Matt Bartkowski Signs One Year Deal

First Benning brings back Weber then snags a guy he's been sniffing around since the spring:

Vancouver Canucks General Manager Jim Benning announced today that the Canucks have signed defenceman Matt Bartkowski to a one-year deal.

Bartkowski, 27, spent the 2014-15 season with the Boston Bruins, collecting four assists and 37 penalty minutes in 47 games. He has appeared in 131 career games with Boston, recording 24 assists and 77 penalty minutes.

The Pittsburgh, PA native was originally selected in the seventh round, 190th overall by the Florida Panthers in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft.

Bartkowski is still relatively young, a left handed shot and fell out of favor this year in Boston.

@KentGBasky he is torey Krug lite. Small offensive defenseman.

— ENGLAND!!!! Connors (@sarah_connors) July 1, 2015

The word "serviceable" springs to mind for his deal that feels like Weber's last year: prove yourself and they'll ink you to something bigger next summer. Bartkowski played 8% of his time last season with Seidenberg and about 4% with McQuaid which slots him very well into a second/third pairing on our end. He factored into more Boston PK than PP time last season, but with the Canucks defense shaping up to be a largely green, I'd expect he'd get some PP time to offset the Bieksa departure as well.

Yeesh, that 2010-2013 swing wasn't terribly pretty, though tough to peg much on those values considering he only played in 20 games in that span with less than 10:00 TOI as well.

#Canucks sign D-man Matt Bartkowski to one-year deal. That's probably it. There's your team.

— Jim Jamieson (@JamiesonCanucks) July 1, 2015

...gulp? Here's the options so far on the backend, rosterbate away:

Alex Edler — Chris Tanev
Dan Hamhuis — Yannick Weber
Luca Sbisa — Frank Corrado
Matt Bartkowski — Adam Clendening

Bartkowski is one of the defenceman we targeted in this article about who the Canucks should be trying to sign on the backend.