The Penguins have been making noise with the trade rumors surrounding Matt Murray and Jared, McCann, acquiring Kasperi Kapanen, and other various things Jim Rutherford publicly comments on. A few things have gone under the radar. The Penguins have extended both Jusuo Riikola and Chad Ruhwedel as depth players.
I don’t have a problem signing players for depth. I would make an argument these two players would have made a better bottom pairing than the Johnson-Schultz disaster we were subjected to. There are a few strange things about the signings, though.
First, I’m a little surprised why Chad Ruhwedel wanted to sign up for another year with the Penguins, again. He signed a one year extension which runs until 2022. The coach and GM apparently HATED Justin Schultz yet Ruhwedel was never a consideration to play in his place. I’m not suggesting Ruhwedel would rather be in the press box, but getting an NHL salary (regardless of how much) to practice a few times a week and watch NHL hockey in person while being paid isn’t a bad gig I suppose. In the four years he has been a Penguin he has played in 137 out of a possible 315 games. As of this moment he can be a serviceable #6 and is a way better value than Schultz’s 5.5M was. In a perfect world he remains the #7. I don’t have a problem from a team standpoint, just curious from the player’s perspective.
Juuso Riikola also signed an extension. It was a two-year deal worth 1.15M each year. This is an interesting situation. First, we need to clear up what might be a misconception about Riikola. He is not a prospect. He will be 27 later this year in November. He kind of is what he is, but also, we don’t have a huge sample of Riikola in the NHL.
His sample is around 1,000 minutes and it was wildly different between year one with the team (last year) and year two (this year).
So the 2019-20 season was a great improvement over a horrendous 2018-19 campaign even if both samples are smallish. The one constant in both seasons was his minimal ice time, minimal quality of teammate, and minimal quality of competition. He played incredibly low leverage minutes. Even so, there was a lot of clamoring for Riikola to get more ice time and I can’t fault those people for saying so. We know who played over him.
I still have tempered expectations of Riikola because of the small NHL sample and don’t really want to push him outside of a bottom pairing, but here’s the issue.; where does he play? Jack Johnson isn’t going anywhere. Brian Dumoulin and Marcus Pettersson won’t be losing their ice time to him, either. Is he going to play forward again? Is he going to play the right side? How does this impact Pierre-Olivier Joseph? The Riikola signing is weird because there isn’t a clear cut spot for him on the present roster and he seems like a road block to Joseph given it is a two-year extension. He makes over 1M on a team that needs to maximize all of their cap space. He is a player the coach has shown no interest in playing. The only logical way to appease these issues is to bench or trade Jack Johnson. There is nothing suggesting the team will do that at this point in time.
My main issue with the signing is less about the player and more about the lack of opportunity and allocation of salary cap. There hasn’t ever seemed to be a plan for Riikola. Then again, is there ever a plan?
Thanks for reading!
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