Although the Penguins will be without one of their top defensemen for the next four months after Justin Schultz underwent surgery to repair a fracture in his left leg, don’t expect the team to quickly try to fill his vacancy on the trade market. Speaking with Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, GM Jim Rutherford indicated that they plan to give their remaining players a chance to fill that vacancy first before considering making a move:
“We’ll deal with it from within. It won’t be any different than anything else. If our team doesn’t play as well as we’d like, then we have to consider other options. At this point in time, we have guys who certainly deserve that opportunity.”
Pittsburgh will likely be leaning on Olli Maatta to take on a larger role although he is off to a bit of a slow start this season and was a healthy scratch at one point last week. It will also give them an opportunity to really evaluate newcomer Juuso Riikola, who had a strong showing in training camp but has only played in a couple of games so far. Jamie Oleksiak, a scratch over the weekend, should also slide back into the lineup and the Penguins will have to go to more of a by-committee approach on their back end, something they’ve had success with in the past. However, with just one right-shooting defender in their top-six, they’ll be asking a couple of those players to play on their off-side.
As is often the case at this time of the year, cap space is limited for Pittsburgh as they can only take on a contract that’s just below $800K at this time, per CapFriendly. As that basically amounts to the cost of an injury recall from the minors, they’d basically have to try to offset salaries if they wanted to make a move at this point. While Schultz is eligible for LTIR which would enable them to go over the Upper Limit for the time being, they’d need to get back into compliance before they could activate him. Accordingly, they likely won’t want to add significant salary this early, knowing that it could complicate things down the road when Schultz is ready to return.
The Penguins have quietly built up some extra depth on their back end in recent years. Those additions are going to prove to be vital over these next few months.