Raymond Avoids Arbitration With Canucks

It appears the Canucks have avoided the arbitration process with restricted free agent forward Mason Raymond on Monday, signing him to a 2-year deal worth $5.1 million, which works out to be a $2.55 million cap hit each year. Raymond had a breakout year playing with Ryan Kesler and now the former 2nd round pick has a new deal that will see that partnership continue, likely for another couple seasons at the very least.

In 2010, Raymond ranked 105th in my pool points list with 25 goals and 28 assists (for 53 points) in all 82 games for the Canucks, which was also good for being 77th among all forwards. His speed was a definite asset in all situations for the Canucks and he quickly found a regular spot on the team with those good numbers and assets.

With the Canucks getting a little stronger on the blueline, including in some puck-moving areas, and the Canucks forward ranks staying relatively the same, I would suggest that Raymond should improve on his 2010 numbers, but I wouldn't get too far ahead of ourselves, just keep the improvements marginal, unless you want to run that extra gamble.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Henrik Sedin	Christian Ehrhoff	Roberto Luongo
Daniel Sedin	Alex Edler
Ryan Kesler	Sami Salo
Alex Burrows	Keith Ballard
Mason Raymond	Dan Hamhuis
Mikael Samuelsson	Kevin Bieksa
Manny Malholtra	Andrew Alberts
Jannik Hansen	Shane O'Brien
Tanner Glass	Aaron Rome
Rick Rypien
Darcy Hordichuk

The Canucks have now moved into the territory where they are now over the salary cap ceiling, in theory, with this signing. Without Cory Schneider, who is likely going to be their back-up, I have the Canucks sitting with 22 players on their potential roster at a cap hit of $60.6 million. I would still prefer to see Schneider make the Canucks full-time roster before adding him, but even without him, the team is over, so another deal has to be put in place, unless there is going to be a lot of ups and downs to the minors in the coming year.

This deal has worked out well for the Canucks, as there was a popular school of thought that Raymond would be looking at around $3 million (or more) through his arbitration case, but the Canucks managed to get the speedy forward to tow the company line and accept a little less than the suspected amount. Raymond is the last major RFA on the Canucks list to deal with and now it is going to be fine tuning for the club down into training camp.