The Vancouver Canucks have signed Travis Hamonic to a professional tryout contract. Many insiders have the Canucks connected to the right-shot defenseman, while others believed the Winnipeg Jets and Calgary Flames were also an option. TSN’s Darren Dreger said, “All indications point at a 1 year deal once Canucks move money or apply LTIR (Ferland).”
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We wrote three weeks ago:
While on TSN radio in Vancouver, Bob Marjanovich explained he had heard that both the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames were interested in Hamonic and said specifically that Canucks head coach Travis Green is really pushing for the Canucks to open up their wallets and add another defenseman — Hamonic being the guy.
It took some time and it doesn’t look like the Flames will have to open their wallets too widely, but the deal will ultimately get done.
Hamonic ranked 2nd in TOI with the Flames last year, scoring three goals and adding nine assists. But, there seemed to be some hesitation from teams to sign Hamonic after he chose to bow out of the play-in rounds at the end of last year. He suffered an upper-body injury during a sideboards collision with J.T. Miller on Feb. 8 at Rogers Arena and didn’t play in remainder of the 2019-20 season paused by the coronavirus pandemic. He could have returned to join the Flames, but elected not to.
The Canucks are $1.5 million US over the salary-cap ceiling but once Micheal Ferland is placed on LTIR, applying his $3.5 million cap hit to the equation would mean the Canucks could have approximately $2 million to get a Hamonic deal done. It is not expected Hamonic would need to be signed for more than that.
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