Penguins re-sign forward Danton Heinen for one year, $1 million

The Pittsburgh Penguins wanted to keep Danton Heinen, even if they took steps that were, in theory, antithetical to him returning this offseason.

Ultimately, all parties decided it was in the best interest of all involved to maintain a mostly fruitful union.

On Thursday, the Penguins re-signed Heinen to a one-year contract worth $1 million.

This contract comes 363 days after Heinen originally joined the Penguins when he signed a one-year contract worth $1.1 million.

That low-risk deal bore strong results as Heinen appeared in 76 games and set a career-high with 18 goals while also posting 15 assists and 33 points as well as averaging 12 minutes, 43 seconds of ice time per contest.

Capable of playing both wings, Heinen filled a variety of roles for the Penguins throughout the 2021-22 season on all four lines. In the postseason, he largely skated on the team’s second line and scored three goals in seven playoff games.

Heinen was scheduled to become a restricted free agent this offseason but the Penguins opted to not extend a qualifying offer to him to avoid an arbitration hearing that would have likely led to him being rewarded a salary figure that would have not been in the franchise’s interest as it relates to its salary cap. As a result, Heinen became an unrestricted free agent July 13.

“Most of these guys, when you have a case where a player has had a productive year and he’s not qualified, often, it’s because teams are nervous about their (potential) arbitration case,” Penguins president of hockey operations Brian Burke said earlier this month. “And that’s the case here. We were very happy with Danton. He’s a great kid. He had a good year for us. But by performing as well as he did, it puts us in an arbitration position that’s untenable.”

With several teams dealing with little to no salary cap space this offseason, Heinen returned to the Penguins at a reduced salary.

While Penguins management is presumably more than sated to retain Heinen at only $1 million, it still must figure out what to do with the team’s salary cap figure which, according to Cap Friendly, sits at $83,980,175. That total is $1,480,175 over the NHL’s upper limit of $82.5 million, although it includes 14 forwards, eight defensemen and two goalies, a couple of whom could be sent to the AHL without going on waivers.

With Heinen re-signed, 12 players who finished the 2021-22 season under NHL contract to the Penguins remain unsigned with regards to an NHL club:

Forwards: Justin Almeida, Jordy Bellerive, Kasper Bjorkqvist, Brian Boyle, Michael Chaput, Jan Drozg, Evan Rodrigues

Defensemen: Niclas Almari, Nathan Beaulieu, Cam Lee, Will Reilly

Goaltender: Alex D’Orio

Almari, Almeida, Bellerive, Drozg, D’Orio, Lee and Reilly became unrestricted free agents after the Penguins opted not to extend qualifying offers to them.

Bjorkqvist and Almari have signed with teams in Europe, though the Penguins opted to retain Bjorkqvist’s NHL rights as a restricted free agent and extended him a qualifying offer.