The Penguins have made a trade. It is one with minimal consequence. They flipped AHL players with the Minnesota Wild
The Penguins have acquired forward Maxim Cajkovic from the Minnesota Wild in exchange for defenseman Will Butcher.
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) January 25, 2024
Cajkovic is signed through the 2023.24 season and his contract carries an average annual value of $925,000 at the NHL level.
Details: https://t.co/6OKKAyRBkW pic.twitter.com/dJSsBmkGmw
Will Butcher has a lot of players to jump in order to make the NHL with Pierre-Olivier Joseph, Ryan Shea, and John Ludvig all poised to get time ahead of him. My sense is with his path being totally blocked the team eithe felt like giving him an opportunity for a fresh start elsewhere while lessening their veteran player burden.
The veteran rule in the AHL for those unaware:
A veteran is any player with more than 260 games of experience combined in the AHL, IHL, NHL or European Elite Leagues at the start of a season.
You can only dress a six veterans per game in the AHL. So this gives the Baby Penguins a little more flexibility with the roster and allows Butcher to have a better opporutnity to play as he’d been a veteran scratch at times.
So there’s really not a lot of substance for the big club in this trade. Just a GM trying to do right by a player stuck on the depth chart.
As for tonight’s action the Penguins will be hosting the Florida Panthers who sit in second place in the Atlantic Division. The Penguins tossed away four standings points last night and thus need to start stealing points from teams higher up in the standings to balance things out. Not an easy task for a team that has so up and down this year. The Panthers, who were finalists last year, are still a handful even if they have similar finishing problems to the Penguins.
It appears Alex Nedeljkovic will be getting the nod in net for his first start in about two weeks. He is coming off of a short lived start where the Vanouver Canucks put up three goals on only nine shots. Nedeljkovic was replaced after the first period. This game was an exception to the rule this year as Nedelkjovic has had a terrific season in what has turned out to be a 1B role for the Penguins.
There were some injured Penguins skating this morning
Reilly Smith (four games missed, upper-body) and John Ludvig (nine games missed, upper-body) are both taking part in Pittsburgh's optional morning skate.
— Pens Inside Scoop (@PensInsideScoop) January 26, 2024
Also skating: Jarry, Nedeljkovic, Malkin, Puustinen, White, Joseph, Ruhwedel, and Shea.
No line rushes today so we’ll see if they run back the same configuration they had against the Coyotes.
The Penguins sit seven points out of a playoff spot at the present moment. It isn’t great. If you’re looking for a positive they have four games in hand on the Red Wings who are holding down the last wild card spot. The catch is they have to start winning games. Games like tonight.
Thanks for reading!