The Vancouver Canucks re-signed forward Zack Kassian to a two-year, $3.5 million deal on Thursday, according to the Vancouver Sun’s Elliott Pap.
Update: It’s official.
Kassian, 23, was a restricted free agent this summer. Extending the big winger continues what’s already been a busy offseason for a newly revamped Canucks front office that made moves including trading Ryan Kesler and signing the likes of Radim Vrbata.
This could be the extent of the moves, as Pap reported in the Vancouver Sun earlier today.
“For the most part, we’re done,” Benning said. “We’re probably going to go into the season with this team. We’re going to see where we stand and go from there. We’re working on our RFA guys today and we want to get them done.
“As far as the UFAs, if something shakes out at the end, we still have a little cap room. But I think we accomplished the things that we set out to accomplish. We wanted to add an experienced goaltender, and we did that with Ryan Miller, and we wanted to add a scorer.”
Kassian enjoyed easily the best season of his still-young NHL career in 2013-14, setting career-highs in goals (14), assists (15), points (29), penalty minutes (124) and games played (73). The Canucks are getting a nice deal for a player who could develop into a nice power forward.
PHT’s Jason Brough passes along word from new GM Jim Benning that Kassian could be a big part of an interesting second line for the Canucks:
Benning suggests moving Burrows to the second line, with Bonino in the middle and Kassian or Hansen on the other side.
— Jason Brough 🙁 (@SadClubCommish) July 3, 2014
“Zack is a skilled, young player and an important member of this team,” said Benning in a release. “He has the ability to impact a game both with his talent and size. We look forward to seeing him continue to develop as a Canuck.”