Report: Canucks re-sign Edler to three-year deal

The Vancouver Canucks and Alex Edler have reportedly agreed on a three-year extension, with a modified no-move clause.

The defenceman that has over 800 games played for the Canucks will be returning to Vancouver after earlier reports suggested that the two parties were still somewhat far apart in negotiations. Going as far as saying that Vancouver would not entertain the idea of a three-year extension for the 33-year-old.

Important to remember that for the next couple of weeks, things move extremely quickly.

The new contract will hold a reported cap hit between $5-million and $5.5-million. Staying in the same realm of his previous six-year, $30-million contract.

One of the key parts of this new deal is the no-move clause only lasting the first two years of the contract. Meaning that the Canucks will not be forced to protect Edler for the upcoming Seattle expansion draft in two years time.

The 13-year Canuck is coming off a season that demonstrated how important he is to this club. Scoring 10 goals and 34 points in just 56 games played, Edler had his highest points-per-game since his 2010-11 season. He was also able to notch an on-ice 0.7 CF%rel this past season, while having a 58.9 defensive zone start percentage, a career-high.

This is the first transaction of what will be a long off-season for the Canucks, especially during the hometown draft, where there have been reports that Benning will be active in trade talks.

The Canucks now are sitting with seven defencemen signed on their roster, but only Edler and Quinn Hughes have contracts beyond next season. A flexible situation where there will be opportunities given to form a new blue line core.

With reports coming earlier today that the salary cap for the 2019-20 NHL season will be somewhere between $81.5-million and $82.5-million, that means Vancouver now has around $24-million in cap space — completely up to the exact cap hit of Edler’s new contract and the new cap league-wide.

There is sure to be more movement and transactions for the Canucks as the host the 2019 NHL Draft that starts this Friday, June 21st.

UPDATE:

It appears the term on Edler’s new deal might not be cemented as of yet. Elliotte Friedman has recently reported that this deal might be a four-year contract, but the no-move clause going away to prevent an expansion draft headache has been solved.