Given it is in the middle of August and Evan Rodrigues is still without a contract I was going to see if there was still a path for the Penguins to re-sign him for 2M or under, which is probably what his market is at the moment. I thought it would be a reasonable thing. Just move a few players to WB/S to free up the space and, voila.
It isn’t quite as easy as I thought. In fact, as things currently sit I don’t think it is all that possible.
Playing around with the armchair tool at CapFriendly I landed on the following roster to try and free up space, become cap compliant, and stick to what I think is the most realistic path for what the team will actually do.
With this current setup the team would have 983k in cap space.
Drew O’Connor and Ty Smith are waiver eligible. They will have to drastically outplay non-waiver exempt players to stick with the club, at least to start the year. I sent them down for this reason. It doesn’t mean they can’t make an impact at some point. I just highly doubt it will be at the beginning of the year given the cap crunch and waiver status.
I sent Josh Archibald to WB/S because he isn’t one of the 12 best forwards on the team and the likelihood of him being claimed is minimal.
I also sent Mark Friedman down, he would have to pass through waivers, too. It was him or Ruhwedel. This is where the Jan Rutta signing combined with the Jeff Petry trade is puzzling to say the least. Rutta sticks out like a luxury signing that has no aspects of being luxurious.
Ryan Poehling stays with the big club due to his waiver status. He has to pass through waivers. He’s a former first round pick and a classic change of scenery candidate. I would wager someone might actually claim him. Perhaps not though, we see a lot of players pass through waivers at the beginning of the season who don’t get claimed. A few years back it was Casey DeSmith who cleared when people were worried he might not.
The Brian Dumoulin, Brock McGinn, Jeff Carter, Jan Rutta, and Kasperi Kapanen contracts stick out to me as needless overpayments. The roster is at a standstill because of them. Until some of these contracts are moved out there is not much the Penguins can do. I don’t think they have a lot of motivation to move them out either, so here we are. It is going to be a boring month of talking Penguins hockey. Things are in a standstill.
Thanks for reading!
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