National Hockey League: Vancouver Canuck’s over the Salary Cap with Jannik Hansen arbitration
Jannik Hansen was among the 31 players who filed for salary arbitration this July. The Vancouver Canuck’s forward was being paid $550,000. Jannik has been a forward for the Canucks throughout his entire career and last season he scored his career high of 9 goals in 47 games.
The arbitrator announced his ruling on Thursday in favour of Jannik; Jannik received a considerable raise worth $275,000 when the arbitrator bumped his salary to $825,000. The Canucks would not offer Jannik more than $605,000 so the contract went to arbitration. Jannik was previously on a two way deal with the Canucks. Now he is on a one year one-way contract for the 2010-2011 season.
With the ruling, the Canucks are a million dollars over their salary cap already and Jannik is not the last of their players heading for arbitration. Mason Raymond has also filed for salary arbitration and the gap between what the Canucks have agreed to pay and what Raymond is asking for is much wider. The Canucks are expected to be the losers in that arbitration case also.
Raymond is coming out of a 50 point season with a salary of just $760,000. After the arbitration that figure could be tripled, putting the Canucks in an even more difficult salary cap situation than the one they are in now. At least they could walk away from the Raymond contract, if it goes over the $1.6 million mark.
The Jannik contract is worth less than that so the team does not even have the option of saying no to him. They will have to absorb this salary cap hit at all costs. It will require some creative thinking on the Canucks part to get out of this pickle; we can expect some trades in the near future.
Canucks General Manager, Laurence Gilman said that the team will make adjustments of any kind to fall under the salary cap limit before the season begins. He said that trades, injuries and players with two way contracts could be possible solutions to the salary cap problem facing them. Jannik is no longer a two way player so that rules him out.
On the trade front, the Canucks could possibly consider defenseman Kevin Bieksa. Kevin becomes an unrestricted free agent next year and his $3.75 million contract could provide Gilman the space he needs to fit under the cap limit.
The Canucks have 9 defensemen, including Kevin, on their roster already and are spending almost $26 million on their defence. They could afford to trade Kevin without adversely affecting the team. Will that be enough to put the team back under the cap or will it still depend on what happens in the Raymond arbitration?
The Canucks had an excellent line up coming into this offseason and with the acquisition of Manny Malhotra and Dan Hamhuis they became only more formidable. Gilman has been relatively inactive in the talent hunt because he had a reasonably well balanced team from the start and now Jannik is once again a part of that team.
With the contract signed, the task that lies ahead of Jannik is landing a regular spot on the team. Jannik is incredibly fast on the ice and that makes him and excellent penalty killer as Gilman himself noted too. “He’s an emerging player who will play the right side on the third or fourth line depending on how well he’s performing,” Gilman said.
Jannik’s agent Mark Stowe was pleased with how the arbitration hearings are played out. He believed that arbitration process is quicker than negotiations and discussion that could drag on and on.
He said that Jannik was just happy to be back with the team he has been with all along and to get the contract signed. “As you can imagine, arbitration is not a friendly process, although in this case it was handled very professionally by both sides,” Stowe said.
Jannik Hansen was drafted in 2008 by the Canucks. The defenseman has 36 points in 107 games with 57 penalty minutes.
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