The Penguins last night announced Bryan Rust’s new contract extension, which is significant in many ways. First and foremost, it’s apparent that it ties Rust to the Pens for the next few seasons as part of the six-year deal, likely making him a penguin for the remainder of the Sidney Crosby era.
Off the ice, the financial impact will mean a lot to how the team handles the rest of the offseason. That the Pens are widely lauded for securing Rust’s services with a fairly modest $1.625 million increase to his previous contract comes as no surprise. Pittsburgh have taken a pretty hard line in contract negotiations and a lack of offers is the main reason Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang remain less than eight weeks away from free agency.
Basically, if Rust were going to return to Pittsburgh, there should have been a relatively team-friendly salary cap and $5.125 million for a top-line player who’s been right on one point per game over the past three seasons, certainly a very cheap deal for Pittsburgh.
With Rust in the fold, how does that set the Pens up for an offseason that has some more big decisions and signings ahead of it? First, with the always handy CapFriendly, let’s visualize what the team looks like at this point with players signed for 2022-23.
Pittsburgh still have nearly $24 million in cap space, which is a good thing because they clearly have a lot more to bring to their roster. This shouldn’t be much of a cause for alarm as the NHL’s off-season hasn’t even officially started yet, we’re just trying to get a picture of what the roster looks like now.
Last but not least, the return of Rust means that the vaunted Pittsburgh First Line (which performed wonderful in the playoffs this season) should be intact for at least the next two seasons as Jake Guentzel has two years left on his current contract. That support and level of winger for Sidney Crosby should at least help make the Pens a strong team right off the bat.
There’s also always a chance that GM Ron Hextall can reshuffle the lineup with a trade that will take a player with a sizeable salary (Jason Zucker, Brian Dumoulin, Marcus Pettersson as candidates for different playing grounds, contract statuses and lusts elsewhere) from Cabinet could send door. In the current market, cap space is king and almost every team will be more interested in cutting salary than putting something in the door that should also be kept in mind.
But the good sign for the Pens is that they have a lot of capital headroom — $23.958 million, to be precise, with the aforementioned players and Jack Johnson’s buyout, which is against the $82.5 million cap in the game going next year. And the team has 15 players considered above, the regular season limit is 23 but could only be 21 or 22.
With Rust back in the group and a very viable position for the pens, could they still have room to bring both Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang back? That scenario seems plausible at this point, but salary compromises would have to be made (and haven’t happened yet), so stay tuned.
With the question of star players settled, the next big challenge will be the center six forward group. Rust’s payment likely means a path for Rickard Rakell to return to Pittsburgh is likely to have dried up as the team also has yet to sign or replace other second- and third-line players (Danton Heinen, Evan Rodrigues).
Finally, don’t lose track of the backup goalkeeper’s situation. Although Casey DeSmith was not at fault due to injury, the Pens, in hindsight and hindsight, lost their last two playoff series in large part due to not having a capable backup goaltender available for the first round. Again, DeSmith couldn’t really do anything about it, but this situation shows the importance of two quality goalies (as also just seen in the Carolina and St. Louis playoff runs, where the #2 goalie had to play a significant role) .
The keeper market was extremely expensive last season but it could be worth for the Pens to invest some of their newfound cap space in a viable, experienced and capable keeper who will join Tristan Jarry for next season.