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In the past week the Penguins have lost the final parts of the impressive third line that won them a Stanley Cup. First the Penguins traded away Tyler Kennedy on draft day, and now long time LW Matt Cooke has elected to sign with the Minnesota Wild. Cooke signed a 3 year deal worth 7.5M. It carries an AAV of 2.5M.
This comes as no surprise. Ray Shero did not even mention Cooke’s name in his press conference from yesterday while name dropping Craig Adams who did sign with the Penguins last night after the press conference.
The loss of Cooke definitely leaves a big hole on the third line for the Penguins. Cooke did provide the Penguins solid overall play that you would want from a third line player on a contender. Cooke had the 2nd most shorthanded time on ice out of all Penguin forwards last season (2:11).
Matt Cooke missed 24 games as a Penguin, most of which were due to suspensions from dirty play. Cooke was a durable player. In his Penguins career Matt Cooke played in 352 games and had 150 points.
What made the Penguins finally move on from Cooke? I think that moment came in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Matt Cooke earned a boarding penalty while hitting Adam McQuaid in the numbers. The hit resulted in a major and a game misconduct. It should have resulted in a boarding minor. If you don’t believe me
here is an identical hit by Robyn Regehr against the Blues earlier in the playoffs that resulted in no penalty.
*For the record I believe that Regehr should have received a boarding minor for his hit*
The amount of risk it took to employ Matt Cooke finally started to outweigh the production.
Cooke deserves his reputation.
His sample size of being reckless is significantly larger than his sample size of having cleaned up his game.
While I don’t think Matt Cooke cook deserves an “atta boy!” for cleaning up his game (something that should be the norm not the exception) it is fact that he changed his ways. In Cooke’s first 3 seasons with the Penguins he played in 222 games and had 356 penalty minutes. That averages out to around 1:30 in penalty minutes per game. After the McDonagh elbow left him suspended for the remainder of the year in 2011, he played in 130 regular season games and had 80 penalty minutes. That sample size had a penalty minute per game ratio of about 36 seconds per game, a significant drop off.
Matt Cooke goes to a place with familiar faces by signing in Minnesota. Former Penguins include General Manager Chuck Fletcher and Head Coach Mike Yeo. They know exactly what they are getting with Cooke, a very good third line player that may or may not be worth the risk.
There is one positive for Matt Cooke though. If you have been reading Travis Yost’s articles about Eugene Melnyk’s finances you will know that he is having some money issues. Could those money issues be the reason why Matt Cooke was never found guilty via forensic investigation for his skate slice of Erik Karlsson? Could Melnyk not afford to continue paying for such an intensive investigation? I guess we’ll never know.
In other news Craig Adams will remain a Penguin for the next 2 years and will make 700k each season. This signing makes sense as the Penguins know what they are getting with Adams. Adams is the Penguins #1 penalty killer amongst the forward unit. Last year Adams led the team with 2:39 of shorthanded time each game in the regular season. With the Penguins aggressively spending money in other areas of the roster, it is imperative that Shero finds some value when he attempts to fill out the roster. Adams will provide that value as a PK guy who also won’t hurt the Penguins at even strength. Chances are always better that Adams will score more goals in the playoffs than the regular season.
There is some injury information I stumbled across yesterday that I found very interesting. It involves Brenden Morrow and Paul Martin.
Both players were known to be banged up during the playoffs but the extent was unknown. Yesterday Pierre Lebrun of ESPN reported that Brenden Morrow was playing with a split knee cap during the playoffs. I am not a doctor but I’m going to go out on a limb and say an injury like that would limit a player’s effectiveness. One of the problems with acquiring rental players is that injuries can certainly damage the return you expected on your investment. This was the case with Brenden Morrow.
Paul Martin was revealed to have had a ‘serious’ injury during the Eastern Conference Finals. That information was given during the exit interviews after the season ended. There were no specific details given about the injury, until now.
Seth Rorabaugh of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports that Paul Martin had/has a serious ankle injury. The injury was sustained during the Eastern Conference Final and required Martin to have pain killing injections for Games 2-4 in order to play. Paul Martin was still one of the Penguins best defenders.
Martin is still wearing a walking boot. He is expected to be ready to go for training camp.
Some former Penguins have reached agreements with their new teams. The aforementioned Tyler Kennedy signed a 2 year extensions with the San Jose Sharks. His contract has an AAV of 2.35M.
Here is a farewell article by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s Joe Starkey on Tyler Kennedy.
Around the same time that the Matt Cooke news broke yesterday, so did the news about Jarome Iginla signing a 1 year deal with the Boston Bruins. The Bruins needed to find a top 6 right winger to replace the holes left by Nathan Horton (signed in Columbus) and Jaromir Jagr (UFA). Iginla will most likely find a better fit with the Bruins. Iginla did not fit well with the Penguins. Iginla’s new deal is an incentive based 6M for the 2013-2014 season. He will receive 1.8M in a base salary, 3.7M in a games played bonus, and 500k for a goal scoring/team playoff performance bonus.
That’s all for now, enjoy the weekend.
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