The Vancouver Canucks added a little more forward depth to their organization on Tuesday, announcing that they'd inked Sweden's Nils Aman to an entry-level contract.
Aman is fresh off an appearance with the Swedish national team at the World Championship, where he finished with two assists in seven games. It's the first time in his career that he has suited up for an IIHF event, but according to the Canucks, he has played a total of 22 games for Team Sweden at other international tournaments.
At his season-ending media conference, Jim Rutherford said that assistant general manager Derek Clancey would be repping the Canucks in Finland, at the World Championship. So, I assume he identified Aman as a possible free-agent candidate. Oliver Ekman-Larsson would also have been a teammate.
Now 22, Aman has good size — listed at 6'2" and 185 pounds on the
World Championship website.
He finished the tournament as a plus-three and while his 9:40 of average ice time per game was second-lowest on the team, he's a player that the Swedes chose to register and use over fellow Canucks prospect and new signee Linus Karlsson, who ended up being one of Sweden's final cuts.
According to
CapFriendly, Aman's deal is identical to Karlsson's: a two-year, two-way pact that carries a cap hit of $883, 750 at the NHL level, signing bonuses of $82,500 in each year, potential performance bonuses of $82,500 in the first year, a tiered salary at the NHL level which would make for a higher qualifying offer after Year 2, and a salary of $70,000 at the AHL level in each season.
Aman was drafted in the sixth round by Colorado in 2020. Because he was already 20 when he was drafted, the Avalanche only retained his rights for two seasons. When they elected not to sign him to an entry-level contract by June 1 of this year, he became an unrestricted free agent.
"Nils is a smart hockey player who plays with speed and has a strong work ethic," said Vancouver general manager Patrik Allvin in Tuesday's announcement. "He possesses a good two-way game, and we look forward to seeing his continued development on both sides of the ice with the Canucks organization."
A native of Avesta, Sweden, Aman came up through the Leksands organization. He graduated to the senior level in the 2019-20 season, playing eight games in the top-level Swedish Hockey League, and has continued on for the last two years.
This season, Aman recorded six goals and 14 points in 51 regular-season games, and finished with a plus-four. Leksands finished eighth in the 14-team SHL and squeaked into the playoffs, but was eliminated by ninth-place Oskarshamn in the best-of-three qualifying round.
Aman's ability to play centre is an asset for the Canucks organization — currently fine at the position at the NHL level, but lacking prospect depth. In general, the Canucks are prioritizing the addition of players in their early 20s who can help fill out the roster in Abbotsford next season, and could have a chance of developing into useful NHL players.
Even with the Aman signing, the Canucks currently have only 28 of their maximum 50 NHL contract slots filled, according to CapFriendly — though they also only have 15 NHLers signed for next season at the moment.
Contract slots will be needed for RFAs Brock Boeser, Matthew Highmore, Juho Lammikko and Will Lockwood, as well as any of the pending unrestricted free agents with Vancouver or Abbotsford that they'd like to bring back.
Aman is expected to be on hand for the Canucks' development camp at UBC just after the draft next month, which will run from July 10-15.
Two other quick notes before I sign off for today:
First - the latest on Russian free agent Andrei Kuzmenko. The Canucks are set for a second interview, and a decision should come down in about two weeks.
Also, Jim Rutherford made an appearance on the Donnie and Dhali show on Wednesday. According to Rick Dhaliwal's tweets, Rutherford downplayed the prospect of making aggressive moves to trade up and said that it's standard procedure to interview the top five prospects, no matter where a team sits in the draft order.
More interestingly at this moment, Rutherford is leaving the door open for a J.T. Miller return, but tempering expectations on any immediate news. With one year remaining on their current deals, both Miller and Bo Horvat cannot be signed to extensions before July 13.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»