With the on ice product being as it is I thought I would change things up and do a mailbag
Contending is in the rear-view mirror at this point. They had some opportunities to stay relevant in recent years and fumbled it for various reasons. It was always going to be a difficult task. I thought making the playoffs was a reasonable goal and they fumbled that, too. If you are looking for the Penguins to give an honest effort in getting the team to compete Kyle Dubas is going to have to spin draft picks and their current prospects (not Yager) into young 20 something players who haven’t broken out yet. That’s why the Guentzel trade was disappointing. That was their best chance at acquiring a player like that and they ended up settling for quantity over quality. The sunset has arrived.
Just glancing at the roster there are three clear options to me.
Ryan Graves is at the top of my list. He is such a gigantic whiff in free agency. He ate up a ton of the available cap space Kyle Dubas had, and let’s be clear, Dubas had enough cap space to do good work with and didn’t. The Graves signing has been detrimental. A total misuse of the cap space. The problem is he has five more years at 4.5M. Who is going to take that? You can’t retain on it, either. It is just too long. I don’t see a trade to be had, but it would be a priority for me.
Reilly Smith because he allegedly doesn’t want to be in Pittsburgh and he’s played like it. I don’t fault Dubas for making the trade to acquire Smith. It was sound logic and the cost to acquire was very reasonable. It just didn’t work, unfortunately.
I would also move Noel Acciari. I don’t have any time for paying a bottom of the lineup player 3x the league minimum to get replacement level results. There’s just no reason for it. Every bit of cap space matters and they are not getting any value on this contract.
Honorable mention to Rickard Rakell. His year has been quite a disappointment. I expected a lot more from him.
As for trade targets I’m going to be honest. I haven’t done a proper look around the league with a buyer’s lens because the Penguins were sellers at the deadline.
I think you’ll see some lower key signings from the Penguins in the summer. I don’t think it is wise for this team at this juncture to be committing 5-8 year contracts at decent money to 27+ players. I think that window has closed for the Penguins. These past two years were the time to make it work and they didn’t. It is disappointing, but also reality. The free agent market for the Penguins is going to have players like Danton Heinen, Danial Sprong, Alex Wennberg, Stefan Noesen, etc… Maybe Jason Zucker takes a two-year deal at 3.5M or something like that. I don’t think they will be shopping for the “big fish” and I don’t think they should. If they can find some veterans on short term, fine. Can’t be getting into those bidding wars with aging players with term. Doesn’t make sense anymore.
There’s risk to be had regardless of which choice they make. Personally, I would lean towards keeping the pick if it were in the top ten. The sooner you can build up the system the better. I think the team has given up on this year. I don’t think their quality of play right now is indicative of what next October will look like. I don’t feel strongly about their playoff chances in 2024-25. I also don’t think they will be a lottery team.
So I tried looking this up and I didn’t really get a great answer on if it is even allowed. For the sake of argument let’s say it is. I would definitely look to do this. If the Penguins are exiting their competitive arc then they need to maximize their chances at getting futures and trading Mike Sullivan would be a logical choice to do so. I’m leaning towards it not being
I really disliked the old rules where if you fired a coach and somebody hired them you owed them compensation. The Penguins were the beneficiary of this rule when they received compensation for both Dan Bylsma and John Hynes. They used the 3rd round pick for Bylsma to acquire Nick Bonino. This isn’t a thing anymore and there aren’t really any recent examples of coaches being traded so I don’t think trading Sullivan is feasible, albeit logical.
I’m very pro Gold Draft and it is independent of the Penguins current trend away from contention. Tanking is a draining process for front offices and more importantly the fans. Rooting for your team to lose so they can increase draft odds is an avoidable situation if you implement gold drafting.
For those unaware gold drafting is when a team is officially eliminated from playoff contention all the standings points they earn after get put towards earning the first overall selections. Team with the most gold points gets the #1 pick and so on. No more rooting for your team to lose. Winning would help you get the best pick in the draft. My personal amendment to this system would be to let teams declare they are out of playoff contention and start earning points towards the draft earlier than when they would be mathematically eliminated. It would create some really interesting decisions for front offices. There would be no gain to bottoming out rosters and thus maintaining the desire for teams to be competitive whether they are chasing a Cup or a top draft pick.
It was not. He was terrific last season. The Penguins wasting both Crosby and Malkin playing 82 games at a high level last year was absurd. Malkin took a step back this year, for sure. He is noticeably a step slower. He’s still plenty good. His playmaking has been elite this season. His quality of teammate has been subpar. There’s nobody to finish what he’s created. His cap hit of 6.1M is totally reasonable. We are already halfway through his current deal. This season he’s a 52.44 xGF% player with 49 points so far in 63 games. Again, not his former standard on the points front. It is fine value for 6.1M in the current climate. His cap hit and production isn’t what’s holding this team back.
I’ll admit up front I’m not much of a string cheese guy. I think the answer lies in its own name. String cheese should be peeled into strings and consumed that way. If you want to bite string cheese just save some money and the individual plastic packaging and buy a block of mozzarella and chomp from it like a savage.
Never draft for positional need. The odds of success are too low as it is to try and pigeon hole yourself like that. Always draft best player available. By the time many of these players mature into functional NHL players the positional needs on the big club have already changed. For example, there is currently no need for a top four right defenseman with Kris Letang and Erik Karlsson on the team. If the draft pick is successful by the time they are able to make the NHL team those players aren’t likely going to be blocking them anymore. Increase the odds of making successful draft choices by just taking the best player available.
Thanks for reading!
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»