The Vancouver Canucks have brought back forward Emerson Etem on a one-year, one-way contract worth $775,000, the team announced Monday.
Etem, 24, was a pending restricted free agent, coming off a one-year deal that paid him $850,500, more than his newly signed deal does, as per General Fanager.
A former first-round pick of the Anaheim Ducks in 2010, Etem scored 61 goals and 107 points in his final year of junior with the Medicine Hat Tigers, but that scoring touch hasn’t yet transferred to the NHL level.
Etem is now on his third NHL team, having been traded twice.
The Canucks acquired Etem from the New York Rangers in January, in exchange for prospect Nicklas Jensen.
After going 19 games without a goal in New York, Etem scored seven times and had 12 points in 39 games for a Vancouver team that, across the board, didn’t score very much.
“He’s a guy that is going to bring us speed and he’s got strength to get to the net,” said general manager Jim Benning of Etem at the time of the trade. “He’s proven he can score in the past and so I expect him, when he comes in here and gets his confidence, to be a scorer for us.”