Josh Yohe of The Athletic wrote a brutally honest assessment of the conundrum the Pittsburgh Penguins are facing with highly paid healthy scratch Ryan Graves. Graves is a healthy scratch once again tonight and has sat out of the lineup for the Penguins’ last three games, which were all victories for Pittsburgh. In fact, the Penguins are 10-4-4 with Graves out of the lineup the last two seasons and 38-40-12 when he does play.
Now, it’s unfair to put all the blame on Graves for the Penguins’ struggles when he plays, but his play on the ice has certainly not come close to living up to his hefty $4.5MM cap hit. Pittsburgh general manager Kyle Dubas has made some shrewd moves to acquire young players since arriving in Pittsburgh, but the Graves contract and the four years remaining on it are one of the worst misfires of any general manager in recent memory.
In other Metropolitan Division notes:
- Colin Stephenson of Newsday reports that New York Rangers forward Brett Berard was back at practice today in a green no-contact jersey. The 22-year-old is currently listed as day-to-day with an upper-body injury, an injury he most likely suffered on Saturday afternoon when he took a hit from Canadiens forward Kirby Dach. In four games this season with the Rangers, Berard has been solid, posting a goal and an assist while averaging 12:33 of ice time. The Rangers have a bit of a break this week and don’t play again until Friday against Pittsburgh, so Berard may still suit up depending on how he feels before then.
- The Columbus Blue Jackets AHL affiliate the Cleveland Monsters have signed defenseman Madison Bowey to an AHL contract for the rest of the 2024-25 season. Bowey has already suited up in 17 games this season for Cleveland, posting three assists while playing under a professional tryout. The 29-year-old is a veteran of 158 NHL games over four seasons with four different NHL teams. The Winnipeg, Manitoba native tallied five goals and 35 assists during his time in the NHL and was a regular for the Detroit Red Wings during the 2019-20 season before the league shutting down during the pandemic. Bowey would only play in four NHL games after that season, spending the bulk of his time in the AHL and KHL.
There is no conundrum, the results speak for themselves.
Ryan Graves is the epitome of the sunk cost fallacy.
If you buy a cheeseburger and it turns out the cheeseburger is poisoned, you don’t keep eating the poisoned cheeseburger just because you paid for it.
Eat the contract, send him to WBS, recall St. Ivany and accept that we need to find some bargain D men for awhile.
They should add the Jarry extension to the list of Dubas misfires.
Hope he can get his head right and make himself movable but that seems highly unlikely
Graves has been so bad that this article is actually an understatement.
Goaltending is so volatile in the NHL that the Jarry contract isn’t even close to as bad as Graves. It’s fairly easy to field 6 competent defensemen, and they paid Graves like a top 4. They’re getting AHL level play from him
Jarry at least, when he’s on, is a legit NHL goalie. He actually has a .909 save percentage since being moved back into the starter role. It’s a very small sample size of five starts, but it’s encouraging. He even stole the game in Boston.
I think Jarry will be fine, albeit overpaid a little bit. I don’t think they will have a problem trading him next offseason if they want to. They have no chance of trading Graves unless they eat most of his contract or send a high draft pick with him.
Graves isn’t good, but the Erik Karlsson move is worse.
What did they do to Graves? He was good in NJ, we liked him. He wasn’t worth what they paid so we were happy and waved him on his way but he was never bad
Karlsson isn’t worth his contract, but he’s still a good player and allowed Pittsburgh to save money by offloading several bad contracts. Graves is so bad you can’t even put him in the lineup.
I have no idea what happened to Graves. I feel like he got propped up by playing with elite defensemen in Colorado and NJ, but there is no way he was this bad. He either needs a change of scenery, or he took the money and packed it in. either way Pittsburgh can’t play him anymore moving forward.