Part 3 Pens in 2 years with Sid extension

Team: 2025-26 Pittsburgh Penguins

Initial Creation Date: Dec. 6, 2023

Published: Dec. 8, 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]]]
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***From my Part 2 Post***
[[[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]]]
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part 3
notes
-i did not bother to transfer any previous picks as none had been in the 2026 draft anyway...
-by the 2025-2026 season the pens would have presumably at least 6 better-ish prospects in their system or hopefully graduating to the NHL (their 3 1sts in 2024 + 2024 2nd + 2 LAK prospects) along with the current group of Yager/Pickering/Blomqvist/etc.
-i had Blomqvist making the team the previous season in 2024-25, and I have Yager making the team this season at age 20 along with Pinelli (age 22) but they can act as placeholders for whichever younger player wins the spot...
-Pettersson will be 29 and like Guentzel 2 years prior if things are going downhill i don't expect to see him resigned... so i put a potential deal in this post (technically it should have been in the last one, but it was alrdy too cluttered.)
-Same goes for Reilly Smith and Lars Eller (except they would be mid 30s) and i assume we'd ship him off at the TDL
-Sid signs a 3 year extention to match the 3 years letang has left on his deal @6.23M x 3 years which equals $18.7M
-the Big Splash last offseason was Nylander (7x10M)... this offseason it's Draisaitl

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