Part 2 Pens Miss Playoffs Offseason Path Forward

Team: 2024-25 Pittsburgh Penguins

Initial Creation Date: Dec. 6, 2023

Published: Dec. 7, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

[From my Part 1 Post: This post assumes the Pens continue their below .500 trajectory and sit over 5 points out of a WC spot at the TDL, which is not hard to imagine happening if the power play continues to be awful, the goaltending and few players actually playing well regress, and other playoff-caliber teams begin to separate themselves from the pack.

-All pending UFAs with at least late-round-pick value get moved.
-All other non-core pieces are made available
-The Pens end up finishing bottom-10 in the league, thus they exercise their right to keep their 2024 1st round pick and opt to send their 2025 1st to San Jose]

notes
-the report that the cap will go up to over 87.5M next year
-hypothetically the pens missing the playoffs for the 2nd straight year
-a 2024 TDL selloff of all expiring contracts

all this leads to dubas now having to consider moving pieces that had subpar seasons like nieto, acciari, etc... and longer term contracts like rakell and graves... for the sake of this post, i will not move rakell/graves as their careers suggest 2023-2024 was an anomaly and they can get back to their previous level of play...

-we'll assume the pens either talk with Guentzel in FA but ultimately don't want to give him 7 years and they switch their focus... (or LAK gives him an 8 year extention)
-Dubas has to consider extentions for now expiring contracts such as Crosby, Smith, Eller, Pettersson, Ludvig..... (part 3 will deal with those contracts expiring in 2025)
-so therefore dubas does alot of short term deals to try to keep the team competitive for now so a teardown post-crosby is easier...
-after a season in the AHL, blomqvist backs up jarry for a full NHL season and plays about 30 games

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.