnesota. However, Kessel would be interested in going to Arizona as he has a great relationship with their coach, Rick Tocchet, who was an assistant coach in Pittsburgh before he took the Coyotes’ job. Tocchet was, in fact, known in Pittsburgh as the “Phil Kessel Whisperer,” and is considered the one coach who can get the most out of the veteran.

The 31-year-old Kessel is coming off a solid season in which he scored 27 goals and 82 points, which would have been tops on Arizona’s squad by 35 points as the team’s points leader was Clayton Keller, who put up 14 goals and 47 points. Kessel provides the Coyotes with a proven veteran scorer, something that was desperately needed as no one in Arizona got to 20 goals last season. In fact, Kessel has scored 291 goals in the last 10 seasons, which is only behind a handful of top players in the league, including Alex Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, John Tavares, Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane and Joe Pavelski. Kessel’s contract will be the second-biggest on the team behind defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Kessel also should provide some stability in the lineup as Arizona was ravaged by injuries last year. Kessel has gone nine straight seasons without having missed a regular-season game. While Kessel isn’t known for his defensive play, it evens out as Galchenyuk is considered to be just as weak defensively.

In Galchenyuk, the Penguins would still get a solid top-six forward, but at both a cheaper price tag and with less term. Galchenyuk has just one year remaining on his deal at $4.9MM, which gives the Penguins some much-needed cap room to attempt to add to a team that got swept in the first-round of the playoffs last year and have a limited time to make a Stanley Cup run as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin aren’t getting any younger. The 25-year-old Galchenyuk put up 19 goals and 41 points in 72 games last season, his first in Arizona after being acquired last offseason via trade from Montreal and should become a solid winger on one of Pittsburgh’s top two lines.

The Penguins also added some young defensive depth as Joseph was Arizona’s first-round pick in 2017 and is ready to turn pro, although he will likely need at least one year in the AHL. The 19-year-old posted nine goals and 42 points for two junior squads last year. Birks is likely to even out the trade as the 23-year-old spent all of last season in the ECHL with the Wheeling Nailers.

TSN’s Darren Dreger was the first to report the trade. 

Latest On Phil Kessel, Pittsburgh Penguins

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Saturday: While he can’t get confirmation from either team, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports that the Penguins and the Arizona Coyotes are are currently working on a Kessel deal. No word on what the deal might consist of, but Arizona is one team that Kessel would be interested in playing for as he is close to Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet, who was an assistant coach for the Penguins before taking the Arizona job.

Friday: The Pittsburgh Penguins had a trade worked out earlier this month that would have seen Phil Kessel head to the Minnesota Wild in exchange for Jason Zucker. It didn’t happen because of a no-trade clause that Kessel refused to waive, something he had negotiated into his contract years ago when he first signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Exercising his clause to block a trade was well within his right, and it seemed to quiet things down for a while in regards to the Penguins. GM Jim Rutherford admitted that a Kessel trade this offseason was now unlikely, but that hasn’t stopped reports surfacing on consecutive days that the team is still trying to unload their enigmatic star.

Yesterday, Josh Yohe of The Athletic (subscription required) reported that trade talks for the Penguins were “heating up” though it wasn’t clear exactly what Rutherford was trying to accomplish, other than dealing Kessel while making the team younger and faster. Today, another detailed piece was released by Rob Rossi of The Athletic that examines exactly what has gone wrong in Pittsburgh between Kessel and the organization and how the star player is currently holding the rest of their offseason “hostage.” Rossi quotes multiple sources that feel a Kessel trade was priority number one this offseason, in order to accomplish a sort of culture reset in Pittsburgh.

The 31-year old Kessel has three years remaining on his current contract and carries a $6.8MM cap hit thanks to a portion being retained by the Maple Leafs from an earlier trade. The deal owes him even less in actual salary, and Kessel is coming off another outstanding offensive season with 82 points in 82 games. He’s also currently on an iron man streak that hasn’t seen him miss a game since the 2009-10 season. Point-per-game wingers don’t get traded very often, but a deal this summer would be the third time Kessel is traded in his career.

Still, there is the problem of a no-trade clause that lists just eight teams that the Penguins can send Kessel to without his permission. Players in that situation usually list teams that would have little interest or that would hesitate to deal in-division. Teams like Philadelphia, Washington, Toronto and Boston all seem unlikely to get into real discussions for one reason or another, meaning his list could basically be limited to just a handful of potential destinations. With Rutherford after a “hockey trade” that brings back a player (or players) that can help the Penguins immediately, a deal might be extremely hard to find.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Canucks Interested In Markus Johansson

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  • More than ten teams have checked in on Bruins UFA Marcus Johansson, reports TSN’s Darren Dreger (Twitter link). Sportsnet 650’s Rick Dhaliwal adds (via Twitter) that the Canucks are among those teams.  While he had a quieter year offensively during the regular season with just 30 points in 58 games between New Jersey and Boston, he had a strong showing in the playoffs in a supporting role which appears to have caught the attention of a lot of teams.  He made $4.583MM on his last contract and should be well-positioned to surpass that on the open market.

Canucks Place Ryan Spooner On Unconditional Waivers

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The Canucks are parting ways with Ryan Spooner.  Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports (Twitter link) that Vancouver has placed the forward on unconditional waivers for the purposes of buying out the final year of his contract.

2018-19 represented a remarkable fall from grace for the 27-year-old.  One season earlier, he had an impressive 41 points in 59 games between the Bruins and the Rangers and he looked as if he could be a useful secondary scorer in New York.  The team certainly felt the same way, handing him a two-year, $8MM contract last summer.

However, things did not go anywhere near as well for Spooner this past season.  He struggled in the early going with the Rangers and was flipped with $900K of salary retention to Edmonton for Ryan Strome.  The move worked out a lot better for the Rangers than it did for the Oilers.

Spooner picked up just two goals and an assist in 25 games with Edmonton before he was ultimately waived and sent to the minors.  Shortly after that, he was flipped in a swap of bad contracts to the Canucks with Sam Gagner going back to the Oilers.  Unfortunately for Vancouver, the struggles continued as he had just four assists in 11 games.  Overall, he wound up with only three goals and six helpers over 52 NHL games between the three teams, hardly the type of production befitting that type of contract.

As a result of the Rangers holding onto part of Spooner’s contract, they’re also affected by this move.  The buyout cost per team is as follows:

Vancouver

2019-20: $1.033MM
2020-21: $1.033MM

New York

2019-20: $300K
2020-21: $300K

With the buyout, Vancouver will save a little under $2MM for next season which will help offset the salary recapture penalty that hit their books following the retirement of Roberto Luongo but will take on the extra charge for 2020-21.  Meanwhile, the Rangers will save $600K for the upcoming season with the extra $300K on the books for the following season.

Meanwhile, Spooner will enter a UFA market where he will now find himself battling for a depth spot in a lineup.  While his 2018-19 performance wasn’t strong, there should still be a few teams thinking that there could still be a bit of upside and that in the right spot, he could be a decent producer from the bottom six.  At any rate, his next contract will be a fraction of the one he is being bought out of.

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