Well, this certainly helps the Vancouver Canucks offseason look a little better.
A lot better, actually.
On Monday evening the Canucks acquired defenseman Nate Schmidt from the Vegas Golden Knights in exchange for a 2022 third-round draft pick.
In terms of talent it is an absolute steal for the Canucks. Schmidt is a very good top-four defenseman that will be a huge upgrade to their blue, especially following the earlier departures of Chris Tanev and Troy Stecher. And the only thing it costs them is a mid-round pick two years from now.
In 59 games for the Golden Knights this past season he scored seven goals and added 24 assists while playing close to 22 minutes per game.
Vegas was desperate to shed salary after signing free agent defenseman Alex Pietrangelo earlier in the evening. His cap hit put them more than $8 million over the cap, forcing them to make a move to allow Pietrangelo’s contract to become official. Ideally Schmidt would have had more value to them in a trade, but every team in the league knew the situation they were in.
They will still need to shed more salary to get under the cap for the start of the season.
Vancouver still has some work to do as Jake Virtanen and Adam Gaudette remain unsigned as restricted free agents and they have just $1.9 million in salary cap space remaining.
—
Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.