GM confirms talented forward will not be re-signed.

A number of teams will be paying close attention.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 7 years ago
GM confirms talented forward will not be re-signed.
Keystone Press.

It sounds like one veteran forward will have a very important season ahead of him as it does not appear he will be re-signed and is playing out his contract year prior to becoming an unrestricted free agent.

This week during an interview with Arizona Sports' Craig Morgan, Coyotes general manager John Cayka all but confirmed that forward Martin Hanzal will not be re-signed and will be a free agent at the end of the 2016-2017 season.

“If there was something that made sense, we would probably take a closer look at that because Marty’s been a good player for us,” Chayka said. “But maybe it’s not a bad thing to get into the season and see how things play out.”

The Coyotes have clearly been working hard to get their already minimal spending down, including acquiring a $7.5 million dollar cap hit from the Red Wings in a trade for Pavel Datsyuk who will never play for the Arizona, and this may be yet another result of their desire to keep that spending as low as possible.

Hanzal has also suffered a number of injuries over the last several seasons, and the Coyotes may be wary of any long-term risk when it comes to signing him.

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