Josh Yohe of The Athletic writes that the Pittsburgh Penguins never came close to dealing forward Rickard Rakell prior to the NHL Trade Deadline. The Penguins reportedly didn’t care to deal Rakell and were happy to hold onto him, despite receiving several offers for his services. Pittsburgh general manager Kyle Dubas doesn’t want the Penguins to tank over the next few years and instead hopes to mirror the retool that the Washington Capitals recently went through.
Dubas did make plenty of moves leading up to the deadline, but didn’t move any of the bigger names such as Rakell or Erik Karlsson. Yohe believes that the Penguins would like to move Karlsson in the summer and are willing to retain as much as $3MM to facilitate a move. Karlsson hasn’t been terrible in Pittsburgh, but his style of play has not meshed well, and he has not been the Norris Trophy defenseman that Pittsburgh thought they were trading for in the summer of 2023.
If the Penguins move on from Karlsson, it will put more pressure on defenseman Kris Letang. Although it’s questionable as to whether he will stick around. Yohe speculates that Dubas will approach Letang to see if he still has interest in remaining in Pittsburgh during their roster turnover. Letang has a full no trade clause and three years remaining on his contract at a $6.1MM AAV. His actual salary in those three years will be $4.8MM per year, which could be appealing for teams on an internal budget. Letang is having arguably the worst season of his professional career but remains a top four NHL defenseman. He hasn’t publicly expressed any interest in moving on from the Penguins.
Yohe expects teams to call Pittsburgh this summer about forward Bryan Rust as his full no movement clause expires. While teams will be interested, Yohe doesn’t believe the Penguins want to move the veteran, who is playing some of the best hockey of his career with 21 goals and 26 assists in 55 games this season.
Given the nature of the Penguins’ deadline, and a desire to keep high character veterans in the fold, it looks as though the Penguins intend to turn things around quickly rather than enduring a five-year rebuild. Yohe acknowledges that next year will be tough for Pittsburgh, but the Penguins are hoping to contend for a playoff spot again in the next two years.
I don’t understand the difference between dealing guys at the deadline vs waiting until summer, except that as the seller you lose leverage waiting
For someone with multiple years left on their contract, you really don’t lose leverage. Deals involving higher-priced players are also much easier to carry out over the offseason since teams can exceed the salary cap by up to 10% as long as they get compliant by opening night.
In addition to what Josh added, with the rising cap over the next few years, Rakell is going to look like a bargain compared to upcoming FAs. Sure, the other teams won’t have to give up assets, but they have to outlay the cash and sacrifice cap space which can have other impacts on roster construction
Translation: No one wanted to pay Dubas’ inflated prices for guys like Rakell & Grzelyck, so now Pittsburgh has to act like this is exactly where they wanted to end up, despite being stuck with an even worse roster than the one they couldn’t make the playoffs with.
Penguins have a dud of a gm. Penguins are manny yrs away from making the playoffs.
The NHL is a copycat league so everyone will say they want to do a Caps-style mini-reset. But the 2024 and 2025 Caps had to
1. get near-Vezina-caliber goaltending from near-minimum-salary G
2. have two high-salary underperformers admit they are too injured to keep playing, opening LTIR space
3. have a champion AHL team supplying inexpensive significant contributors
4. get well-above-expectations results from a high percentage of trades and signings
I don’t see this coming up for the Penguins.
That said, keeping Rakell and getting a nice haul of draft picks for pedestrian players were good outcomes.
We can’t do a Caps style rebuild (Dubas used the tire spinning Kings as his example last time) for a bunch of reasons.
Number one, the Caps to a large extent got lucky that Backstrom and Oshie are so injured they can confidently spend their cap space on guys like Dubois and Chychrun. If they were still on the books or were a threat to return, it’s an entirely different roster.
Number two, the Caps have (wisely) ignored the league trend of drafting small players. They are a very big team at almost every roster spot. That took time to build up.
Number three, you need goaltending that is both cheap and high end. We are (more or less) locked into the 3 guys who have largely sunk us this year.
The goal should be to (except against MAF or the Rangers) tank out the rest of the year. Any of the top 4 of this draft would be great adds and could probably play for us next year.
Then the goal should be to still add assets when and where you can but only if the offer is great. Keep Rakell if no one blows you away, etc. Sign the best free agents you can get on one year deals. Two years if it’s the right guy who is tradeable. NO MORE NTC’s or NMC’s.
Give it another go next year without trading assets or overspending in free agency. If you hit on the right formula and are in contention, cool. Still don’t pay anything more than 3rd or 4th for rentals. If you are not in contention, then begin the full scale sell off and become the Blackhawks/Sharks.
The pens will do what STL did to grab a RFA and overpay so a team doesn’t match/has no room. It worked better for the Blues though due to tight caps space but with increasing cap, not as easy to replicate. Pens could lose their 1st, 2nd, 3rd picks for proven RFAs and still have 28 picks in next 3 drafts
As an overall hockey fan it’s a shame to see such a successful franchise being lead by a dud. But as someone who doesn’t like the Pens this is rather enjoyable.