Photo Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn/USA TODAY Sports

The Vancouver Canucks have opened up contract talks with Yannick Weber, a pending restricted free agent and the club’s most prolific goal scoring defender from the 2014-15 season, according to his agent JP Barry.

Barry told News 1130 Sports on Tuesday that talks have been preliminary in nature, and will continue in earnest following the conclusion of the NHL scouting combine and the Canucks’ professional meetings. 

Weber, 26, has one year of restricted free agency remaining, can file for arbitration rights, and will cost $892,500 to qualify based on the CBA mandated 105 percent raise and his $850,000 salary during the 2014-15 season, according to NHLNumbers.com. Though Weber only played top-four minutes for the Canucks for a couple of months down the stretch, his 11 goals and his importance to Vancouver’s power play will serve to provide Barry with the ammunition he requires to earn his client some real money at arbitration should negotiations get that far. 

Most arbitration cases are settled before the hearing though, and presumably this won’t be any different. Canucks general manager Jim Benning was direct about the club’s interest in bringing Weber back during his season ending press conference, telling reporters unequivocally that the club will get the right-handed shooting blue liner signed. 

The Swiss-born blue-liner emerged as a regular for the Canucks, and occasionally a regular in the top-four, when he excelled in February and March as the club dealt with a mess of blue-line injuries. Though Weber is probably best served in a third-pairing role, he’s long produced better offensive and defensive results than his depth usage would suggest. 

To my eyes he also held up particularly well against the withering Calgary Flames forecheck in the club’s first round loss in April. Weber doesn’t provide much in the way of physical value and occasionally seems to get a bit lost against bigger teams like the Los Angeles Kings and the Winnipeg Jets, but he’s very good at avoiding hits and keying the rush. 

Where Weber really provided some serious value for the Canucks last season is on the power play. His impact on Vancouver’s 5-on-4 play was particularly pronounced, and helped re-open the Radim Vrbata backdoor pass in the latter two or three months of the season. Weber was the most efficient 5-on-4 point producer among Vancouver defenseman, and led all NHL defenders in 5-on-4 goal scoring rate (and by a wide margin, although the sample is only 90 minutes large).

As for what Weber’s next contract will look like, that’ll depend largely on whether the Canucks look to bring him back as an affordable depth defender on a one-year deal, or whether they opt to purchase an unrestricted season or two. Based on comparable recent restricted free agents that were arbitration eligible and could therefore be submitted as comparable players at a hearing, I’d think the two sides are looking at players like 2012 Carl Gunnarsson, 2012 Anton Stralman, 2014 Matt Bartkowski, and 2012 Raphael Diaz as realistic – albeit somewhat low-end – comparable players.

Weber outscored all four of those players (somewhat narrowly though), but he played fewer minutes than most of them. Those four defenders were ultimately signed to deals with a cap-hit varying from $1.25 million to $1.7 million, and I’d think that Weber might have narrowly more value, but that’s the basic neighbourhood he’s in. Surely he’s not going to end up getting Cody Franson, or Jason Demers, or Kyle Quincey money. 

If Weber’s restricted season is somewhat generously worth about $2 million, then you’d expect his restricted free agent seasons to be worth closer to $3.5 million. Perhaps something like a three-year, $8.5 million contract (with a $2.833 million AAV) might make sense if the club is looking to buy some of Weber’s unrestricted years. With salary cap uncertainty, and the potential that Weber could go off again and earn himself a lot more in unrestricted free agency next July, I’d be mildly surprised if the two sides agreed to a multi-year deal.