Jim Rutherford, Penguins continue to wait, make contingency plans

About 365 days ago, Jim Rutherford wasn’t terribly busy.

He had just watched the Pittsburgh Penguins get swept from the first round of the playoff by the New York Islanders with a 3-1 home loss April 16, 2019.

That humiliating defeat was the start of an uncertain time for the Penguins and their general manager, which led to considerable changes for the organization.

One year later, Rutherford and the Penguins are again dealing with the unknown in late April.

Mainly, they don’t know when their next game will be.

With the NHL and all sports leagues in North America on hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic, Rutherford and the Penguins still are going about their business, even if they don’t know when business will resume.

“I know the league and the (NHLPA) are working hard together to try to figure out a way to do it and do it in a safe way,” Rutherford said in a phone interview with the Tribune-Review on Monday while enjoying some light exercise in his backyard. “That’s going to be the most important thing. There’s going to be a little more time to figure all that out. But I know everybody is working hard on it.”

The Penguins have not played since March 10. Two days later, the NHL suspended play for all 31 teams.

In the 40 days since, the Penguins have tried to maintain some level of readiness, even if they’re largely confined to their homes and don’t have a target date for which to aim.

“Everybody in their own department talks, communicates on a regular basis,” Rutherford said. “Probably four to five days a week. I talked to (coach) Mike Sullivan and (CEO and president) David Morehouse almost daily here four to five times a week. Communication has been really good. Everybody has been communicating with everybody. Our player development guys are talking to our prospects. All the way through the organization.

“Lots of conference calls going on related to the amateur draft. All the different things that we deal with. Hockey (operations) and the coaching staff have been working being prepared to play if we play at some point this season, and if not, what we may like to do moving forward for next season.”

The prospect of completing the 2019-20 season appears to be a moving target. Teams and leagues are at the mercy of state or provincial laws, which can vary considerably given the ongoing pandemic.

The rules for New York can be very different for Pennsylvania or California or Alberta.

There’s also the not-so-minor matter of the border between the United States and Canada being closed to nonessential travel. That has a considerable impact on the bottom line for the Penguins and the NHL as a whole.

“It’s affected this year a lot,” Rutherford said. “As a league, it’s going to be a $1.1 billion shortfall. That obviously affects every team. That obviously affects the players’ share, escrow, everything. On the other side of that is the projections for next season as to what the revenue is going to be and everything. Personally, I’d like to think that we get to next season, and we have therapeutic drugs or a vaccine or close to a vaccine, which changes everybody’s mindset.”

Next season’s salary cap is a huge question mark. The cap is determined by hockey-related revenue from the previous league year as outlined by the collective bargaining agreement between the league and players’ association.

While Rutherford has signed some prospects to entry-level contracts, he has not recently discussed any potential contract extensions with pending restricted or unrestricted free agents such as goaltenders Matt Murray, Tristan Jarry, forward Jared McCann and others.

“I haven’t been doing any negotiations with our NHL players because we don’t know what the cap is going to be,” Rutherford said. “It can just take one or two contracts that put a team in a tough spot. Until we know what the cap is going to be for next year, I don’t think there will be a lot of negotiations going on.”

Another matter that affects the Penguins is the status of conditions in trades they made before February’s trade deadline.

In acquiring forward Jason Zucker from the Minnesota Wild on Feb. 11, the Penguins could defer the 2020 first-round draft pick they sent to the Wild to 2021 if they were to miss the 2020 playoffs per parameters of the transaction. The Penguins control the option on that trade, and it expires on June 1.

Additionally, their acquisition of forward Patrick Marleau on Feb. 24 from the San Jose Sharks sent a conditional third-round pick in 2021 to Sharks that could be upgraded to a second-rounder if the Penguins win the Stanley Cup this season.

There are several other conditional transactions around the league that could be affected by how the NHL concludes (or doesn’t conclude) the season. It has not been determined how the league will determine a course of action with those conditions.

Rutherford seems to be primarily concerned with the pick that went to San Jose.

“They’re different kinds of trades,” Rutherford said. “The Minnesota trade is a player that we have in his prime that we have another three years left. It wasn’t a rental.

“The San Jose trade was a rental and a draft pick. That point has been raised to the league as to what is the fairness of that, when you get a rental player to take a run in the playoffs, and you only get the player for a couple of handful of games. That has been raised with the league.”

How the NHL proceeds with the 2020 draft also remains to be seen. Originally scheduled for June 26-27 in Montreal, the league indefinitely postponed the event and could stage its draft remotely.

The draft is one of the few times of the year when virtually every general manager, coach, agent, scout or other hockey operations staffer gather in one place on one weekend. A lot of horse trading goes on in a face-to-face fashion, and in many ways, that weekend is almost as big as trade-deadline day or the start of free agency in terms of player movement.

How will that be altered in a more virtual setting?

“It will obviously be a lot different,” Rutherford said. “I feel bad for the players that are being drafted and their families. They love to come and enjoy that (weekend). That’s who I feel bad for. As for teams, we can adjust with technology.I’m sure we’ll be working off a few phones and computers and everything like that. Because there (are) trade talks going on. It’s easier to do at the draft in person. But even though it’s going to be tougher, I believe we’ll be able to adjust.”

The Penguins and the NHL have no choice but to adjust. And they are seemingly doing it on a daily or weekly (or monthly) basis as the pandemic continues.

As he waits for his next game, Rutherford has turned to another sport, which also has been halted by the coronavirus, to fill his days.

“I really do miss baseball,” he said. “This is a nice time of the year. To get the home opener out of the way and get the start of the season going. I find watching some of those old games, hockey and baseball games are fun. … I watched the Pirates’ game last week, the (Bill) Mazeroski game (from the 1960 World Series). I watched some other World Series games in the 1970s and ‘80s.

“I mean, I really enjoyed them, but I’d really like to be watching the Pirates play live right now. Just as I’d like to see the Penguins play live right now.”

Notes: Rutherford indicated no member of the team or organization has been diagnosed with coronavirus. … Rutherford did not have any updates on players who were sidelined because of injuries — such as forwards Nick Bjugstad or Jake Guentzel — before the league shut down.

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