The first month of the season is just about in the books, and the Vancouver Canucks sit fifth in the Pacific Division with a 6-6 record. Amidst their injury problems, pending unrestricted free agent Kiefer Sherwood has carried the team over their previous three games, scoring five of the team’s seven goals over that span.

Canucks fans are speculating what a Sherwood extension may look like. However, three teams around the National Hockey League recently got their big pending free agents locked up over the past few days.

The Colorado Avalanche have extended forward Martin Necas to an eight-year, $92 million contract, carrying an $11.5 million average annual value.

Necas, 26, was the big piece coming back in the trade that sent Mikko Rantanen to the Carolina Hurricanes less than a year ago. The Avalanche also acquired centreman Jack Drury and a pair of draft picks in the deal.

In 30 regular season games in Colorado last season, Necas scored 11 goals and 28 points. And he’s off to a hot start to his first full season with the Avalanche, scoring seven goals and 13 points through 11 games. His efforts have him tied for 22nd in league scoring with Mark Stone, Drake Batherson, Tim Stutzle, Jesper Bratt and Cole Caufield.

The 6’3″ winger comes in slightly under Canucks centreman Elias Pettersson’s $11.6 million average annual value contract. Before the Rantanen trade, the Canucks were in talks with the Hurricanes about a potential Elias Pettersson-for-Necas swap. Now, both players are making very similar money on an annual basis.

Colorado avoids going down the same path as last season with Rantanen and locks up their guy on a cheaper deal than the Finnish winger got with the Dallas Stars.

The Utah Mammoth locked up their No. 1 centre, Logan Cooley, to an eight-year, $80 million contract, holding a $10 million average annual value.

Cooley is coming off a 25-goal, 60-point sophomore year in Utah’s inaugural season. The 21-year-old centreman is scoring at will this season, potting eight goals and 12 points through 11 games this season – including a four-game stretch in which he scored six goals.

The Mammoth drafted Cooley third overall in the 2022 NHL draft. Among his peers, Cooley leads his draft class in goals (53) and points (121). He’s outproduced first overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky by just four points, despite playing 43 fewer games.

Utah now has its top young duo in Cooley and Dylan Guenther, who was selected with the Canucks’ ninth-overall pick in the Conor Garland, Oliver Ekman-Larsson trade, locked up for $142,000 more than the mega extension Kirill Kaprizov signed earlier this past offseason.

The Dallas Stars locked up a big piece on their back end, extending defenceman Thomas Harley to an eight-year, $84.7 million contract, with a $10.59 million average annual value.

Harley was selected 18th overall in the 2019 NHL draft. He made his debut in the 2021-22 season, before really bursting onto the scene in 2023-24, when he scored 15 goals and 47 points in 79 games, while logging 21:01 minutes of average ice time. Harley followed that up with a 16-goal, 50-point season, where he finished with a plus-32 rating.

This extension has the 24-year-old as the fourth-highest defenceman in the league, behind only Erik Karlsson, Rasmus Dahlin and Drew Doughty. Harley will make $2.137 million more annually than fellow defenceman Miro Heiskanen for the three seasons before he is due a raise off his $8.45 million contract.

Next on the docket for the Stars is locking up forward Jason Robertson. He is in the final year of his four-year $31 million, which pays him $7.75 million annually. Robertson was involved in trade rumours after the Stars’ Western Conference loss to the Edmonton Oilers, as the Stars faced cap problems. However, after his strong start to the season – three goals and nine points in 11 games, third in the NHL in shots on goal (47) – and the rising cap, there is a more straightforward path to a reunion between the two sides than what was believed last June.