Confirmed with Link: Ducks sign Jansen Harkins (2 years, $787.5k AAV)

[Big McLargehuge]

Giving one way contracts out to NHL/AHL tweeners really isn't a big deal, especially when you have as much cap space as we have. Paying a little overs to have some competitive players in San Diego is not a bad thing, it will help the development of our young players down there.

Given we still have 9 roster spots open, I suspect we'll see at least a couple more of these contracts, especially on the backend.

The Penguins, for example, had a handful of AHL guys on one-way deals by design last season (and presumably this coming one too). That's just the cost of adding a certain caliber of tweener these days. If the owners can afford it then it's a true who cares situation, since it doesn't affect the cap any more than a two-way deal under a certain amount (which this comfortably is). Washington has been doing this with Hershey for a long time now.


Harkins was a punching bag player for the Penguins this past season, and fairly rightly so. 0 goals was truly hard to stomach from someone who had 25 goals in 44 AHL games the season before. It's not as if he was just snake-bitten either, well not just snake-bitten at least, he was just a black hole in the offensive zone. Defensively he was fine, but the Pens fourth line wasn't good enough defensively to make up for the complete lack of offense and the guy with 0 goal is inevitably going to get a lot of the fans' ire.

Is Harkins better than that? Possibly. It's not as if he was playing with better players on a dismal fourth line...but he was a big part of that line's problem and consistently failed the eye-test. If he can figure out how to translate any of that AHL offense to the NHL then he is a fine 12th/13th forward. If not...well, I hope he's in San Diego because he's more likely to help them than the Ducks. At 27 and with 199 NHL games under his belt I think he's probably just what he is - a tweener who can dominate in the AHL, but is overmatched in the NHL.