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Molinari: Have Opinion on Keeping 71, 58? Hextall Shouldn’t Care

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NHL Trade, Pittsburgh Penguins, Ron Hextall

Whether the Pittsburgh Penguins should re-sign Kris Letang and/or Evgeni Malkin has become a subject of ferocious debate for the team’s fan base.

There are lots of conflicting opinions, all presented with abundant passion.

Some believe that keeping both, at almost any price, is essential; others feel it is time to move on from them, to focus on the future. And then there are those who think that one of the two is indispensable, while the other is expendable.

Ron Hextall, of course, has made it clear that he would like to retain both — but only under contracts that he thinks would preserve enough salary-cap space to allow him to finish assembling a Stanley Cup-caliber roster.

That is a most daunting challenge, considering that the Penguins haven’t won a playoff series since 2018 and that core players like Sidney Crosby, Letang and Malkin are in their mid-30s.

Hextall, of course, knows all of that, and those factors helped to shape the offers that have been extended to Letang and Malkin. He probably also is aware of the public’s diverse opinions about how far he should be willing to go to retain them.

And he probably doesn’t care.

Nor should he.

Hextall’s mandate is not to please the public — or any particular segment of it — but to construct the best team he can while operating within the constraints of the cap.

If Hextall is able to do that, the vast majority of the franchise’s followers will not care about the finer points of how he made it happen.

And if he can’t, he should be more concerned about how the decision-makers at Fenway Sports Group will react than he is about how distressed the fans might be.

*** It surely is scant consolation to the Pittsburgh Penguins, but they aren’t the only NHL club facing some tough negotiations and painful personnel decisions this offseason.

That list, not surprisingly, is headlined by the teams that won the past three Cups.

Tampa Bay, the champion in 2020 and 2021, already is about $5.1 million OVER the $82.5 million cap ceiling for 2022-23, per CapFriendly.com. And that’s without re-signing Ondrej Palat and Jan Rutta.

Lightning officials already have asked veteran defenseman Ryan McDonagh, who has a no-trade clause and four years left on contract with an average annual value of $6.75 million, about teams to which he would be willing to accept a trade. And he will not be the only prominent player the Lightning will try to shed before next season.

Colorado, which won its first Cup since 2001 last Sunday, is in a challenging spot, too. The Avalanche has about $26.5 million in cap space, which sounds good — until you see the list of high-profile contributors whose contracts are expiring. Nazem Kadri, Josh Manson, Valeri Nichushkin and Andre Burakovsky are in that group, and there are quite a few others in line to be paid.

It could be worse, of course. At least the Lightning and Avalanche just played for a Cup; Vegas, which hasn’t gotten close to a title since making it to the Cup final in 2018, already is about $2.6 million above the ceiling and has a number of players who need new deals.

*** Remember when San Jose was considered one of the best-run franchises in the league? Yeah, that was quite a while ago, and it doesn’t seem to be changing.

It’s bad enough that the Sharks are on the hook for long-term contracts with aging players like Brent Burns and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, but evidence of dysfunction has persisted long after those deals were negotiated.

It was apparent as recently as Thursday night, when coach Bob Boughner and his assistants were informed that they were losing their jobs. There’s nothing wrong with replacing coaches — NHL teams do it with rather stunning regularity — but to fire a staff two months after a season ends, which means those coaches have very limited opportunities to seek work elsewhere is a sign of a rudderless operation.

*** There was no mention of rookie games when the Pittsburgh Penguins’ preseason schedule was announced a few days ago, although Hextall has said in the past that he prefers those to sending a squad to a prospects tournament, as the Penguins did for years when Ray Shero and Jim Rutherford were GM.

*** Cody Ceci, a popular target of public derision while playing in Ottawa and Toronto, revived his career with a strong performance for the Penguins in 2020-21, when he worked on a one-year deal that carried a cap hit of $1.25 million.

It was enough to earn Ceci a four-year, $13 million contract from Edmonton last summer, and nothing happened during the past season to make the Oilers second-guess their investment.

His offensive output was relatively modest — five goals and 23 assists in 78 games — but Ceci logged an average of 20 minutes, 54 seconds of ice time, which was second only to Darnell Nurse (25:03) among Edmonton defensemen. His total included an average of 2:34 of shorthanded work per game.

Ceci also was second on the team in blocked shots (121) and fifth in hits (117).

*** There is fierce resistance in some quarters to the idea of the Pittsburgh Penguins retaining Casey DeSmith, who is about to qualify for unrestricted free agency, as Tristan Jarry’s backup.

Why so many object so strenuously isn’t clear.

When a team operates near the cap ceiling, as the Penguins consistently do, it generally doesn’t have the resources to prioritize a goalie who’s expected to appear in 20-25 games.

What’s more, if the Penguins are to have any chance of seriously contending for a Cup in 2023 — and that doesn’t seem to be a particularly realistic objective, at least at this point — they will need to have Jarry playing at his very best.

If he’s unavailable, for whatever reason, a backup goalie — no matter who it is — simply isn’t going to perform at the level the Penguins would need to win four series.

*** With the NHL draft scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Montreal, this is a good time for a reminder of how difficult it can be to project the career trajectory of even the most talented teenaged players.

Witness the 2017 draft, when Nico Hischier (New Jersey), Nolan Patrick (Philadelphia) and Miro Heiskanen (Dallas) were the first three players selected. No. 4? That would be Cale Makar, who didn’t do much during the past season except win the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman and the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.