It has been an interesting few months for unrestricted free agent defenseman Ethan Bear. After finishing out his season with Vancouver, he agreed to play for Canada at the Worlds despite not having a deal in place for 2023-24, a move that carried some risk. While at that tournament, he re-aggravated an existing shoulder injury, resulting in him undergoing surgery. That caused the Canucks to lower their offer to him and when a deal wasn’t agreed upon, they non-tendered him after the draft.
Since then, things have been quiet on his front with Bear not being linked to any teams through the first month of free agency. Although he acknowledged to Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston that recovery is going well (perhaps even slightly ahead of schedule), the 26-year-old still isn’t going to be ready to play until sometime in December. That certainly seems to have presented some challenges for him when it comes to finding a team to sign with.
With so many teams capped out, that will stand to limit the potential suitors Bear has right now. While he’d be LTIR-eligible to start the season, if a signing team doesn’t have the cap room to carry him on the active roster now, they’d be in a tough spot where they’d need to open up room midseason to activate Bear. The odd team has a willingness to do a move like this where they deal with the potential ramifications later but the role he’s likely to fill isn’t one where such a move could be justifiable.
Meanwhile, by the time he’s ready to return, there’s no guarantee that the teams that might have a spot for him now will still have one in December. Others could be created by injuries but generally speaking, players unsigned that late into the year are settling for league minimum contracts (although Patrick Kane will almost certainly buck that trend at some point in 2023-24).
Bear indicated that a few teams have made inquiries thus far but clearly, an offer to his liking has yet to materialize. He specifically stated a preference to return to Vancouver but was told by GM Patrik Allvin that they would need to clear up cap space for that to happen, a scenario that they are hardly alone in. He fared relatively well with the Canucks after being acquired early last season, picking up 16 points in 61 games while averaging 18:32 per contest.
When healthy, Bear has shown over his five-year career that he is certainly an NHL-caliber defenseman, and as a right-shot player, he should be in more demand than it appears he has been thus far. But his injury situation adds a wrinkle to those discussions and as a result, it looks like he’ll be on the open market for at least a little while longer even though his recovery might even be ahead of schedule.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
One of teams in Canada should sign him . He got hurt playing for Canada.
Stevie could sign him for $1M and send Linstrom down to GR.
A lot of bad luck and timing for Bear. He likely will end up with a two-way deal somewhere. Decent player but there are a lot of players of his caliber looking for contracts.
Bear Market