Josh Yohe of The Athletic believes that the Pittsburgh Penguins will be sellers regardless of their position in the standings. Yohe wrote about the unusual position the Penguins find themselves in heading into the second half of the NHL season. Pittsburgh has fought its way back into the Wild Card conversation in the Eastern Conference, and despite being largely made up of veteran players, general manager Kyle Dubas has his eye on the future and intends to sell.
Yohe says that his league sources predict the Penguins will make multiple moves to jettison veterans and that “no one is safe” on Pittsburgh, except for the players holding full no-trade protection (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin to name a few). Marcus Pettersson is certainly a name Pittsburgh will move on from given his contractual status, but one name that could also go is forward Rickard Rakell. The 31-year-old is having a nice bounce-back season with 22 goals in 45 games. However, Yohe pours cold water on that notion, saying that Pittsburgh is likely to hold onto him for this year unless they receive a big offer.
While all signs point to Pittsburgh packing it in for the season and missing the playoffs for a third straight year, Yohe believes that the Penguins may see the trading of veteran players as an opportunity to call up some of their prospects who are NHL-ready, most notably goaltender Joel Blomqvist who is arguably the best netminder in the Penguins entire organization and their best chance at steady goaltending. Tristan Jarry has struggled for well over a calendar year and doesn’t look like an NHL goaltender at the moment, and Alex Nedeljkovic has been wildly inconsistent this season after putting together a nice campaign a year ago.
While the Penguins would love to move on from some of their pricier veterans, they will be in tough to do so as Jarry has three years left on his contract after this season with an AAV of $5.375MM, and defenseman Ryan Graves has four years on his deal at $4.5MM. Those deals were two of the first contracts Dubas handed out in Pittsburgh, and they’ve aged like milk. In previous years, those types of contracts would have been untradeable, but with the cap rising next season, it’s not out of the question that the Penguins could move on from those players in the next six months.
There is absolutely no way Graves or Jarry get moved unless the pens are adding assets which they obviously do not want to do.
God damn, I hope so!
News flash!
The amazing Kyle Dubas!
Are they gonna be selling Malkin’s stolen cup rings?
Eh, put Jarry on waivers. Two things can happen:
(1) Someone claims him, which isn’t THAT far fetched; this is his first genuinely bad season, and there are a lot of teams out there needing goaltending. No, they won’t get anything for him, but they’d be out from under the cap hit, and they wouldn’t need to BRIBE someone to take him off of the Pens’ hands; or
(2) He clears, and gets sent down to WBS, in which case there’s at least relief from a part of the cap hit, and maybe rebuilds some value (in five games on the farm, Jarry played excellently). Then Pittsburgh can see what Filip Larsson can do, a guy who’s been playing lights out for the junior Pens.