Salary cap situation makes Penguins roster moves inevitable

Given their performance in a first-round sweep by the New York Islanders and his track record as an active general manager, there is zero chance Jim Rutherford wants to go into next season with the same roster the Pittsburgh Penguins used at the end of this year.

Factoring in the team’s salary cap situation, those chances drop to less than zero.

The Penguins have about $79 million committed to 17 players for next year. The salary cap is expected to be around $83 million.

The Penguins have three restricted free agents they’ll want to prioritize signing — defenseman Marcus Pettersson and forwards Zach Aston-Reese and Teddy Blueger.

Pettersson doesn’t have arbitration rights while Aston-Reese and Blueger don’t have extensive NHL resumes, so they won’t break the bank, but the best the Penguins could hope to re-sign the trio for is about $2.5 million. That’s 20 players for about $81.5 million.

Add in three more players to round out a 23-man roster, either young players from the system like Juuso Riikola and Adam Johnson or free agents to replace depth pieces like Matt Cullen and Garrett Wilson, and the Penguins are getting closer to a total of $84 million.

To make any kind of substantive changes beyond merely dumping one player to become cap compliant, Rutherford is going to need some wiggle room.

That’s one of the reasons — perhaps the biggest one — why a player as talented as Phil Kessel will probably spend the summer in the rumor mill.

Kessel’s $6.8 million salary cap hit isn’t an exorbitant price to pay for a player who has hit a point per game in each of the last two seasons. He’ll be attractive to offensively challenged teams. To a lesser extent, the same idea might apply to Patric Hornqvist ($5.3 million), Bryan Rust ($3.5 million) or Nick Bjugstad ($4.1 million).

Beyond that, it seems like a necessity that Rutherford will need to shave some of the total salary he’s paying his defense corps before next season.

Four players slotted into the team’s second and third defense pairs – Justin Schultz ($5.5 million), Olli Maatta ($4.08 million), Erik Gudbranson ($4.0 million) and Jack Johnson ($3.25 million) – make more than $16 million between them. That doesn’t appear to be sustainable. At least one and maybe more will likely be on the move.

Matt Murray’s contract is up after next season, so re-signing him will become a priority at some point. He’ll still carry a reasonable $3.75 million cap hit for next year, though, so accounting for his inevitable raise is a can that can be kicked down the road for a little while.