Would-be Penguins defenseman Dan Hamhuis retires
Longtime NHL defenseman Dan Hamhuis announced his retirement through the Nashville Predators on Thursday.
Over 16 seasons, Hamhuis appeared in 1,148 regular season games and scored 356 points (59 goals, 297 assists). A stout defensive defenseman throughout his career, Hamhuis, 37, primarily played for the Predators throughout his career but also spent time with the Vancouver Canucks and Dallas Stars.
He nearly became a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins a little more than decade ago.
The 12th overall pick in the 2001 draft, Hamhuis was set to become an unrestricted free agent in the 2010 offseason. The cash-conscious Predators were unable to agree to a contract extension with Hamhuis and dealt his signing rights to the Philadelphia Flyers for defenseman Ryan Parent and a conditional draft pick on June 19.
Negotiations between Hamhuis’ agent and the Flyers went nowhere, so the Flyers traded his signing rights to the Penguins on June 25, the first night of the NHL’s draft, for a third-round pick in 2011.
Former Penguins general manager Ray Shero, previously the Predators’ assistant general manager, felt his ties with Hamhuis could convince him to join the Penguins. Hamhuis, then 27, was considered one of the top potential unrestricted free agents on the market and the Penguins were looking to beef up their blue line as negotiations with defenseman Sergei Gonchar on a contract extension were not progressing.
“I have seen him since we drafted him in Nashville in the first round,” Shero said that night from the floor of Los Angeles’ Staples Center, site of the draft. “I was with him in the AHL and in the NHL. He is a good two-way defenseman who is mobile. He makes a good pass. It would strengthen our defense if we can sign him.”
Ultimately, the Penguins were unable to sign Hamhuis, whose loyalties to Shero were outweighed by his loyalties to his home province.
A native of Smithers, B.C., Hamhuis signed a six-year deal worth $27 million with the Vancouver Canucks on July 1, the first day of the free agent signing period.
After seeing Gonchar sign with the Ottawa Senators that same day, Shero filled the void on his blue line by signing defensemen Paul Martin ($25 million) and Zbynek Michalek ($20 million) to five-year contracts.
“I have known Dan for a long time,” Shero said that day. “We had drafted him when I was in Nashville. He is a good defenseman. It’s competitive to get defensemen when they are free agents. If I have to spend a third-round draft pick to try to get a step up on someone — which in the end we didn’t get Dan Hamhuis, but we got two other guys. … I think it worked out well. I saw Dan signed with Vancouver, which is very close to home for him. That is a great landing spot for him as well.”
It certainly worked out well for the Canucks, at least in the short term. They were the NHL’s best team in the 2010-11 regular season with a 54-19-9 record and played in the Stanley Cup Final, losing to the Boston Bruins.
“We did get some different offers from other teams, and some of them were higher in contract value, but we like the fit in Vancouver,” Hamhuis said. “We like the opportunity presented from a hockey perspective, and the lifestyle perspective for my family was also a very important consideration,” Hamhuis said to reporters the day he signed with the Canucks. “We are quite familiar with the city, and it’s a city that we quite enjoy.”
Martin served out his contract with the Penguins and was a steady presence, albeit often injured.
Michalek only lasted two seasons in Pittsburgh and was traded to the Phoenix Coyotes during the 2012 NHL draft in a salary dump. Oddly, one of the assets the Penguins acquired in that trade, defensive prospect Harrison Ruopp, was drafted by the Coyotes using the draft pick the Penguins sent to the Flyers to acquire Hamhuis’ signing rights.
During the 2011 offseason, the Flyers dealt that pick to the Coyotes as part of the trade that sent goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov to the Flyers.
The failure to sign Hamhuis and Michalek’s inability to find a fit with the Penguins led to the team re-signing former defenseman Rob Scuderi to an ill-fated four-year contract in the 2013 offseason. Barely a year later, Shero was fired by the Penguins and Scuderi, who had largely struggled during his second act with the Penguins, was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks by Shero’s successor, Jim Rutherford, in December of 2015.
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.
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