Vancouver Canucks general manager Jim Benning stayed away from signing any of the big names during this summer’s free agent period. Instead, he opted to go in the bargain shopping bin and found a handful of quality sames.
Benning added versatile veteran Sam Gagner, who can be a nice fill-in anywhere on the top three lines. He also added puck-moving defenceman Michael Del Zotto, backup goalie Anders Nilsson and depth players in centre Alexander Burmistrov and blueliner Patrick Wiercioch.
So for a team that was supposed to rebuild, that was already quite a a number of moves for Benning.