Yesterday was the deadline for players to file for arbitration. Kasperi Kapanen was one of the player who elected to file.
Kasperi Kapanen plans to file for arbitration ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline, per source.
— Mike DeFabo (@MikeDeFabo) July 17, 2022
The winger just completed a 3-year deal w/ $3.2 mil AAV. But his qualifying offer is only $840k due to the structure of the contract. While he's underperformed, that's less than market value.
I’m not a huge fan of bringing Kasperi Kapanen back. I don’t like his situational awareness or his on-ice vision. His natural talent is limited to rush plays because of it. His rush plays are limited/bolstered by shooting percentage. He is a volatile wild card. Not exactly the player makeup the Penguins can afford at the moment because they have minimal space and a lot of question marks in the bottom six. Put bluntly, their bottom six is among the worst in the league, definitely not championship caliber.
Kapanen was making 3.2M, he isn’t very likely to get that amount after the season he just had. The 840k is a technicality of the qualifying offer. It is too low for him, which is why he filed for arbitration. The likely path is the Penguins and Kapanen come to a short term agreement before the arbitration hearing at 1.5-2M. I wouldn’t leave it up to an independent arbitrator. I would trade him before the hearing if it came to it. Honestly, I would be looking to trade him regardless of the arbitration situation. I don’t want to be in the Kasperi Kapanen business anymore. There’s certainly a path where he has a juiced up shooting percentage season and hits twenty goals, but how likely is it when Mike Sullivan buries him on the bench more times than not. He isn’t the type of player who is going to win Sullivan over. Kapanen is 26 next week. He is who he is.
As for the bottom six, is there motivation to remedy this situation?
GM Ron Hextall said he likes current group of Penguins’ forwards, especially depth, and that cap space makes it tough to acquire/add another forward.
— Rob Rossi (@Real_RobRossi) July 16, 2022
Hopefully, he is attempting some gamesmanship here and is flat out lying. I can’t fathom the other option. All that great work retaining Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, Bryan Rust, and Rickard Rakell to roll out a 2013-14esque bottom six? That would suck. Ron Hextall still has a lot of work to do on this roster even if he has taken care of quite a number of things to this point. That’s the job, though. Nobody said it was easy.
Thanks for reading!