Penguins One-Timers: Comparing Contracts, What About Boyle and E-Rod?

It has been an interesting offseason. The right-handed defenseman expected to set the market just signed a one-year bargain deal with a team not expected to contend for a Stanley Cup. The center expected to set the market is still unsigned 18 days after free agency opened. And the Pittsburgh Penguins locked up both their right-handed defenseman and center to what was expected to be below-market deals but must clear more salary cap space.

The two primary questions before the Penguins and GM Ron Hextall are: How do they clear more cap space, and are they Stanley Cup contenders?

After all, there’d be no reason to sign Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin to long-term 35+ contracts if the Penguins were not Cup contenders.

1. Comparing Penguins Contracts

It’s not truly possible to compare John Klingberg’s one-year, $7 million contract with the Anaheim Ducks to Kris Letang’s six-year, $36.6 million deal. It seems Klingberg didn’t like the teams offering big deals or wanted more than they offered and punted to next season. It doesn’t mean Kris Letang would not have received upwards of $9 million on a shorter deal from another team.

Alex Letang, Kris’s young son who joined his contract press conference at the draft in Montreal, admitted the family had been city shopping.

However, despite Klingberg’s status as the 1 or 1A right-handed defenseman on the market, he’s a small step behind Kris Letang, who routinely finishes in the top-10 of Norris Trophy voting. Klingberg hasn’t registered in Norris voting in the last four seasons.

There are a lot of teams that would have paid Letang $36 million.

It’s much more challenging to compare Evgeni Malkin’s contract. Perhaps Penguins fans and media are too close to the situation to answer objectively. Malkin is one of the great players in the league, but it isn’t easy to know what he was worth. It was a pure guessing game, even if Sportsnet reporter Elliotte Friedman reported that several teams were ready with big offers.

2. Should the Pittsburgh Penguins Carry Only 12 Forwards to Fit Beneath the Cap? 

The Penguins could limbo under the NHL salary cap by carrying only 12 forwards but is that a viable solution?

No.

COVID and week-long COVID absences will probably remain with us for a while longer. As long as that little bug is racing around the planet faster than bad gossip, there exists the possibility that on any given afternoon before a game, one or three players could be out with barely a moment’s notice.

Rolling with only 12 forwards means the perpetual risk of playing with 10 or 11 forwards.

Even as one or two forwards return to the lineup, another one or two could leave. The team could be shorthanded for several games without salary cap space to call up multiple players.

That seems like a perpetual risk not worth taking.

3. Brian Boyle and Evan Rodrigues

Last week, PHN reported (exclusively, I think) that Brian Boyle wants to play this season and that there was at least a little hope or expectation that he could again play in Pittsburgh.

That was before Danton Heinen accepted a $1 million, one-year deal.

The Pittsburgh Penguins no longer have center depth. Last season, they could count six centers in the lineup or available. This coming season, they appear to be at four. Ryan Poehling is a center but didn’t stick in the middle for the Montreal Canadiens. He’s their fifth. Perhaps Josh Archibald is the sixth center?

Brian Boyle had 12 goals on a minimum contract or about three times more goals than Dominik Simon and Zach Aston-Reese scored with the Penguins last season. He was part of the Penguins’ fierce penalty kill that finished top-three in the league. And he’s a large-bodied fourth-line player.

Evan Rodrigues scored 19 goals and was Mike Sullivan’s Swiss Army Knife.

Are Archibald and Poehling suitable replacements?

The answer would seem to be an immediate “no,” but Rodrigues and Boyle weren’t exactly top-priority, go-to players last summer. Boyle arrived on a PTO, and Rodrigues had been a part-time player, a part-time healthy scratch in the prior season.

Perhaps Poehling and Archibald will be just fine, though if either pops for 19 goals, the Penguins could be in a very, very good spot.

But it would appear that Boyle and Rodrigues will not re-sign with the Penguins unless additional forwards are involved in any Penguins trade.

**Lastly, THANK YOU to PHN readers. You pushed us over 1.4 million readers in July. That’s a 40% increase from our previous July and nearly a 30% bump over our previous best in May. Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson have been rockstars on this crazy path. The Steelers and Pirates coverage is coming along very well. This little venture is really sprouting.