Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - Forget about Mario Lemieux's birthday...the Jack Johnson nightmare is over!

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

There's never a dull moment in the Pittsburgh Penguins offseason as today, the Penguins bought out Jack Johnson's contract. Hunter talks all about that in the opening segment of the podcast as Penguins Twitter went crazy and hr gives his thoughts on how this is so overdue. Just how much better does this one move make them? Hunter answers that, then brings Geoff from The PensBlog back on the podcast and they talk even more about it. Was there really no market for Johnson? How much will Mike Matheson benefit from not having to play with him? They answer those questions, plus go into the Tristan Jarry contract and how it looks to be a good deal for the Penguins. All that, plus much more on this episode of Locked On Penguins.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON,” and you’ll get $10 off your first order.Door DashRight now, our listeners can get $5 off and zero delivery fees on their first order of $15 or more, when you download the DoorDash app and enter code LOCKEDONNHL.RomanGo to getroman.com/lockedonnhl TODAY. If approved, you’ll get fifteen dollars off your first orderof ED treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, welcome to this Monday afternoon edition of the Locked on Penguins podcast. I'm your host, Hunter Hodes. Follow me on Twitter at Hunter Hodes. Follow the show is Twitter at L.O. underscore Penguins. And in case anyone is wondering why I'm so fired up for today's podcast, today is one of the greatest days in Pennsylvania penguins history. Not only is it Mario Lemieux's 55th birthday, the greatest hockey player to ever play in a national hockey league. We also have the news that Jack Johnson has officially been bought out by the Pittsburgh Penguins.

This is probably the best day of 2020 as well. And, you know, this is flat out awesome. We're going to have Jeff on from Penn's blog. He was here to break down the Hornquist and Matheson trade just about a couple weeks ago. We're going to have him on in the next segment and the segment after that talk about the buyout as well. And just everything that's going around with the team right now, especially with the Tristan Jari signing. We totally have to talk about that as well. But first off, we are going to touch on this Jack Johnson situation.

I definitely did not see this one coming on. We've been reading for weeks now, guys, that, you know, the Penguins hate buyouts. You know, they don't really like doing them. They haven't really done them in a long time. And, I mean, I can understand why. You know, you don't really want to be paying a player that's not on your team for however many years. For Jack Johnson's case, it's going to be the next six years and they're going to be paying him. I know the first three, I think it's like one point.

0.67 million for the first two years and then 1.9 million for the third year and then for the three years after those three years, it's 917K against the cap. And like I said, I know teams don't like to do that, but in this situation, you had to do this. It was this dire. You could not have Jack Johnson on this hockey team going into next season. It would just be very, very ludicrous to do so, ignorant and competent, whatever word you want to use for it. But Jack Johnson is off this hockey team. And, you know, I think Penguin's Twitter, this is the happiest they've been since the 2017 Stanley Cup final. It has been a while since, you know, Penguin's Twitter can all come together and we can just have a great time. So, you know, just a great day. I remember I saw the

tweet from Frank Zerbello just scrolling Twitter. I'm like, okay, is that a fake Frank Zeravilli Twitter account? Because if so, I'm going to really, really lose my shit. But so I checked it about five times, did a big celebration, chugged a beer. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't really chugged their beer, but you know, had a celebratory lunch, you know, celebrated with everyone on Penguins' Twitter, and, you know, it's just been a really great day as Penguins fan. So now for the defense, go Dumlin-Littang, Pedersen and Marino, Matheson Ruehiel, unless the team wants to upgrade over Chad Ruehdle. But, you know, I did want to say a couple of things in this segment as well about Jack Johnson. I'm sure he's a wonderful human being. I'm not going to

trash him, Jack Johnson as the human, but, you know, as a hockey player, he just wasn't there. And I saw this tweet earlier from Adam Gretz, which really is just a great tweet. I mean, if you guys do not follow Adam Gretz on Twitter A, Gretz. He does stuff for NH on NBC, Pensburg, but, you know, the tweet says this. This is the right move, but I do feel bad for Johnson. He did nothing wrong.

He signed a contract that anyone would have signed. I mean, I agree with that 100%. If anyone walks up to you and says, hey, you know, you want to sign a five-year contract for 3.25 million per season, I don't care what kind of job it was it is. I'm pretty sure most of you would take it. And the tweet also goes on to say he played hard, did everything he could.

He was just the wrong fit on the wrong team, on the wrong contract, and on the wrong role. And that's 100% right. And, you know, people are already back to saying, hey, yeah, guys, Jim Rutherford, he's so good. We love Jim Rutherford. Everyone's like, I'm not going to give Jim Rutherford any

freaking credit for this. Sure, he bought him out, which maybe people didn't really see coming, but But everyone knew how bad this signing was going to be in 2018 when we first saw the rumors of Jack John's potentially coming to the Penguins. And then the signing was leaked a few days prior to July 1st. I think Mark Madden actually tweeted it out just a couple days before it. And, you know, we all even said we're trying to get Jim Rutherford to go back and say, hey, man,

think about this. This is not a good idea. You're going to regret this. He's not going to play out these five years. And what do you know? He didn't. And, you know, also one of the funniest things about this. You guys remember just a few weeks ago.

Jim Rutherford was like, oh yeah, man, he's going to play out his tenure here as a penguin. I think he's done a really, really good job. The fan base doesn't understand just what Jack's been through and all this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, nonsense. I mean, you can't take everything he says at face value. And hey, I'm guilty at that. I think a lot of people from Penguin's Twitter are also guilty of that. I mean, I remember the James Neal situation where he was like, yeah, I don't really think I'm going to trade James Neal. I think 48 hours later he trades James.

James Neal for Patrick Winquist. So, I mean, like I said, you can't really take a lot of what he's, some of what he says, at face value. And just to go back to my other point, stop shilling for Jim Rutherford people. I don't care if you're in the Pittsburgh media. I don't care if you're a diehard fan of this team or whatever the else you do. You don't really need to shill for Jim Rutherford. He's had a lot of very bad moves these last few years.

I know this is a good move, but, you know, it's a move that didn't need to happen. And now you're going to be paying this player for six more years at, you know, a little under $2 million for the first three and then $917K for the last three. So it's a move that you didn't even need to make in 2018, but you made it and now you get to reap what you sow. But, you know, let's just be positive now for the last few minutes of this segment. This team is a much better hockey team today than it was yesterday. Bottom line, case closed, there's no argument to that. Your defense is so much better, especially your third pairing.

The biggest thing that I said going into this offseason, if anyone, had been listening to this podcast right after this series ended against Montreal, was they need to get rid of the third pairing of Jack Johnson and Justin Schultz. Jim Rutherford actually listened. They're not bringing back Justin Schultz. He's going to go make whatever he wants in free agency. And of course, you know, they finally decided to buy out Jack Johnson because it was that third pairing was just that bad.

In the playoffs, you go on to natural statutes, you look at their numbers together as a third pairing. Jack Johnson was outscored while he was on the ice, five to one. His expected goals for percentage in the series was like not even 40%. I think it was actually like 30 to 33. He was outchance every time he was on the ice. Every time Jack Johnson was on the ice, they were bleeding chances left and right. And it was just like, Jim, what kind of player are you watching that everyone else is not watching?

That's just the biggest thing that I want to know because I really just don't understand it at all. But still, guys, a great moment in Pittsburgh-Fingland's history today. the scene just looks a lot better going into the season now. And I think I can look at this Hornquist for Mathis and trade a lot differently now. They basically traded Padgerald Hornquist and Jack Johnson for Mike Matheson and Colton Severe. And I'm just not as hard on the trade now as I was. I mean, I don't think anyone can be as hard on the trade now as you were. I mean, that's also your opinion though.

So I'm not here to make your opinion for you. But still, I mean, I know you trade away Patrick Hornquist who was a folk hero in this town, but you upgraded your defense, which was a big, big need going in a new. next season and oh yeah you get jack johnson off your team so it just really can't be underestimated just of how big this move was for the penguins in my opinion everyone this puts the penguins back up to being a stanley cup contender if they were going to have jack johnson on this team going into next season i was potentially going to have them missing the playoffs that's just how bad he is that's just how much of like a negative impact he is to the penguins and now that he's no longer there

this team's a contender but we got to see what the other moves are coming to coming. I'm sure Matt Murray is going to be traded very, very soon. We saw that report from Elliot Freeman earlier today saying it sounded like Pittsburgh and Chicago were getting close to a trade with Matt Murray, but Chicago was able to try to talk an extension with him, but it looks like that went nowhere because I'm sure Matt Murray was asking for five to six million per season, and I don't think the Blackhawks were going to do that. So what a day has already been. It is going to be a crazy, crazy week here. Just so much movement is going on. I mean, Matt Niskin, it looks like he's going to retire I'm a penguin, of course.

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first order with DoorDash. All right, welcome back to this episode of the Lockdown Penguins podcast and we are now joined by Jeff, friend Penn's blog, on this such a special day in Pittsburgh Penguins history. Jeff, how are you doing today, man? I am doing great, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I think everyone that's a Penguins fan is doing pretty good today. I was talking in the first segment, man. I probably had to read Frank Cerebelly's tweet five, ten times to make sure that wasn't a fake account because I thought I was being pranked here. But what a day. Jack Johnson is off the hockey team. And that's all there is to it, I think. What are your thoughts on the situation? Yeah, I don't know that it's totally processing and set in yet.

But it's, you know, obviously the team gets, gets a lot better here just by virtue of him not being on it. You know, you kind of hate to hate to say that about a player that's made it to the highest level of the sport. But he just wasn't good the last two years for the Penguins. It hasn't been good, I don't think, ever in his career. So getting that off of the roster and, you know, opening up, you know, almost almost. two million worth of, uh, worth of cap space certainly, certainly helps moving forward. Absolutely. And it looked like they were trying to trade him over the weekend, looking at some reports, but I mean, who wanted that contract? And I mean, I know people are going to be kind of

weirded out that they did a buyout just because we've been reading the last few weeks that they just hate buyouts. And I was talking about it, you know, on my Twitter today and on the earlier segment, I don't blame them for hating buyouts. I mean, you're going to be paying in for the next six years. I mean, it's the same for a lot of players in that situation. I mean, the Rangers just bought out Henrik Lundquist. You've seen a lot of other buyouts throughout the years where teams are just paying players for however many years. But this one was just very necessary just because of how bad he is and just because of needing the cap space especially because we all know how they love to spend up for the salary cap. They want to upgrade the team in other

areas. They still have the Matt Murray trade to do. It just made sense even though I know they didn't want to do it. Yeah, and, you know, you kind of have to think of it on a personal level, too. You know, you build these relationships within the organization and with your players. And the last thing you want to do is just say, you know what, look, I screwed up with you and, you know, see you later. You know, as far as the cap goes to, you know, you kind of have to think of it as kind of a cost-benefit analysis, right?

So at some point, you know, if you were going to find a taker for him, you weren't ever going to find a takeer of his full contract. I mean, that was pretty much written in stone, you know, with probably with the, with the Nick Eustadt trade, to be honest with you. But, you know, you were never going to really find someone that was going to take that full contract. So, you know, you think about it this way. You know, if you were, if you were going to retain some salary in any sort of transaction, was that really ever going to be less than, you know, the, retained salary, you know, with the buyout? So, you know, you figure, you know, you're saving two, 2.8 million or 2.08 million over the next,

over the next two seasons, or each of the next two seasons, rather. So that's really all that I think that they're focused on versus what would be a retained salary at, you know, say, 50%. You know, that that 2.08's going to be going to be a higher savings than what they would have gotten had they retained even half of his, half the salary. And, you know, that goes on for, that would have gone on for, you know, three more years rather than the next two.

And like we talked about, you know, last week, the next two years are the pertinent ones with his team. Yeah, I think people aren't realizing that as well. I'm glad you said that because they would probably be retaining more salary on if they were to trade him than they are right now. So, I mean, it's really good that they're not even paying in $2 million these next three years. And then I think the last three, it's what, $917K? I mean, I don't really give a damn about those last three years because the team is probably

not going to be that good for most of those last three years. But these next few, I mean, so what? It's less than $2 million per season that you're paying him. You're still saving $2 million against the cap. And he's not on a team. That's the big thing. This is now a better hockey team today than it was yesterday. And honestly, man, I think they're back to being a contender with just this move.

I really honestly believe that. Well, and that brings me to kind of my next kind of talking point I had written down here is now these guys have nowhere to hide. You know, you're without your two worst players that were a total detriment to this team, you know, the last two years in Johnson and Schultz. They're gone now. There's no, there's nowhere to hide. So, you know, it just comes down to this. It's time to win. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, now you're third pairing. You can put Mike Matheson down there. I know he has his fault. I know he makes a lot of money. But offensively, he can actually move the puck up the ice. He has a good shot, good first pass. Jack Johnson didn't have any of those things, and he can defend a bit in his own zone,

and I think some of the video that I've watched on him is definitely coachable from Tyler Reardon. So that's a big upgrade there. I know you can look at the salary and say he makes a lot of money. He does, but I'll take it. And then Chad Ruido takes Justin Schultz's spot. That's a much better third pairing, man, and it's cheaper. That's the best part about it.

Yep. And, you know, you kind of position yourself in such a way, too, where, you know, if Ruweedo isn't really working out, out, he's not living up to, you know, what you want to see out of your, out of your number six defensemen, then, you know, you have, you have options now to, to go out and, and find a trade and bring in a true number five, number six defenseman there for that, for that bottom bearing. So, you know, this, this does kind of give them a little bit more flexibility, you know, a decent chunk of, of that money that they're saving is going to be taken up in,

in just kind of resigning some of these restricted free agents. But, you know, they're like we talked about, I mean, there's just going to be so much more flexibility with not having to worry about $3.25 million in anchor, whether it be in your regular lineup or in the press box, you just don't have to worry about that anymore. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I was reading Jim Rutherford's comments.

Like, yeah, we can put him on his offside or we can put him in the press box every night. And it's like, what? That was the most confusing thing to me. It was like, no, you got to get them off the team. Whatever it takes, as they say from the Avengers movies and everything like that. But before we get to the next segment, Jeff, we'll just talk about Tristan Jari signing because, oh, yeah, that happened too. We can talk about Bilko a little bit.

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That's promo code locked for $30 off at BuiltGo. dot com. Okay, Jeff, so I mean, I guess the Tristan Jari signing also happened. That was a, I think I liked the deal, you know, three years, three point five million per season. It's actually lower than what Matt Murray got on his deal after the one that Stanley Cups. What are your thoughts on that deal? I'm pretty okay with it, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of right in line with kind of what we all expected that to be.

You know, there was no way to, I don't know that there was really any way to justify giving him exactly what Murray got on his bridge deal, but, you know, you kind of expected it to be a little bit of a bridge deal and you kind of expected it to be a little bit less than what Murray was coming off of. So that to me just makes a lot of sense. You know, and it's going to be curious what the return for Murray is going to be. You know, I'm obviously a big Mad Murray guy. You know, I know he's struggled at times over the last. the last two seasons, but there's a lot of stuff that, you know, he does, he does really well that's better than what Jari does. And there's a lot of stuff that Jari does that's better than Murray. So, you know, we're, we're going to, it's going to be interesting to see kind of what,

what we actually have in, in Tristan Jari now. And again, it's going to be interesting to see what the, what the, um, return is now for, for Murray. And one of the, one of the extra things that, that I don't think is kind of going, um, going really acknowledged right now, now that Johnson has been bought out, you don't have to diminish your return on Matt Murray by trying to package Johnson with him. Yes, yes, yes. That is huge,

because now you can maybe get Murray for like a second round pick or something like that. I've been holding out hope that they can somehow get a first for him, but I don't think a team is dumb enough to do that, but I would absolutely love it. But, you know, your point about, you know, the Murray and Jari thing, how they both do stuff better than each other.

I 100% agree with that. It's almost like, I saw Adam Greggis was tweeting about this over the weekend. It's almost like you're kind of flipping a coin here and hoping this works out in your favor because we all know Jari's sample size is very limited. He had some very good sports during the season. Obviously, he was an all-star, but then his play came down quite a bit, I would say, after that, and then I know he had that really good playoff start too. So I'm just really hoping that he can put, you know, that all-star caliber, like stats, those like those spurts into like a full season

for the penguins, obviously for the next three seasons. And then maybe he can go out and cash out on another deal because I'm not really interested in paying goalies long term. So I'm just really hoping that he can put it all together and just show everyone that he can just be the goalie for a full season that he was in that spurt that led him to being an all-star. Yeah, that's the big thing. And I think, you know, obviously the whole idea of not having to pay him as much as you're going to have to pay Murray was basically what was always going to tip this in his favor as

far as being the starting guy the next, you know, one to three years, however it plays out. But, you know, one of the other things I think we have to consider with Jari as well is the fact that, you know, he's now playing behind a defense corps that, that, again, doesn't have Jack Johnson and Justin Schult. Yeah. He's not going to have to face the same quality on when, you know, any of the other pairings are out there that there's not going to be that discrepancy. So I think that that's going to be one of the other things to really keep an eye on

is just how much, you know, he flourishes not having to go up against high quality shots, you know, 20% of the time that the other defense bearings out on the ice. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, they're not going to be bleeding as many high danger chances next season. I don't think, and especially with Johnson and Schultz off the team. But, you know, one more question before I let you go. What do you see the team doing now, besides the Matt Murray trade, which is hopefully going to come this week. I would much rather have that done during the draft week, so we know what their cap number is going to be going to a free agency.

You know, we have the Passen Hornquist deal from Mike Matheson. Now we have the Jack Johnson domino that falls. Do you see any holes on this team that you would like them to address in free agency or any more trades outside of Matt Murray? Yeah, I think, you know, with them not qualifying Simone, that kind of opens up a little bit of a hole there on the, on the third line, you know, I can't, I think CVR is okay. I just don't know that he's necessarily going to be, you know, the type of guy that you that you want to ride or die with with, you know, McCann on that, on that third line. So I think, I think somewhere on maybe either wing, you know, on that third line, you kind of

see, maybe see them try to fill a hole. I just don't know that it's going to be on the, in the first, you know, one to, seven days of free agency. I think all the big ticket guys are going to go for a decent chunk of money that it's going to really price the penguins out. But, you know, I could see them, I could see them adding someone, someone that doesn't really get too much of attention or even just bring back Dominic Simone. Yeah.

And just see, just see where you're at after that. I'm personally not entirely sold on Sam Lafferty or Anthony. Angelo. I know they're probably going to fill some holes there at the beginning of the season just by virtue of, you know, Aston Reese still being injured and the whole left now with Simone. So I think there will be there will be some stop gaps. But yeah, I can imagine, I can foresee them, you know, grabbing someone in free agency as being one of the other loan things that they do. I can't, I just don't see them having much, having much flexibility out there.

outside of, you know, trading Murray and maybe signing a downline-up guy. Yeah, I think it's probably just going to be someone on the cheap they get for the third line. I think I was reading Jim Lepiver today. He talked to Dave Molinari, and he was like, yeah, if we're going to sign someone, it's probably going to be three days after the first day of free agency, just because we don't have the cap to go after anyone on the first day. You know, thank God there's no Chris Tandum situation that's happening right now. So I would agree with you on that.

I'm hoping that Severe can fit on that third line. I don't really think him and McCann played on a line together down in Florida. I don't have to double check that, though. So that would be interesting. But, yeah, I'm also not really sold on Sam Lafferty either. But, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on this episode of Locked on Penguins. I really appreciate it. And, yeah, man, we're going to do this hopefully again soon,

especially with what's going to happen in free agency in the draft this week. It's going to be a crazy week. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, thanks again for having me on. I appreciate it. Yeah, perfect. Well, more episodes coming later this week, guys. it's going to be crazy so keep it right here on locked on penguins