Canucks Sign Torres

Late on Monday night, news broke that the Canucks have signed unrestricted free agent forward Raffi Torres to a 1-year deal worth $1 million. Torres was ranked on my last top 20 unrestricted free agents post, down around the middle of the pack, which should make him a real solid pick-up, especially at a $1 million salary.  The grinding winger may be a good fit for the Canucks 3rd line in October.

In 2010, Torres split time between the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Buffalo Sabres, having being dealt as a rental player at the trade deadline in March.  In 74 games, Torres potted 19 goals and 17 assists between the two teams, giving him 36 points and ranked him 161st among forwards.

In Columbus, Torres was logging some solid minutes for the Blue Jackets, but the role he had in Buffalo after a lack of production didn't give him as many minutes and everything suffered after that.  With the Canucks he'll likely be getting some in-between minutes, likely with a centre like Manny Malhotra, so there could be a pretty good match there.

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

The Canucks are definitely going to be a cap team in the 2011 season and they are currently sitting over top of the salary cap ceiling with the squad that you see above. I have finally added Cory Schneider to the mix, as it doesn't look like the Canucks are in the market for any more goaltending and both Alex Burrows and Sami Salo are in red, as they are both expected to start the season on the injured reserve. With every player present and accounted for, the 23-man roster above, plus a small cap overage penalty, the Canucks now stand at $62.5 million, $3.1 million over top of the ceiling.  Some clever math will likely push that number down, but that is where they stand right now.