With the regular season set to start this week every team in the NHL will have to cut their roster down in order to comply with the 23 player roster limit. Some teams will have tough decisions and there is always potential for some interesting players to hit the waiver wire.
How do the Penguins look as far as the waiver wire? Pretty good, actually. They are currently at exactly 24 players with 14 forwards, 8 defensemen, and two goaltenders. They have about 2.5M in cap space so they aren’t going to be forced into a financial decision. There is a group of four players that I could see the team sending down. Those players are Derrick Pouliot (probably traded), Chad Ruhwedel, Josh Archibald, and Tom Kuhnhackl. These players would have to clear the waiver wire. Players like Daniel Sprong, Zach Aston-Reese, Adam Johnson, and Teddy Bluegger did not have to pass through waivers which made their demotions obvious.
Patric Hornqvist is still injured, so the team could feasibly create a roster spot by putting him on injured reserve to start the season.
If Pittsburgh does have to go the waiver route there isn’t a ton of value they would be losing if we’re being honest. Tom Kuhnhackl has underwhelming numbers and could be considered a replacement level player. In 99 games the last two years he has a 46.8% CF%. His relative possession is a woeful -6.54%. Only Eric Fehr (-7.85%) and Tom Sestito (-13.55%) have been worse. Matt Cullen is gone so these numbers could get worse for Kuhnhackl.
Josh Archibald has a very small NHL sample (11 games) so we don’t have the same amount of information to draw from. Archibald brings more speed than Kuhnhackl, but the early returns haven’t been great. His CF% is 43.78% and has a 5v5 points per 60 of 1.11.
I would keep Archibald up over Kuhnackl at this point because Kuhnhackl is a known commodity and there really isn’t much left to learn. Archibald may not amount to anything either, but at least there’s still enough unknown about him to perhaps get lucky, albeit not likely.
Given the forward depth accumulating down in WB/S the team shouldn’t be too concerned if they had to put Kuhnhackl or Archibald through waivers. Mike Sullivan referenced the potential of starting the season with eight defensemen and that is probably what I would do as well.
Thanks for reading!