Kingerski: The Hextall, Penguins Decision I Still Don’t Understand

Former Pittsburgh Penguins forward Evan Rodrigues signed a one-year, $2 million deal with the Colorado Avalanche last week. Reports indicate Rodrigues may have also turned down a bigger offer at the start of free agency. But after a summer of GM Ron Hextall’s successes, there remains one decision, with two parts, that just doesn’t compute.

Why sign Kasperi Kapanen to a two-year contract with a $3.2 million AAV that put the team over the salary cap?

Why sign Kapanen instead of Rodrigues?

Full praise for Hextall this summer. He managed the seemingly impossible by signing Bryan Rust, Kris Letang, Evgeni Malkin, and Rickard Rakell. Hextall added Jeff Petry on the blue line and got an additional third-round pick in the John Marino trade, which also netted young (and much less expensive) defenseman Ty Smith.

The Penguins are a better team today than they were in May. When Brian Burke told colleague Dave Molinari the same last week, that wasn’t puffery.

Yet the Kapanen contract stands out not for its value, because Kapanen probably got full market price, if not more, and not for its necessity. The Penguins didn’t get much from Kapanen last season.

The Kapanen deal stands alone in an otherwise ebullient summer because the contract shoved the Penguins’ cap number into the red. Officially, they are about $1.4 million over the NHL salary cap. Late in training camp, they will send a pair of eligible players to the WBS Penguins or put a couple of players who didn’t make the big squad through waivers. Those moves will get the Penguins just under the cap but not create enough cap room to make call-ups should they suffer a couple of injuries or illnesses.

Hey, COVID is still around and can remove a player for five days. A couple of National Hockey Now writers had it last week, and it wasn’t pleasant for them. If a few players get the bug, the Penguins could be shorthanded because they lack cap space to replace them for a few games.

Last season, the New York Islanders season hit a tailspin because they were caught shorthanded.

It can happen.

There are competing narratives surrounding Rodrigues. The first incorporates incredulity. Rodrigues had never before scored close to 19 goals. It was a fluke. He went cold in the second half of the season. It was a fluke, and he regressed to the mean. The Penguins didn’t win a playoff series. It doesn’t matter.

The other narrative, which is more reality-based, is that Rodrigues was a prominent figure when the Penguins needed him to be. He scored 19 goals, most of them in the first half of the season, when the Penguins were without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, or just Malkin. Rodrigues emerged after too many seasons of press box nachos and being a bubble player, never sure of his spot in the Buffalo Sabres or Pittsburgh Penguins lineup.

As the playoffs approached, Rodrigues again elevated his game. He was also one of the best Penguins forwards in the Round One playoff series against the New York Rangers. He scored three goals and five points in the seven-game series.

Pittsburgh Penguins Fork in the Road

If reports are accurate, and Rodrigues turned down three years and $10.5 million on the advice of his agent, that’s a mistake by Rodrigues.

But the Penguins eventually paid Kapanen nearly the same money. That’s a mistake by the Penguins.

After five seasons in the NHL, Kapanen has been on a roller coaster. True, he’s had a better career than Rodrigues to this point, but it was hard to watch how each fit with the Penguins last season and conclude that Kapanen was the player to keep.

The goal totals only tell a little bit of the story. Rodrigues played every forward position and filled nearly every role last season. From top-line winger to fourth-line center, he did it all.

Kapanen hasn’t cracked the 40-point plateau in three NHL seasons (In fairness, he was on pace in the 2020-21 COVID-shortened season). The Toronto Maple Leafs eventually demoted him to fourth-line duty before the Penguins trade.

Inconsistency has been a festering problem for Kapanen, who possesses the talent to be a premier power forward. Still, after seven years since his NHL debut, perhaps that status is more hope than expectation.

You, the reader and fans, have full authority to agree with me today but Tweet at me in March after Kapanen scores 30 goals, “this didn’t age well.”

But in a summer of near perfection, of shrewd cost moves and player acquisition (at least in the short term. We’ll see about the long contracts in four years), going over the cap with Kapanen at the expense of Rodrigues is one decision I don’t get.

Should the Penguins need top-six help in the middle or on the left this season, I suspect the legend of E-Rod will grow. He will also have a healthy chance at a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche, further cementing this lament.