Canucks sign Sprong to 1-year pact

The Vancouver Canucks continued to make offseason additions to their roster, inking forward Daniel Sprong to a one-year contract, the club announced Saturday.

The deal is worth $975,000, according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.

Sprong was an unrestricted free agent. He's coming off a one-year, $2-million agreement signed with the Detroit Red Wings on July 1, 2023.

The 27-year-old collected 18 goals and tied his career-high assist total (25) from two seasons ago while averaging exactly 12 minutes of ice time over 76 games with the Red Wings in 2023-24.

Sprong will be suiting up for his sixth team in nine campaigns. He established a personal best at the NHL level with 21 tallies while playing for the Seattle Kraken in 2022-23. Sprong has posted 14 goals in three separate seasons, and 13 in another.

He was the highest-scoring forward left in the UFA pool.

The Canucks inked Jake DeBrusk (another 27-year-old forward) to a seven-year, $38.5-million contract this past July 1. Vancouver also handed out two-year deals to forwards Danton Heinen and Kiefer Sherwood, as well as defenseman Vincent Desharnais that same day.

On Tuesday, the Canucks re-upped restricted free-agent goaltender Artus Silovs on a two-year pact of his own. They retained several other players earlier in the offseason, including Dakota Joshua (four years) and Tyler Myers (three) on June 27.

The day before that, Vancouver traded forwards Ilya Mikheyev and Sam Lafferty to the Chicago Blackhawks and re-signed Teddy Blueger for another two seasons. But the biggest deal the Canucks have handed out since their campaign came to a close was the eight-year, $58-million pact they gave top-pairing blue-liner Filip Hronek on June 18.