It's bargain-hunting season in the NHL, when organizations can take advantage of soft market conditions to offer low-value contracts to veteran players.
Professional tryout agreements (PTOs) offer players the lowest possible level of security. They're basically an invitation for a player to attend training camp, with no guarantee of a future contract offer. If the player can prove himself, he'll get a deal, but successful PTO auditions are rare.
Dustin Nelson of The Hockey Writers kept a comprehensive list of players on PTO deals going into last season. If you scroll through, you'll see that some teams had as many as six or seven deals on their books.
David Booth was the ex-Canuck that tried unsuccessfully to extend his career—in his case, with Florida. Eventually, he signed on with Admiral Vladivostok in the KHL, where he had six goals and 16 points in 23 games.
Looking through the list, here are the players who were able to parlay their opportunities into NHL jobs last year:
• Jonas Gustavsson (G), Boston
• Michal Rozsival (D), re-signing with Chicago
• Jack Skille (RW), Colorado
• Tomas Fleischmann (LW), signed with Montreal then traded to Chicago at trade deadline
• Lee Stempniak (RW), signed with New Jersey then traded to Boston at trade deadline - scored 19 goals and 51 points and earned a two-year deal with a $2.5 million cap hit from Carolina on July 1
• Steve Bernier (RW), New York Islanders
• Scott Gomez (C), St. Louis, then released by Christmas; he went on to sign with the AHL Hershey Bears, then the Ottawa Senators
• Scottie Upshall (LW), St. Louis - was re-signed by the Blues for the 2016-17 season
• Brad Boyes (RW) - Toronto
This offseason, we're seeing a few more ex-Canucks go to the PTO route. It was announced at the end of July that Max Lapierre, now 31, would be at camp with the New York Rangers after having spent last season with MODO in the Swedish League and Lugano of the Swiss League.
On August 22, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced that they're inviting Brandon Prust to camp. Yesterday, Raffi Torres secured an invite from the Carolina Hurricanes and today, we're hearing that Chris Higgins will be returning to Calgary, where he played 12 forgettable games in 2009-10.
I guess each of these players is hoping that he can catch on like a Stempniak or find a fit like Scottie Upshall did, but those stories are few and far between.
Every year, one of the purpose of PTOs is for teams to fill their training camp rosters. There's a rule which states that every team must ice at least eight veterans for every preseason game—the details are on
page 92 of the CBA.
For purposes of this rule, a "veteran" (non-goalie) is defined as a player who has played at least 100 NHL games, or who played at least 30 games last season—or, a first-round draft pick from the last entry draft.
Back in the Mike Gillis years, the Canucks brought in a motley collection of vets to help fill out those roster spots—remember the head-scratching signings of players like Owen Nolan and Todd Fedoruk?
We haven't really seen the Benning regime do the same. Last year's Canucks' PTOs went to LW John Kurtz and D Travis Ehrhardt, who were both ultimately assigned to Utica.
This year the "veterans" clause will be even more of an issue during preseason games, due to the World Cup of Hockey. Toronto, for instance, may have brought in Prust as an extra body to fill a roster spot: the Leafs will be missing Auston Matthews and James van Riemsdyk (Team USA), Leo Komarov (Team Finland), Milan Michalek and Roman Polak (Team Czech Republic), Morgan Rielly (Team North America) and Frederik Andersen (Team Europe) in their training camp.
As for Calgary, they'll be without four players: Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan (Team North America), Michal Frolik (Team Czech Republic) and Jyrki Jokipakka (Team Finland). The Flames will have 13 forwards signed once they get Gaudreau under contract, not including LW prospects Emile Poirier and Morgan Klimchuk—both 2013 first-rounders who seem to have been jumped on the Flames' depth chart by another ex-Canuck, Hunter Shinkaruk. Unless Higgins turns back the clock in a big way, I'd be surprised to see him stick with the Flames.
The Canucks should have enough veterans to get the team through preseason. Brendan Gaunce, Nikita Tryamkin and Andrey Pedan haven't done quite enough to cross the threshold and qualify as vets, but Vancouver will have eight veteran forwards available (Burrows, Sutter, Dorsett, Baertschi, Granlund, Horvat, Virtanen and Etem), along with seven defensemen (Edler, Tanev, Gudbranson, Hutton, Biega, Philip Larsen and, for these purposes, Olli Juolevi) and Ryan Miller. There are no split-squad games for Vancouver this year, but with 16 veterans at camp, the Canucks should be able to keep them each playing only about half of the team's exhibition games—and will have lots of space to take a good look at the prospects and new players.
Bottom line: don't necessarily expect the Canucks to get into the PTO market, and don't get worked up over players signing with other teams. They're intriguing, but the odds are small that most of these players will stick in the NHL this season.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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