I’m going to talk about a signing today. It was made by the Carolina Hurricanes and not the Pittsburgh Penguins. I do think it showcases what a poor job the Penguins have done building their bottom six. At the moment the Penguins have a very underwhelming bottom six. Signing Danton Heinen to another cheap deal was a good step in trying to make things better, but he alone isn’t going to fix the bigger picture.
The signing I want to bring up is Paul Stastny. He signed a one-year deal for 1.5M with the Hurricanes. He, even in his mid-thirties, is still a very effective player.
You can’t blindly assume someone like Stastny would agree to the same exact contract with another team. I do think the Penguins had a good selling point to offer. Be our third line center behind Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Jeff Carter would then be taken out of a role he clearly wasn’t up for last year. Signing with Carolina is proof he was willing to leave the Western Conference for the first time.
The bigger issue is the Penguins didn’t have room, cap space, or desire(?) to make this kind of low risk and medium/high reward situation a reality. They signed Kasperi Kapanen to an undeserved two-year 3.2M AAV deal. It isn’t out of the question for both Stastny and the currently unsigned Evan Rodrigues to come in at around that number. I know what I would rather spend ~3.2M on.
Pittsburgh’s top end players all took less money to stay. Ron Hextall did a nice job to make it happen. The issue is what we see commonly around the league. These top players take less only to give those savings in overpayments to non-difference makers. It remains disappointing to see all the bad value in the Penguins mid-tier contract range. Today’s Stastny signing is just another reason for the disappointment
Thanks for reading!