Beauchemin, 37, could reportedly earn an additional $500,000 in performance bonuses.
The veteran blue-liner was originally acquired by the Ducks in the 2005-06 season as a part of a midseason trade with the Columbus Blue Jackets. He won a Stanley Cup with Anaheim in 2007 before signing in Toronto as a free agent in 2009. His tenure in Toronto was short-lived, as he returned to Anaheim in 2010-11 and spent the last two seasons in Colorado.
Joining one of the league's deepest blue lines, Beauchemin will likely find himself in a dog fight for playing time this season. Here is how the Ducks' defense projects:
Pairing
LD
RD
1
Cam Fowler
Sami Vatanen
2
Hampus Lindholm
Josh Manson
3
Branton Montour
Kevin Bieksa
Extas
Beauchemin
Korbinian Holzer
Beauchemin recorded 18 points in 81 games with the Avalanche last season.
Monday's total solar eclipse is a big deal. Unless you're going city to city chasing these things down, chances are you will only see the moon completely cover the sun once in your lifetime - if at all.
Hockey has it's own versions of total solar eclipses. If you've witnessed the following five things, consider yourself lucky, as there's a very good chance you'll never see them again.
Wayne Gretzky
There will never be another Wayne Gretzky. Not just because of how skilled a player he was, or because so many of his records won't ever be touched, but no player will ever transcend the game the way The Great One did. Gretzky helped grow the game worldwide, but perhaps made his biggest impact in Los Angeles and the southern United States.
A player as big, dominant as Zdeno Chara
You might think the 6-foot-9 Zdeno Chara - the tallest player in NHL history - is on this list because he's actually big enough to block the sun and create his own Zdeno Eclipse, but no. Will there ever be a player as tall as Big Z? Maybe. Will there be players more dominant? Certainly. But it's difficult to envision a player ever matching his combination of size and influence.
Any 6-foot-9 players that come into the league will be hard-pressed to match Chara's skating ability - obviously crucial in today's NHL - for such a large human being.
The 40-year-old has been remarkably durable throughout his 19-year career, while big men across all sports often find their bodies breaking down at a much younger age. He has logged 1,350 regular-season games and 147 playoff contests. He has done so with style, too, winning the Norris Trophy as the league's top D-man in 2008-09 and captaining the Bruins to a Stanley Cup in 2011.
Teams averaging 4 goals per game
In the 1981-82 season, teams averaged 4.01 goals per game - the sixth-highest total of all time. Much of the '80s was the same way. Many fans claim '80s hockey was the NHL at it's peak, and there is zero chance hockey will ever be this high-scoring again.
No matter what the NHL does in the future in an effort to increase scoring, whether they make goalie equipment even smaller or make the nets bigger, the game is far too structured, goalies are too good, and there is too much player-wide parity across the league for games to become river hockey. Even if they went to 4-on-4 full time, coaches would figure out how to defend it.
2 rookies recording 100 points in same season
In the 2005-06 season, an 18-year-old Sidney Crosby tallied 102 points, not be outdone by a 20-year-old Alex Ovechkin, who recorded 106 points and took home the Calder Trophy.
Since then, no rookie has reached the century mark in a campaign. The likelihood of two rookies doing so again is virtually nil. Not only are Crosby and Ovechkin generational talents, but their point totals were aided by the high-scoring first season in the post-lockout era. All the new rules led to a league-record 5.85 power-play opportunities per game by team.
The rookie class of 2016-17 is regarded as one of the best ever, and not a single player even sniffed 100 points.
A player racking up 300 PIMs in 1 season
As recently as the early 2000s, it was routine for a player to register 300 PIMs in a season. The most recent member of the 300-PIM club was Zenon Konopka back in 2010-11. He will undoubtedly be the last.
Enforcers are few and far between in today's NHL. Teams value players with skill on their fourth lines. Once every player is wearing a visor, it will be difficult to imagine a player recording 200 PIMs, let alone 300.
In an effort to add some depth on their back end, the Florida Panthers will have veteran KHL defenseman Nikolai Belov at their upcoming training camp on a tryout basis, according to George Richards of the Miami Herald.
Belov stands at 6-foot-3 and weighs 194 pounds. He's never played in the NHL - or any North American league - but has spent the last 10 seasons playing in the KHL.
The 30-year-old is coming off the best offensive season of his career with Chelyabinsk Traktor, as he recorded eight goals and 15 points in 59 games.
Florida's top six defensemen seem to be set in stone, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Belov cracks the opening-day roster as the team's seventh D-man.
Much was made of the fact that Pekka Rinne and the Predators shut out the Blackhawks in Games 1 and 2 of their first-round series at the United Center in Chicago, but Gnash clearly doesn't mind revisiting it despite the Blackhawks' obvious edge in Stanley Cup championships.
Sunday's chirp wasn't Gnash's first jab at Chicago, and it likely won't be the last.
I feel "kind of" the same way about the Hawks winning the cup. Actually it's going to be really hard for them to do so this year. 😹 https://t.co/DBpgBLzAEI
Let's get one thing straight: Eating anything out of the Stanley Cup is awesome. And when you bust out the Parmigiano-Reggiano, things get a little extra special.
Such was the case for former Pittsburgh Penguins forward Nick Bonino, as the veteran recently got his day with the Cup. Bonino took the opportunity to load Lord Stanley's mug with parm-covered pasta as he enjoyed some of his mother's home cooking.
Come October, Bonino will start his first season with the Nashville Predators, who - after reading this story - might be concerned with his carb-heavy offseason eating regimen.
We'd suggest a kale-based salad in that bowl next, Nick.
Los Angeles Kings goaltending prospect Calvin Petersen may not see a ton of action in the NHL next season, but that's not stopping him from throwing a little shoutout to the 6 God.
Petersen posted pictures of his new mask to Twitter on Sunday, with a clear shot of rapper Drake's famous owl logo emblazoned on the back.
The Kings inked netminder Darcy Kuemper to a one-year contract in July to be Jonathan Quick's backup, so the chances of Petersen starting the year in L.A. are slim.
Before the start of the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the NHL gave the green light for teams across the league to begin using the iBench video system - a decision Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan said aided his team in its latest championship run.
Using iPads, the iBench system lets coaches show their players video footage during the game, allowing them to quickly adapt and adjust tactics.
Such was the case for Sullivan and his staff during Pittsburgh's second consecutive Stanley Cup victory this spring. "The main areas where we probably gained the most use out of it was special teams, because you get immediate feedback,” he said, according to Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe.
"You can make subtle adjustments on the fly. In the playoffs, you might only get two power plays a game. So if you have the ability to make an adjustment that might lead to an opportunity to score or generate a scoring chance, that could be the difference between winning and losing."
While Sullivan has embraced the tablet technology, he's also a traditionalist who looks to strike the right balance between new-school and old-school approaches to the sport.
"There’s always going to be that fine line between analysis and emotion and instinct. That’s our game," Sullivan added.
"For me, the game is rooted in emotion and instinct. As a coaching staff, we don’t want to get in the way of that. My antennas are always up, because I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. Having said that, the feedback and the ability to make adjustments on the fly is really important."
With tablets in tow, the Penguins will be looking to become the first three-peat champions since the 1982 New York Islanders.
