Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Could the Penguins look to make a splash in free agency?

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

We've still got about a month to go until free agency, but there are some gems the Penguins could look to sign this summer. Patrick and Hunter look at a couple of options, including a former third-overall pick. Then, with the news that a new, still unnamed Amazon documentary will follow several NHL stars this fall, who would they pick from the Penguins to be highlighted in such a documentary? Finally, the show wraps up with some sort-of news regarding the Penguins goaltending situation this summer.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit at eBayMotos.com. Let’s ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.PolicygeniusCheck life insurance off your to do list in no time with Policygenius. Head to policygenius.com/lockedonnhl to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNHL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.FanDuelFanDuel, America’s Number One Sportsbook. Right now, NEW customers get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS with any winning GUARANTEED That’s A HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS – with any winning FIVE DOLLAR BET! Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We've still got about a month to go until free agency officially opens, so that means we're going to take a look at even some more free agents the penguins could be interested in. Your Locked-on Penguin, your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. I'm one of your host, Patrick Damp. You can follow me on Twitter at Synonym 4. Wet, joined as always by the one and only Hunter Hodes.

You can follow him on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. You can give our show's account a follow at L0 underscore Penguins. And we thank you for making this your first listener watch of the day because we're your team every day. And don't forget, we are free and available wherever you get your podcast as well as YouTube. And before we get started today, today's episode is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code locked on NHL for $20 off your first purchase terms apply. So here we are. It is still the middle of the off season,

not even the middle of the off season. We are in the very beginning of the off season for the most part, because as you know, the Stanley Cup still has not been awarded, nor has the Stanley Cup final even begun. We still got a couple days to go before even that starts. But here we are, and we know that we have been saying on this show quite a bit, we believe that this off season is going to be one of change for the Pittsburgh Penguins. be anything seismic. Obviously, all of your favorite and familiar faces will be back. Mike Sullivan, Sydney Crosby, Evgeny Malkin, Chris LaTang, so on and so forth. But we do know that they are going to have a solid bit of cap space. We expect Kyle Dubus to make some moves,

whether it's moving a few players out, making some signings. We still don't know what the total plan is in net. We're going to figure that out later this summer. And we are going to discuss that later on in the show. But that means we still have to look at free agents. Because even though it is an underwhelming UFA class for the most part, save for a handful of players, there are a couple diamonds in the rough that I know Hunter has looked up. I have a couple silly season ones that I know the penguins more than likely are not going to be in on.

But hey, it's June 6th. We got to talk hockey. Let's have some fun with it. But before I do that, Hunter, you brought up a very interesting one to me that even I wasn't aware of going into this offseason. That could be a good bargain move for the penguins going into July 1st. Yeah, this player is very much a diamond in the rough. That is Yaakov Trennan from the Colorado Aflange and formerly also of the National Predators. only made $1.7 million for this past season will be a UFA on July 1st.

And he's had a pretty solid career, at least as a bottom six player down in Nashville and then out west in Colorado. His best season counting stats-wise, 2021, 2022, 17 goals, 24 points in 80 games. This year combined with Nashville and Colorado had 12 goals in 17 points in 76 games. for his career. He's played in 299 games, 48 goals, 82 points in 299 games. He's not very

much of a playmaker. He's very much a finisher, and that is something that the penguins could use in their bottom six. He can play wing, he can play center. I'm looking at him strictly as a center just because the penguins need more center depth heading into next season. And if your bottom six centers

are both Eller and Trennan, I think you're going in the right direction if you want to get back to this in the game out playoffs. I kind of see Trenton as maybe a fallback option if you can't get a couple of the other top centers on the market if you want to sign one to be your third line center. Again, if you can't get one of those, I would very much look at Trenton. His underlying numbers for this season in general, I think very, very good. With Nashville, he was on the ice for 51% of the shot attempts with Colorado only 16 games, though,

53%. And in total, 33 goals for 26 against was 51, 52% for expected goals. Same range for scoring chances, similar with high danger chances, though, with Colorado, 41 high danger chances for 32 high danger chances against. But he's someone who is young enough. He's not going to cost you that much. I don't really think he's going to be getting that much of a raise, even though he had 12 goals this past season.

I think he's someone that the penguins can very much afford if they want to bring him in on a two-year deal, maybe if you want to extend it to three years and take him to you know, age 30, that would be fine as well. But this is a player that I do think they should be interested in if they can't get one of the other Beners setters, just because he's already had a 17-goal season in the league. And I think he could just be scratching the surface for his talent, even though he's been in the league for a few seasons now.

Yeah, I look at it a lot like the guy we talked about yesterday in Bemstrom to where, I think at this point, we kind of know who he is and that's a solid bottom six contributor. on a much, much being relative here, but much higher level than Bemstrom. We kind of, I talked about that yesterday, that you know who Bemstrom is at this point. He's played enough games in the league. You know what his track record is. You look at Trenton, it's kind of the same deal. You know that he is a bottom six forward who can tap in 15 to 20 points,

maybe a little bit more throughout the season, which is what you want from a guy in the bottom six. You don't need him to put up 30, 40, 50, 50 points. points, but if he can get you in that 20 to 25 range, you are very happy with his output. And most of those points are goals. If you just look at his production, again, he's not much of a playmaker. He's a finisher. And as I said a few minutes ago, the penguins really need a few finishers to be added to this lineup for next season, considering how awful their finishing luck has been for the past three years. Of course. And I want to reiterate what I said at the top. One of my suggestions here is going to be a bit of a silly season one.

It's not, I can see if you're not watching on YouTube hunters, Chuck went a little bit. This isn't the one I was saying before we hit record because I understand that there is no world where they're probably going to be able to sign someone like Tevutera Vinen. But regardless, I digress. The name I'm looking at right now, and honestly, I would be more surprised if he made it to July 1st because I think he's sticking where he is. but if there's a chance that he can make it to July 1st, maybe give Matt Douchain's people a call. He had a very solid year making only $3 million for the Dallas Stars, 25 goals, 40 assists, 65 points. Yes, I can already see and hear the eye rolling from our listeners. They got to get younger.

They got to get younger. Do not disagree with you. But here's something to keep in mind with Matt Duches. A big year for him in Dallas, off of being. bought out from the Nashville Predators last summer. So he's still collecting checks from the Nashville Predators. They are still paying him after a buyout. And I don't know what he's looking for specifically.

I haven't seen a ton of reports on exactly what he's angling for this offseason. But always keep in mind with guys who had buyouts that they don't need the big deal because they have a guaranteed pay coming in from the team that bought them out. And Dallas got him at a bargain discount at $3 million. Is he going to require a bit more probably this year after a 65 point season in Dallas? Yeah, he's probably going to get a bump to $4.4.5 million if I had to guess, if not more. But that said, he can play wing, he can fill in in center. He still has what looks like after that year in Dallas.

a handful of good years of hockey left. And as I've been saying, and Hunter's been saying to an extent as well, where the Penguins are as a franchise right now, this is not a team that needs to take on projects. They need to take on shore things. This isn't Crosby, Malkin, Lattang, in their early years we are hoping guys

continue to develop and see if they fit in the long term. You're going for it right now. You're not in a rebuild. So if you have a chance to get a guy like that, I think you take it. Right. Despite being 33, if you can get him on a short-term deal, whether that's one or two years, I think you do it every time. Whether it's, you know, 4 to 4.5 million per, I think I take that gamble, even though Duchenne is going to be a year or two older by the end of that contract. You already gave his counting stats at a very good year with Dallas. he was someone I kind of circled last year before you joined the show later on that summer.

I had Douchay and someone like, okay, if you can maybe go after him during free agency, he's someone that makes sense at wing, at center, you can play him up and down your lineup first, second, third line. And when I saw how cheap he signed for in Dallas, I was really like, seriously, you didn't really want to give him a call. And I mean, maybe they did and he wasn't interested in going to the Penguins. but he signed for such a cheap deal in Dallas where I was like, I'm kind of stunned that he was only getting $3 million,

considering how good of a player he still is. I mean, like heck, you dive into the underlying. Sure, for course, he shot attempts, only 49% of those. But 54 goals for, 36 goals against this past season, 51% expected goals full rate, about 51.5% of the scoring chances, 32 high danger goals for, 23 high danger goals against. He was great in the playoffs. for the stars. He's still very much a big time player in the NHL. He feels another big need for the

Penguins. And that's another good, strong middle six player to potentially another center where, again, you can bump Eller down a little bit. You know, if you're looking at him maybe making $5 million, I kind of get a bit nervous just because of their salary cap situation. I think there has to be that right range, Pat, you know, two times four, I think two years times four million. I think I would probably do that maybe 4.5. But just because of their salary cap situation right now and how it's close to 13 million, I think if he wants five, you might have to move on and look to someone else. But I was interested in him last offseason.

And if he makes it to July 1, I will very much be interested in him again, despite the age. And he's going to be at least another year older for this season. But I think he still has quite a bit left in the tank. And you said it. You're not getting the Matt Douchain of a few. years ago where he's going to come in and pop on your first line and do really well. But he's like you said, he's exactly what the penguins are missing right now.

And that's a very productive middle six forward. And if you can get him to work for cheap, yeah, he's 33. Yeah, he's probably not got a lot of time left. But neither does this iteration of the Pittsburgh Penguins. So why not roll those dice? Especially because the only thing you're giving up were you to go after him is cap space. You're not trading away prospects or draft picks. You're just signing him on July 1.

But again, I don't foresee this being a possibility. I think Dallas is going to resign him because they have everybody they need locked up. There are FAs that they have going into July 1st are not guys who are going to command big raises. All of their key players are locked up. Joe Pavelski is retiring. So I highly doubt he makes it to July 1. But that is going to do it. it for our first segment of the Thursday edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast.

When we come back, we got our first look at the still unnamed Amazon documentary that will follow multiple NHLers. Unfortunately, there were no penguins on the list as far as I could tell. But with that in mind, we're going to have our own little fantasy world where we decide who would we highlight if there was a documentary like this for the Pittsburgh Penguins. But before we do that, we've got to tell you about our first sponsor. and that is game time. It's the NBA finals and the Stanley Cup finals,

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All right, we're back here on the Thursday edition of the Lockedon. Penguins podcast. I'm Patrick Damp. That's Hunter Hodes. And we got our first look this morning at the Amazon documentary that will premiere this fall that is following several NHL superstars. Unfortunately, as I said before we threw to break, no penguins as far as we can tell early on from this teaser, as well as the NHL's official press release will be penguins. We won't get to see Crosby, Malkin, or anybody like that. We may see them highlighted in games that they participated in, but they aren't going to be the main subjects. By the sound of it, these are the players that will be highlighted in the documentary.

Connor McDavid, Matthew Kachuk, Leon Drysidle, Jacob Truba, David Posternock, Jeremy Swamen, Quinn Hughes, Jack Eichael, William Nealander, Philip Forsberg, and Gabriel Landiscaug. A lot of talent there. And before we get to our part about who we would highlight for the Penguins, I just want to say this. I have high hopes for this because it's the same company that produced Drive to Survive. And if you know what that is, chances are you are, or you do, it's the Netflix documentary

that highlighted Formula One drivers. And prior to it, Formula One in the United States was not that big. People knew about it. It was very niche. Now it's incredibly popular to the point that races in the United States are well attended. It is frequently talked about in mainstream sports coverage in the United States. So I'm really hoping that Amazon gets full control of this because we saw it with 24-7. They started off hot and it became really sanitized and generic.

So I have high hopes for this. I'm going to watch it regardless. But I really hope that Amazon knocks this out of the park. Agreed. I'll definitely watch this as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing, you know, how they treat someone. like McDavid. I know a lot of fans and even some other media members out there kind of think of McDavid as the usual hockey robot. So I want to see how Amazon humanizes him a little bit,

because I do think there's a different side to him than just him talking to the media, after practice, talking to the media after a game. I think with Posternach, especially, that one is going to be hilarious. He's always been a character on and off the ice for the Bruins. and I think they're going to do a really good job with him. Cuch's the same. He's always a character on the ice. I want to see how he is off the ice a little bit too. I know there's no penguins on there for this,

but I'm still looking forward to watching it. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. And in a interview with the athletic with Mark Lazarus today, they talked about this. And it sounds like the people who are producing this for Amazon, they're not hockey people. They didn't tap lifelong hockey fans to produce and write this. It is somebody from completely on the outside.

Somebody who is, I think, if I read the article correctly, has been to like four games in their entire life. And at one point, he described hockey, his knowledge going into it as angry Canadians who fight. So this could be really good. But let's talk about this. If the penguins were to get somebody highlighted in this, I know who my answer is, and it's going to be an off-the-board one. It's not going to be any of the big guns. It's not going to be any of the big boys.

It's going to be one of the newer editions. And for me, I want to see Jesse Poyarvey on this because he in all accounts seems to be one of the most fun-loving, entertaining people on the Penguins roster. And I think between all the facial expressions we see of him, if you're on Twitter, you have seen the screenshots of this guy with his tongue out, looking like a goofball when he plays hockey. But by the sound of it, if he was miced up, it would be really funny.

It would be really entertaining. And I think that probably is an extension of his personality. So I would love to see what Jesse Pooeyarvey does away from the rink, how he interacts with his teammates, things he does when he's not playing hockey. I think it would be an incredible piece of cinema. I like that one. I'm going to stay on that train and do another very new penguin. How about Michael Bunting, man?

Wouldn't you like to see how he is away from the ring and just, you know, get to know him a little bit more off the ice? You know, the penguins, we've only gotten a short sample size from him so far. Obviously, he was great during the end of the season for the penguins. But, you know, getting a full season from him and getting that type of Amazon documentary on him, I think would be a lot of fun. He's already also been quite loud. It looks like in a locker room just with the videos

of the Penguin's social media team we're posting towards the late stages of the season. It looked like he was already starting to turn into at least a small leader for the team. And he looks excited to be here in Pittsburgh. He had an Instagram post on Wednesday thanking everyone for the warm welcome and can't wait for a full season with the Penguins. But I think him with the way he plays,

the way he acts on the ice, and just his personality, I think he would be a slam-dung pick for an Amazon documentary if they were to do it with the Penguins. Obviously, the core players would too. Outside of Bunting, I think of the core, Pat, Evgeny Malkin. I know Sid would be a great choice too, but you know how funny Gino is. He's probably one of the most hilarious players in the National Hockey League. I don't think many people outside of Pittsburgh understand how funny he is on an everyday basis. for this team and getting a documentary, a documentary, excuse me, on him would be awesome.

So of the core players outside of Bunting, give me one on Gino. Yeah, he would be great. And I know this isn't new. It's been kind of happening over the last decade plus. He has really evolved from the shy Russian superstar to being Evgeny Malkin. And he has really grown and become a bigger personality. obviously because it's hockey and because he's Russian, like we don't get as much from him.

But in the instances we've seen, he has been an absolute gem. Last one for me, it's another not totally off the board pick. Been here a long time. Definitely part of the core now. I would love to see Brian Rust as well. Because we talked about him last week when he said, oh, we would have beaten the Rangers when he was on a Twitch stream with Ninja.

he is also kind of a big nerd. He has talked about like, oh, I have like these marathon games of Catan with some of my teammates. He plays video games. He's a family man now. Like, he really would be a fun person to highlight because here's the thing that I think a lot of people need to understand when they go into this documentary. If it gets made in a similar way to things like Drive for Survive, or full swing, the emphasis is not going to be on hockey. Yes, it'll be a part of it.

You're going to see them in games. You're going to see them miced up. You're going to get the narrative of the season that they're in. But the purpose of it is to humanize the players themselves. So we're, yeah, we'll see games. We'll see meetings. We'll see practices, all that. But really, you're going to get feature length episodes

of players away from hockey. And that is in this era of sports and entertainment, what people look for now, and that's how you grow games. I agree. I think he would also be a very good pick. If I had to put one more in there, obviously, Sid is the easy choice.

I mean, getting to see a different side of him would be great. But how about Eric Carlson, man? He's hilarious on the ice. He's hilarious off the ice. He always jokes with media members, just going back to his days, with Ottawa, at San Jose as well.

He's always been just really not even, obviously fun to watch play, but also fun to see how he acts when he's not on the ice, you know? And I think he would also be a really fascinating fit

for an Amazon documentary for the penguin. So that's how I think I'll end this segment. That's another player who I would look at as well. I can't believe I didn't really vote Crosby. If they wanted to do it,

him. Obviously, I would not be mad just because he's the captain. He's one of the five greatest players to ever play the game. But I just think there's a few better options overall. That's no disrespect to Crosby, please. Don't know. And put it this way before we wrap up this segment, Crosby's

done his job to promote and grow the sport. Granted, yes, he's the ultimate hockey robot. I don't think we would see him doing anything really that interesting or exciting. No offense to Cid. But Crosby, wakes up thinking about hockey. He goes to play hockey. After he's done playing hockey, he watches

hockey, goes to bed, dreams about hockey, and then starts the cycle up over again the next day. But he's done his job promoting the game in the league. They don't need to have him do this anymore. It would have been cool, but at the same time, it's also been done. We've seen it in 24-7. He's had his own mini-documentaries, books, feature stories, you name it. We've seen it top to bottom. So it's been done. But that'll do it for this second segment of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. When we return, we got some sort of kind of updates on the Penguins goal-tending situation going into free agency. We will update you on that when we come back right after this.

All right, we're back here for the final segment of the Thursday edition of the Locked-on Penguins podcast. One more time, I'm Patrick Damp. That's Hunter Hodes. And we got a little bit of an update, but more of a non-update than anything from David Pagnata of the fourth period. This is, this one's difficult because we're in a portion of the off season where any single little bit of nugget gets treated as, oh, this is the biggest thing in the world. I always tell people, hey, you know, don't get worked up over reports and rumors. it's not worth your time or energy to get angry about what might happen, wait for it to actually happen, then react. But we did get this report from Pagnata that said, during his end of season remarks, Penguins GM, Kyle Dubus seemed to suggest that Joe Blumquist would be inserted as one of the team's goaltenders next season.

I'm told those comments were taken out of context. And the penguins have not closed the door on netminder Alex Nadelcovich, who can become a UFA on July 1. the team continues to have an open dialogue with his agent, Rich Evans, about a possible return. I don't know about this one. It's not that I am questioning the reporting. I'm not questioning what he's hearing or what is going on with the Penguins. But between the way he played this year, I still believe he's priced himself out of Pittsburgh. I also think you run a really heavy risk if you resign him.

him. If you lock back into Jari Nadelcovic, one, you could stunt the development of Joel Blumquist by keeping him in the HL. In two, if there's one thing that has marred Alex Nadelcovich's career since he came to Pittsburgh, it's inconsistencies. And there is no guarantee and there is no track record that shows he can repeat what he did this year, not to mention when you dig into the full numbers of what he did this year, it's not really overly impressive. I'm not downplaying and I'm not saying he was actually bad, but he didn't exactly turn into a starting goalie. He's a, his ceiling is probably 1B. Yeah, I agree with you. I think he is a stopgap to a 1B goalie. And that's really it. I don't think he's a 1A goalie on most teams in the league.

I still think right now it's more unlikely that he comes back just because I think he's going to get more money elsewhere to be a team's one be goaltender. And say again, we sign him, I'll just throw this out there. Two years to $2.5 million. Then you have even more money locked up to both him and Tristan Jari for the next couple of years. Jari makes $5.375 million for the next four seasons. and if you add two more million to Nadelcovic, it's almost 7.5 million for the next couple years for both goaltenders. If it's 2.5 million, you're almost at 8 million for two goalies

combined. And I just don't know if you can do that when you spend up to the cap and you have other needs on this roster right now. So again, I'm sure they've had preliminary discussions. I just don't really know how far they've gone. And personally, I don't think that. are going to go that far just and I think he's going to go elsewhere. Now again, if they do bring him back on some type of contract, you have Blumquist and then you have the new kid, Philip Larson down in Wilkesbury. Are you going to have this Larson kid taking away starts from Blumquist and Wilkesbury as he tries to get NH ready?

I just think it's risky in more than one way with Dahlkevich potentially turning back into a pumpkin with where he's been before and Blumquist not getting. as many starts in Wilkesbury that he did this year because the goal is for him to graduate to the NHL. How would you be doing that here if you run Jari and Adelkevich back while also having Larson take away starts from him in Wilkesbury? I just see too many, what's the word I want to use? I guess red flags here overall. If you bring the Delkevich back, okay, that's interesting, but are you also going to bring Jari back? What's going to happen there? So I don't know. It just raises there's a lot of questions for me.

It does with me as well. I also have this part of it. I can understand the logic. I don't think getting another goalie this summer is the wrong idea, regardless of what happens with Tristan Jari this summer, though I do think he's going to ultimately return and be the starter next year. Probably. I would, but if there's an upgrade to be had, I would do it.

but I think at this time it's more than likely that he's probably going to return. But then on the other flip side of it, you really can't guarantee that Blumquist is NHL ready yet. All of his trends show that he probably is. But let's remember, this is a 22-year-old with zero NHL starts under his belt. And we have seen not just in net, just in general, players who come up from the AHL, they light the HL on fire and it doesn't work at the NHL level. And if you don't have a solid backup, then you're in real trouble.

And that's the, to connect it to Ndilkevich, I think he's going to cost a lot more than you'd want to pay for a backup goalie. If you have a one, one and a half million dollar backup goalie, one B goalie, then fine.

If you lose that goalie to waivers or you can just bury that goalie for a few few games or a few weeks, not a big deal. But if you bring back Alex Nadelcovic on two and a half, three million in that range, which I think he's probably in line to get, and he doesn't work out, or Joel Blumquist doesn't pan out correctly. Then, and then you add in maybe Tristan Jari's struggling again, then you're in a real, real world of hurt. Right. No, I agree with you. And say you also move on from Jari, you deal him, and maybe you get someone that's, not Linus Allmark, do you have a guarantee that that goalie is going to outplay Tristan Jari, even though, again, you know, he's been inconsistent the last couple of years from February

onward? So there's really no easy solution to this heading into next season, unless by some divine situation that you're able to pry Linus Allmark out from Boston and have a trade package that they're interested in. So it's going to be interesting. I really, don't envy Kyle do this when it comes to this at all. For sure. And the last thing I'll say on it is this. Like despite the UFA class being

very unimpressive, that also means that there are options you can take to be your backup or your next Alex Nadelcovic, a guy who isn't going to be your starter. But if Jari falters, they can step in and take some time away or at the very least help

load manage Tristan Jari better to where they can play a handful more games, but we will see what happens with that. A lot of time to go, but even though we have a lot of time to go, we are out of time here on the Locked-on Penguins podcast. We thank you for always tuning in.

Hunter and I will be back tomorrow on Friday with a mailbag episode. We will have some posts out and some calls out here on our YouTube channel as well as our social media channels. So if you've got any questions you want us to answer here on the Locked-on Penguins podcast, we will be doing that tomorrow. But for now, for Hunter Hodes, I am Patrick Damp.

Thank you, as always for tuning in, and we will be back on Friday.