Team: 2024-25 Pittsburgh Penguins

Initial Creation Date: Mar. 11, 2024

Published: Mar. 12, 2024

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Stop pretending that this team is anything other than what it is -- a non-playoff team as currently constituted. Trade away valuable players on the final year of their contracts to acquire some badly needed draft capital and start building a prospect pool. Sign some free-agent players to patch the holes. (Teravainen is probably a pipe dream, but maybe not Chatfield.)

More than enough cap space to sign/acquire a good back-up goaltender, and maybe enough left over to get an upgrade in the middle-6 (or pay Teravainen an additional million or two).

I've given the three lowest forwards on the totem pole (not counting the currently injured Matt Nieto) plus Pierre-Olivier Joseph their Qualifying Offers because I'm not sure what they've done to deserve more. I'm entirely open to education.

It may seem odd at first blush to trade Marcus Pettersson only to replace him with Nikita Zadorov, but my thinking here is that Zadorov plus the future first has greater value than running out the clock on MP's contract in a season when the Penguins probably won't be competitive. (I think that Pettersson and Soucy would be an excellent second pairing.)

Rather than dump Reilly Smith for a meaningless middling pick, I would package him together with an over-the-horizon third to acquire a late second in next year's draft. f Niklas Backstrom's injury is permanent, as it appears to be, Washington would have sufficient cap space to accommodate this move.

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