The Pittsburgh Penguins will continue to evaluate their roster and investigate if they need to make improvements to make another playoff run. Part of that process will be to evaluate their center play in the bottom six. Derick Brassard, Riley Sheahan, and Matt Cullen have all underperformed if the standard is to contribute to a championship caliber team.
The Penguins could always make some sort of trade if they wanted to improve. Today I’ll take a quick snapshot of Patrik Berglund. He recently had his contract terminated in Buffalo. He wanted no part of playing in Buffalo. Apparently, he had Buffalo on his no trade list, but his agent screwed up and didn’t get the list to the team by the deadline, whoops.
Sorry for the delay. A bit on Berglund here, too. https://t.co/3TPLmlCWYe
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) December 20, 2018
By getting terminated Berglund will be missing out on about 12.5M. I can’t imagine his next step would be to sign a contract under 1M. My initial reaction to the Sabres being able to terminate his contract was that the team caught a huge break as far as their salary cap was concerned. He was the more expensive version of a Nick Spaling throw in to create cap space for Ryan O’Reilly.
Let’s take a look at Patrik Berglund’s last six seasons and put it alongside Riley Sheahan
Berglund at his peak was a fringe third line level player. He’s been a dud for a while. Neither player has shown any consistency of being able to contribute offensively.
Let’s take a look at expected goals. Maybe there’s some value there.
If you were trying to find a hill to go sledding Berglund’s xGF% would be a great place. He’s a fading player. There is no reason for the Penguins to be interested in Patrik Berglund’s services as a center.
Thanks for reading!