Here's your daily helping of #thirdlinecenterwatch
Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette was able to get some quotes from Jim Rutherford on a couple of topics including the trade front for a third line center.
“I do feel confident that, by the start of the season, we’re going to have a third-line center that we’re comfortable with,” Rutherford said. “Whether it’s one of those guys on the list or one of the guys that I could go and get right today.”
This is good. Patience is a approach in the Penguins situation. It seems like they have a deal in their back pocket to start the season with an NHL caliber third line center, but are not content with the caliber of that player. They feel they can do better. Waiting things out might allow them to do better.
“There are things going on, some talk,” Rutherford said. “You don’t know when things are going to break loose. I do think there are teams that have either too many players or they’re close to the cap or over the cap that recognize they’re going to have to make a move at some point, or they could get caught with players. You kind of keep an eye on those situations.”
So I've discussed the Toronto thing. They certainly apply to the quote above. Who are some of the other teams in this same situation. Here's a look at the teams with the smallest amount of current cap space courtesy of Cap Friendly
I added some names to the right hand side that could potentially be of interest.
The Detroit Red Wings are running out of cap space. Not only does Andreas Athanasiou need a new contract, but so does Tomas Tatar and Tatar isn't going to come cheap. There are also some reports that Detroit is interested in bringing Thomas Vanek back. Something has to give here and I would put Ken Holland on that list of general managers you should be calling. Whether or not Pittsburgh should be interested in Athanasiou in the first place is debatable. His goal scoring rate was incredible in 2016-17, but most everything else was mediocre. Tough to know if the goal scoring thing is real when he only has 1,000 minutes of 5v5 time in his career and he had an overall shotting percentage of 15% last year.
Andrew Cogliano would be a nice fit for the Penguins. I'm not sure the Ducks are looking to move him. That would leave Antoine Vermette as the third line center.
Jonathan Marchesault would be a decent player to take a chance with coming off the year he had. Vegas is probably open for business and their moves to this point have been all over the place so who knows what kind of plan they have in place for the short or long term.
Bryan Little is one of the players around the league that just goes about his business with not a lot of fanfare. He is criminally underrated. He is also a UFA at the end of the year. No word on if the Jets have Little in their long term plans or if Little has the Jets in his long term plans. He will be 30 in November.
Mathieu Perreault is analytically strong. He also flies under the radar. He's a good player, but recently signed a four-year extension and will turn 30 next season as well.
When you look at the left side of Winnipeg's defense grouping there isn't much. They certainly wouldn't mind Olli Maatta.
Minnesota isn't listed in the graphic above because they currently have about 15M in cap space. What that doesn't account for are contract extensions for Nino Niederreiter and Mikael Granlund. Those two players should eat up at least 10M of cap space. Marcus Foligno also needs a contract which will take up a little bit more of their cap space. Eric Staal would be the player of interest from Minnesota. It is worth tracking the rest of Minnesota's summer.
The Hurricanes are worth paying attention to. Today they just gave a contract extension to Jaccob Slavin which will start paying him 5.3M per season next year. While the Hurricanes have a ton of cap space they aren't like all teams. They have an internal cap. The Hurricanes have been tied to Matt Duchene rumors at certain points this offseason. They have defensive prospects that Colorado would probably be interested in. If they were to land Duchene I could see them trying to shed the Staal contract. Elias Lindholm is a center and could move to that position and the team also just acquired Marcus Kruger.
Say what you will about Jordan Staal rumors, but the GM who traded for him is now the GM in Pittsburgh.
Tyler Kennedy spoke to Tim Benz of DK on Pittsburgh Sports
One of Staal's closest friends, and his former linemate, said Staal would "definitely love to come back."
As you can see there are a few options that involve moving parts. You can understand why Rutherford wants to sit back and wait for some of it to play out. Some of his listed players may become available later this summer.
Thanks for reading!
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