Vancouver Canucks sign Vincent Desharnais to two-year deal at $2 million AAV

The Vancouver Canucks remain busy on the opening day of free agency, making their seventh signing of the day. The club announced early afternoon that they’ve signed free agent defenceman Vincent Desharnais to a two-year, $2 million per year deal.

 

Desharnais, 28, played in 78 regular season games for the Edmonton Oilers last season, scoring one goal and 10 assists for 11 points with a plus-three rating. The towering 6’7, 226-lb defenceman is very defensive-minded, with quite some snarl regarding his physical play. Desharnais finished the season with 126 hits (45th among NHL defencemen), 122 blocks (tied for 70th among NHL defencemen) and 54 penalty minutes (47th among NHL defencemen) while only averaging 15:44 seconds of ice time.

Canucks fans should be very familiar with Desharnais’ game, as he was a menace in games against Vancouver in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs last season. The former seventh-round pick played in all seven games of that series, finishing with 16 hits and 15 blocked shots. While only having two seasons and 114 NHL games under his belt, Desharnais was a mainstay on the Oilers roster all season and earned a raise off of his near league minimum ($762,500) contract he signed in 2022.

With this addition, the Canucks now have six NHL-calibre defencemen on their roster: Quinn Hughes ($7.85 million), Filip Hronek ($7.25 million), Carson Soucy ($3.25 million), Tyler Myers ($3 million), Derek Forbort ($1.5 million) and Vincent Desharnais ($2 million) only taking up 28.2% of the salary cap, while having an average height of 6’3 on their back end.

Add Desharnais among Jake DeBrusk, Danton Heinen, Kiefer Sherwood, Jiří Patera and Nate Smith to the list of new Vancouver Canucks. With the LTIR money from Tucker Poolman’s contract, the organization now has just shy of $2 million to spend and only restricted free-agent goaltender Arturs Silovs to sign.

With more potential moves to be made, make sure you don’t miss any signings by checking out our live free agency blog here.