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Does Jim Rutherford's big trade target reside in the Big Apple?

November 13, 2018, 10:58 PM ET [138 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Penguins lost to the New Jersey Devils for the second time in the past seven days. They are the only two wins the Devils have had in their last eight games. Pittsburgh has lost six of their last seven games. The Penguins are in sixth place in the Metropolitan Division.

Jim Rutherford is not going to stand for this. He will go down guns a blazin’ before he watches things get worse. There is no draft pick or prospect safe from this mindset and if you’re an underperforming veteran you need to start packing a to go bag as well. Something is going to happen in the near future.

There are so many possibilities on the table because Jim Rutherford is mediocre at his job and he has as many misses as he does hits. It’s a coin flip on if future trades are going to help or hurt the team. Here's an overview of his Carolina tenure




All this being said, I’m not exactly sure what was behind Rutherford’s compulsion to defend the latter years of his tenure in his appearance on The David Glenn Show.

He has his two Cups with the Penguins, and the Hurricanes are in a much, much better spot now than they were when he departed. The mutual parting of ways seems to have worked out for both parties.

The overarching theme that runs through these five seasons is the complete and total lack of a sense of direction to Rutherford’s team building approach. He made moves suggestive of a win-now strategy with a core group wasn’t capable of winning now.

A lot of Rutherford’s best moves in this era (trading Kaberle, Ruutu, Gleason) were simply undoing the catastrophic decisions he’d made previously, and that’s never a good thing coming out of a general manager.


That last passage rings true when you take into account how the past two offseasons have gone.

Anyways, back to underachieving veterans. One of the biggest culprits this season has been Carl Hagelin and his 4.0M cap hit. He’s been attached to Evgeni Malkin (183:06) and Phil Kessel (154:10) this year. The next highest forward is Patric Hornqvist at (37:25). He has one goal. One! His points per 60 with Malkin this year is 0.98(!). Truly pathetic.

Carl Hagelin is a UFA and he isn’t playing well this season. He’s not going to have great value on the trade market. If Hagelin is going to be part of a trade he is going to be the salary dump to make room for whatever the Penguins want to bring in. After looking around the league I found a player I think will appeal to Rutherford and a team that might take Hagelin’s 4M cap hit if the Penguins come strong with the other parts of the deal.

Part of the frustration with Hagelin is that his offense has severely dried up after he set the world on fire when he first arrived in Pittsburgh. A player I think the Penguins will look at to improve their offensive output on the left wing is Mats Zuccarello. He makes 4.5M and has a much better history of putting up offense.

So what does a deal for Zuccarello look like? It’s going to involve Hagelin as a salary dump and it is going to cost the Penguins two assets the Jim Rutherford doesn’t really care about, a first round pick and Daniel Sprong. The Rangers have banked some wins so far this season, but if they are smart they will stay the course and continue with their rebuild. A first round pick and Daniel Sprong isn’t a terrible return for a pending UFA that isn’t going to stay.

Jan Levine who covers the New York Rangers for Hockeybuzz has his thoughts on this proposal and you can find those here

Trying to figure out what Jim Rutherford is going to do when he’s upset is almost an impossible task. This is just one suggestion that I could see him trying for. The Penguins are 14th in the conference. Something has to give.

Thanks for reading!
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