Forty NHL players elected to file for salary arbitration before Friday's deadline. After Josh Leivo inked his new one-year deal with the Canucks on Friday, Reid Boucher was the only other Vancouver player who was eligible, but did not elect to do so.
Here's the full list. Vancouver is one of 11 teams that did not have a player file for arbitration.
One notable side effect here: only teams with players who file for arbitration are eligible to buy out players during a 48-hour window after their arbitration cases have been handled.
Of course, the Canucks did take advantage of the regular buyout window, terminating their affiliation with forward Ryan Spooner after just a few months. Larry Brooks of the
New York Post mentions an interesting side-effect of that decision
in his column this week — Because the New York Rangers retained $900,000 of Spooner's salary when they traded him to Edmonton last November, they also received cap relief when the Canucks bought Spooner out. New York is still on the hook for $300,000 in each of the next two seasons as part of the buyout, but took the extra $600,000 that came available for the 2019-20 season to sweeten its offer to Artemi Panarin.
Brooks says, "Without that $600,000, the Blueshirts were prepared to stick on their offer of $11M per, industry sources confirm."
In the end, the two sides settled on a cap hit of $11.642 million a year—still less than the reported $12 and $12.5 million AAVs that Columbus and the Islanders offered, respectively, but no longer quite so far out of that ballpark.
It's clear that the Rangers were Panarin's first choice. I wonder if he would have made a different decision if they'd only been able to offer $11 million. If so, I also wonder if Rangers GM Jeff Gorton nudged Jim Benning at all to make that buyout?
Even with their 'economical' acquisition of Panarin, Gorton is probably going to have to get creative to remain cap compliant.
CapFriendly shows the Rangers with just over $8 million in cap space with 20 players signed. Brendan Lemieux and Anthony DeAngelo are RFAs without arbitration rights; Pavel Buchnevich and Jacob Trouba did file for arbitration.
Trouba was awarded a one-year deal at $5.5 million by the arbitrator last year. He's happy to be stateside now, for sure, but he's still one year away from unrestricted free agency. He'll presumably be looking for a significant raise on a long-term deal from the Rangers; otherwise, he'll just take the arbitrator's award again and give himself a chance to hit the open market next summer.
The Rangers' other three RFAs are all coming off their entry-level contracts. There has been chatter for awhile that Gorton will create more cap space by trading Chris Kreider, who's one year away from UFA status himself. But now that Panarin's in the fold, Gorton might be more inclined to try to hang onto Kreider as the Rangers try to get back into the playoffs this year.
If Gorton does now owe Benning a favour, I wonder if we'll see that manifest in a Canucks-friendly deal with the Rangers in the coming months?
Now—let's put the wheeling and dealing aside and look ahead to the schedule of actual hockey that awaits us during the summer months.
Da Beauty League comes first. Brock Boeser, who was named MVP in 2018, is confirmed to return to the ice for the third year of Minnesota summer hockey, which kicks off next Wednesday, July 10.
Full rosters will be announced on Monday. Games run weekly in July, then kick up to Mondays and Wednesdays for the first two weeks of August before the playoffs begin.
At the end of the month, the annual World Junior Summer Showcase will take place in Plymouth, Michigan from July 27 to August 3. This is our first look at the players from Canada, the U.S., Finland and Sweden who have the inside track to make their respective national teams at the 2020 World Junior Championship, which will be held in the Czech Republic this year.
Click here for the schedule—and links to the team rosters. Last year, both Canada and the U.S. started out with two teams' worth of players, then made cuts midway through the tournament; this year, Canada is just icing one squad.
Canucks' 2018 second-rounder Jett Woo is back for a second season. He'll turn 19 just as the tournament begins. Following an offseason knee procedure, Woo was back on the ice during the Canucks' development camp after the draft. Hopefully with another three weeks of training, he'll be ready to go in Plymouth.
Vancouver's 2018 fifth-rounder, Toni Utunen, also returns for Finland after winning a gold medal here in Vancouver last year and scoring the goal that eliminated Canada in the quarterfinal.
New to the Summer Showcase stage this year: Vancouver's 2019 second-rounder Nils Hoglander is on the roster for Sweden.
*EDIT* Also, thanks to @conway_ian from Twitter for pointing out that the Canucks' 2019 fifth-rounder Carson Focht is also on Team Canada's roster. Focht turned 19 last February and had 64 points in 68 games with the Calgary Hitmen last season.
While still eligible for World Juniors, Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko are not listed on their teams' rosters. Third and fourth-overall picks Kirby Dach and Bowen Byram are both on the roster for Team Canada, as are Alex Newhook and injured Dylan Cozens and Peyton Krebs, who almost certainly won't be ready to skate by the end of the month.
The U.S. team, of course, is built around that incredible 2019 NTDP draft class, starting with Spencer Knight in net and including Cam York and Alex Vlasic on defense and Alex Turcotte, Trevor Zegras, Matthew Boldy, Cole Caufield and many more up front.
Right after that tournament wraps up, we'll get our first look at next year's draft eligibles at the 2019 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, which runs from August 5-10 in Breclav, Czech Republic, and Piestany, Slovakia.
Rosters haven't been released yet, but are sure to include top 2020 prospects including Canada's Alexis Lafreniere and Quinton Byfield and Sweden's Lucas Raymond and Alexander Holtz, who both won gold at April's World U18 tournament.
Canada will play the preliminary round in Group A in Breclav, along with Switzerland, the Czechs and the Finns. The U.S., Sweden, Russia and Slovakia will square off in Group B in Piestany.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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