The Penguins roster could be potentially set. They could begin the season in October with the personnel they have under contract. They might make a trade for an impact player, but it isn’t a necessity to get it done in the summer. Today they made their last significant signing of the offseason.

With Oleksiak signed for 3 years at $2,137,500. We now show the #LetsGoPens 🐧 with $745k in cap space and a roster of 23 (14F - 7D - 2G)

RFA's remaining: (4 in total)
F Blueger
D Prow
F DiPauli
G Jarryhttps://t.co/GB8Nl3zjUB pic.twitter.com/wmE41ku8fK

— CapFriendly (@CapFriendly) July 12, 2018

The team has a little more salary cap space than the 745k because they don’t need to carry 14 forwards at all times.

I thought Jamie Oleksiak’s Pittsburgh sample was good for a bottom pairing defender. I the area I thought he did the best was earning controlled zone entries when he skates the puck in instead of dumping it in.

That said it is fair to say he is a bottom pairing defenseman that has not always had positive results. We’ll have to see if Oleksiak plays like he did in 2017-18 or if there is a regression towards his time in Dallas. Trevor Daley is a recent example of getting positive returns early and then seeing things go back to prior career standards.

Here’s a larger snapshot of his 2017-18 season



Offensively he was good at both even-strength and the power play. That is useful considering the type of team Pittsburgh is. He’s not terrific on the possession side of things, but we are talking about a player in a bottom pairing role so the fact there is an offensive pulse this is still helpful.

The issue moving forward with the Penguins defense is that you can only shelter so many players. Justin Schultz was at his best when he was getting more favorable deployment. I’m not sure how you get him that with Jack Johnson and Oleksiak also needing that. The team is talking about limiting Letang’s minutes, but it is a double edged sword. He is the reason the others can have better matchups. Letang and Dumoulin get thrown to the wolves and always do a good job. You start taking those minutes away and somebody is going to have to play them.

Overall this signing should turn out fine and if it is problematic you can always lean on the fact that Oleksiak was a former first round pick and those guys always get second and third chances in this league so somebody would take him.

Thanks for reading!

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