The Vancouver Canucks have signed undrafted free agent forward Andrei Kuzmenko to what is reportedly a one-year, two-way contract worth just north of the NHL minimum at $925,000. Performance bonuses could push this up to as high as $1.775M.

The Canucks get: A 26-year-old late-bloomer who finished second in the KHL in scoring (behind our old friend Vadim Shipachyov) last season. He was one of just six KHL players to achieve greater than a point-per-game average, posting 20 goals and 53 points in 45 contests. A lot of NHL teams were rumored to be in on signing him, but the Canucks emerged victorious. He is a right-shooting left wing who often played alongside former NHLer Nikita Gusev. Kuzmenko is not a high-volume shooter but he shoots enough, and his shot is very accurate. His shot rate jumped from 1.98 SOG/GP to 2.24 SOG/GP. That’s not quite as often as Mats Zuccarello, but a tad more than Yegor Sharangovich – with similar scoring success.

That’s not to say he will enjoy similar scoring numbers. That will depend on how well he transitions. He could be another Vladimir Tkachev. But unlike Tkachev, Kuzmenko looks to have more room on the depth chart for him. Seriously – with the depth and quality of the Los Angeles prospects, what on earth was Tkachev thinking signing there? On the other hand, when you want to look at Vancouver’s pipeline, you could just close your eyes and picture a tumbleweed rolling through a ghost town.

Kuzmenko lacks physicality, and stands at 5-11, 194 pounds. But he wasn’t signed to be an energy guy. He’ll get at a few games on a scoring line to show what he can do. If he fails, he fails – but as fantasy owners, all we can do is look at ‘opportunity’ and manage our fantasy assets accordingly. Kuzmenko will have ‘opportunity’.

Fantasy Players Impacted: Owners of Tanner Pearson, Vasily Podkolzin and Nils Hoglander should be a little worried. One of them will lose ice time and linemate quality, and Pearson/Podkolzin will lose a bit of PP time (what little they are actually given. Or – this could be much ado about nothing if Kuzmenko pulls a Tkachev and needs an AHL adjustment period.