The Anaheim Ducks have started making the calls everyone knew were coming. Two days after Cutter Gauthier’s camp was reported to be seeking around $15 million per year, Rick Dhaliwal said Monday on Oilers Now with Bob Stauffer that Anaheim called the Vancouver Canucks to ask whether they would take winger Frank Vatrano off their hands.
The shape of the conversation matters as much as the name. Per Dhaliwal, Anaheim will have to attach sweeteners to move contracts like Vatrano’s — the Ducks are not selling a player so much as paying for cap room. “The Ducks are trying to move some players so they can sign Cutter Gauthier,” Dhaliwal said, adding that Vancouver’s own money-in, money-out budget makes a straight salary absorption unlikely there. Vatrano is reportedly one of the types of contracts being offered around, not necessarily the only one.
Why it matters
This is the first reported concrete step in the squeeze that matching Leo Carlsson‘s five-year, $90 million offer sheet created. Anaheim came out of the match with just under $10 million in cap space and an unsigned 41-goal restricted free agent asking for more than that. General manager Pat Verbeek has said he has two and a half months to figure it out, but the sequencing is unforgiving: the more urgently the league understands Anaheim needs the room, the more a sweetener costs. Every team that picks up the phone already knows why the Ducks are calling.
The realistic outcome is that Anaheim gives up a mid-round pick or a depth prospect to place a veteran salary, then signs Gauthier to a number between the reported $15 million ask and what the cleared space allows. The alternative — a bridge deal that defers the problem — got no mention in Dhaliwal’s reporting, which suggests the Ducks are working toward the long-term contract first.
For fantasy purposes, a Vatrano trade would matter mostly at the margins: he shot well below his career norms at times last season but still holds middle-six and second-unit power-play value wherever he lands, and a move to a team with an open top-nine slot could modestly help him. The bigger signal is for Gauthier dynasty holders — Anaheim clearing money is the strongest indication yet that the Ducks intend to pay him, not trade him.
