Rumor: Ben Hutton has turned down multiple contract offers.

I'm not entirely sure if I am buying this one, but it certainly will be interesting to see what the future holds. 

Although we are currently still in the middle of the National Hockey League's free agency period, we have also reached the point where the majority of teams in the NHL have already made the adjustments to their rosters that they were hoping to make during the offseason. The overwhelming majority of the elite level talent on the open market this summer has already been signed by one team or another, and that leaves free agents who do notyet  have a contract in a rather uncomfortable position.

If a player is still expecting to get a big money deal this late into the summer you only really need to look at the salary cap of the teams in the NHL to quickly realize that there are not many still capable of making that kind of offer this late into the summer. As a result player agents will usually go on the offensive for their clients when things get to this point, and that appears to be what Andy Scott is doing at the moment. Now to be clear Scott could be telling the truth here, but I will maintain a healthy bit of skepticism when it comes to this one. 

Scott, who currently represents now former Vancouver Canucks defenseman Ben Hutton, spoke to the media this week and made it clear that his client very much intends to remain in the National Hockey League. Scott informed Sportsnet's Canucks insider Rick Dhaliwaal that they had in fact received multiple offers, presumably from multiple teams, but that none of them thus far had been satisfactory enough to illicit a signature from Hutton. 

"We will get a deal done before camp," said Scott this week. "We have had plenty of offers since July 1st, nothing has worked so far, we will continue to be patient."

Hutton was by no means a dynamic player for the Canucks and the fact that they let a 26 year old defenseman walk away in free agency should tell you plenty about how much value they place on his talents. It seems probable that the offers Hutton received, if they did indeed receive any, were low-ball type offers for him to come and fill a very limited depth role on a team.