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Big name trade target for Pittsburgh... if they had an active front office |
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Who wants to take a sliver out of their day and pretend the Penguins have a general manager who would actually act on an opportunity? Ron Hextall is notorious for inaction. There are legions of Flyers fans and a growing number of Penguins fans who will provide confirmation if you need it. The reality isn’t always as fun as speculating. Today I am going to put forth something that would take a miracle with the Penguins current leadership, but something with perhaps a bigger path forward than what one would think at first glance.
The Penguins could probably take a swing at acquiring Timo Meier. Yeah, it sounds pretty crazy, but if the team really wanted to push their remaining chips to the middle of the table this is as good of a bet as any. Timo Meier is a high end scoring winger who plays on a team where the timeline doesn’t match up with giving the player a lucrative extension. Meier scored 35 goals last year and currently has 26 goals in 46 games, a 46 goal pace. Something worth noting is his 12.1 shooting percentage this year is a shade above his 10.4 mark for his career. He isn’t going on a shooting percentage bender. He’s a legit goal scorer and talent. He’s also only 26 years old.
So the first hurdle before you take a run at a player is figuring out if you can even fit them into your cap situation. The Penguins situation isn’t great. There are options to shed some money. Right now, Timo Meier has a 6M cap hit and is a pending RFA. If you were super serious about acquiring a high-end winger you have Brian Dumoulin and Kasperi Kapanen eating up a little over 7M in cap hits. Figure out a way to shed that money. Again, you’d have to be serious about acquiring Meier, which is probably not the case.
As far as the long-term situation goes Meier is actually making more than his 6M cap hit which does come into play with his qualifying offer. He is actually making 10M in salary. This affects the qualifying offer.
The biggest ‘Buyer Beware’ point is solely Meier’s contract. He is being paid $10 million in salary this season, which means his qualifying offer for next year as a restricted free agent is also $10 million. In other words, if the acquiring team does not offer Meier a one-year, $10 million deal (or negotiate another acceptable long-term deal that he signs), he will automatically hit the market and become an unrestricted free agent. We saw this play out last year with Matthew Tkachuk in Calgary, where he refused to re-sign and forced his way to Florida
I think long term Meier will come in between 8-10M. I imagine an eight-year deal could make it 8.5-9ish. If you were able to shed Dumoulin and Kapanen’s cap hit you’re almost there. Jason Zucker is a pending UFA so there’s another 5.5M. Brock McGinn’s shooting bender this year might make that contract moveable. The point being if the Penguins were serious about it, they could make a go of it.
That leads us to compensating the Sharks for Meier. I have no issue giving up the 2023 1st, 2024 1st, and Owen Pickering. It wouldn’t be my starting offer (2023 1st and Pickering) but I’d be willing to use up those kinds of futures for a 26-year-old goal scoring winger. Let’s be completely honest, what are the odds any of those futures amount to anything close to the impact of Timo Meier. I say not likely. I don’t care about five years from now. I hope the Penguins look like the Coyotes at that point. You have to bottom out to rebuild properly in this league. This re-sign the core players, but also try to build up the prospect pool is a failed approach. Pick one or the other. I’m in the camp of truly going all-in. A Timo Meier trade? Yeah, that’s going all-in. It's also fun.
I don’t anticipate the Penguins doing anything like this, but they could.
Thanks for reading!
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