The Vancouver Canucks signed a top-four defenceman who has fewer than three years of NHL experience, but was good enough to earn a six-year contract.
Numbers Game breaks down the Canucks signing hometown boy Jason Garrison.
The Canucks Get: D Jason Garrison.
Garrison, 27, has played 190 career NHL games, but really came into his own this past season, scoring a career-high 16 goals, 33 points and a plus-6 rating while playing a career-high 23:42 per game.
Those numbers are impressive enough -- 16 goals ranked third among all defencemen -- but Garrison is more than just a big blast from the point, facing a consistently high quality of competition over the last two seasons in Florida (per www.behindthenet.ca).
In fact, given Garrison's limited offensive pedigree before 2011-2012 (going back to his days at Minnesota-Duluth, when he was an unheralded teammate of Canucks winger Mason Raymond), it's more reasonable to expect that Garrison will be a reliable two-way top-four defenceman that should contribute some on the power play too, even if expecting another 16-goal season could be optimistic.
Since Vancouver's Sami Salo signed with Tampa Bay as a free agent earlier in the day, there is a natural opening for Garrison to play alongside Alexander Edler while Dan Hamhuis and Kevin Bieksa remain the Canucks' primary shutdown pair, so Garrison may actually face a lower level of even-strength competition on a consistent basis than he was typically facing in Florida.
Vancouver had to make a significant investment to get Garrison signed and a six-year deal comes with inherent risk, but the yearly cap hit of $4.6-million is reasonable enough if Garrison fulfills his anticipated top-four role.
Losing Garrison creates a hole for the Panthers that they attempted to address by signing Filip Kuba from the Ottawa Senators. Kuba certainly has a longer track record, but the 35-year-old is also at a different stage of his career, requiring a shorter-term investment.
Maybe Garrison won't live up to his deal in Vancouver (Keith Ballard was certainly more effective playing in Florida), but given the options on a relatively thin free agent market, Vancouver made a move that gives them a better chance to win both now and in the years to come.
Scott Cullen can be reached at Scott.Cullen@bellmedia.ca and followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tsnscottcullen. For more, check out TSN Fantasy on Facebook.
