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The Pittsburgh Penguins organization faces some tough decisions entering this offseason on the player personnel front. Like every team in the league they have free agents to sign and players to evaluate.
The Penguins have a number of unrestricted free agents that will be sure to draw some interest on the market, some of these players they should allow to walk (Orpik, Glass, Pyatt, Vitale, Conner, Engelland) and other players they will need to have a discussion about (Niskanen, Jokinen, Stempniak, and Goc)
The sooner the Penguins hire a GM the sooner these decisions can be made.
Once a decision has been made to move on from a player the Penguins could explore the option of trading away that player’s rights to another team.
This is not a common occurrence but it does happen from time to time. The most recent example was when the New York Islanders traded for their goalie of the future Jaroslav Halak. The Islanders gave up a 4th round pick in order to acquire his rights and it resulted in the Islanders signing Halak to a 4 year 18M contract.
Last year the Islanders traded acquired a 4th round pick when they traded Mark Streit’s rights to the Philadelphia Flyers.
In one of the bigger trades involving player’s rights the Philadelphia Flyers traded away their first round pick back in 2007 to acquire Kimmo Tiomonen and Scott Hartnell from the Nashville Predators. By doing so the Predators were able to reacquire the 1st round pick they gave to Philadelphia to rent Peter Forsberg.
Former Penguins star defenseman Sergei Gonchar’s rights were traded from Ottawa to Dallas for a 6th round pick.
The Penguins have been involved with similar trades. Ray Shero traded a 3rd round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers for the rights to Dan Hamhuis. Hamhuis did not sign in Pittsburgh but it did allow the Penguins to aggressively pursue Paul Martin as soon as the free agency period opened because they knew not to waste time with Hamhuis.
Pittsburgh traded Tyler Kennedy’s (RFA) rights to the San Jose Sharks last summer for a 2nd round pick. That pick was parlayed into a better 2nd round pick which was used to take recent Memorial Cup winning goaltender Tristan Jarry.
The reason I bring this up is because the Penguins have some of the more attractive free agent options on the market with Matt Niskanen and Jussi Jokinen. If the Penguins know they are not going to sign those players, they should do their best to acquire what would amount to free assets. Whether that means acquiring a 2nd round pick or a 7th round pick it doesn’t matter, get something for nothing.
Matt Niskanen is going to be the most sought after free agent defenseman on the market. I do not believe he will be giving the Penguins a home town discount (nor should he) and as a result I think the Penguins should move on. I am willing to bet there is a defense starved team out there (Colorado comes to mind) that would offer up some compensation in order to get the first crack at signing a player like Niskanen. The Penguins should do their best to take advantage of what is a weak free agent defense market.
Brooks Orpik’s time in Pittsburgh may be over, but there is probably at least one team out there that does not value analytics, that team will think Orpik is the answer to their defense problems. Take advantage of the situation.
Personally I am not a big believer in trading for a player’s rights, especially if it is higher than a 6th or 7th round pick, but teams do it and the Penguins should be looking to replenish some of their draft picks they spent at the deadline.
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After winning the World Championships in Minsk Malkin got some face time with Russian President Vladimir Putin
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