Tim Benz: Evgeni Malkin's decision to stay in Pittsburgh softens focus on Rickard Rakell's contract

Did you ever break up with someone after a long relationship, then start dating somebody else you barely know right away in an attempt to get back at that other person?

Did that new relationship immediately start off with a $30 million prenup?

That sort of feels like what happened when Pittsburgh Penguins general manager Ron Hextall signed forward Rickard Rakell a few hours after it became known that Evgeni Malkin was about to enter free agency.

I’m not going to suggest Rakell’s signing was done totally out of spite. But I’m also not going to rule out the possibility that some may have been present when Hextall made the final call to Rakell’s agent.

I could hear the conversation sounding something like, “OK. Geno’s out. What did you say Rak wanted? Thirty million over six years? Done. Would he be interested in wearing No. 71, as well?”

Alright. I’m exaggerating with that last part, but I don’t think I’m too far off on the rest of it.

But then Malkin reversed course and signed a four-year contract to stay in Pittsburgh late Tuesday night, and the tone surrounding Rakell’s contract changed.

Now the debate is about whether that deal is going to prove to be a good one on its own merits, independent of what role it played in the drama surrounding Malkin.

Don’t get me wrong. Rakell is a good player. He was a nice acquisition at the trade deadline by Hextall. I hoped to see the Penguins make a run at keeping him. I just didn’t see them giving him $5 million a year.

I didn’t see them giving him six years either.

More on Penguins re-signing Evgeni Malkin:

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• With a new contract in his pocket, many milestones are within reach for Evgeni Malkin
• Penguins re-sign forward Evgeni Malkin to 4-year contract

The Swedish winger will turn 30 during the second year of the deal. After back-to-back 30-goal seasons in Anaheim in 2016-17 and 2017-18, Rakell’s 20 goals last year (four with Pittsburgh in 19 games) were the most he has been able to muster. He has not totaled more than 43 points since his career-high 69 points in 2017-18.

Rakell did show some decent chemistry with Sidney Crosby when the two were on a line together. But it seems a bit optimistic to assume there’s a lot more to tap from Rakell than what the rest of the league has seen in his first 10 years. At least not to the degree that the Penguins were perhaps bidding against themselves with this contract.

To some extent, that appeared to be the case because I can’t imagine Rakell’s representatives would’ve swayed their client away from unfettered free agency to tether him to a city that he barely knows, with a team that hasn’t won a playoff round in four years.

Whether it was the $30 million total value or the six-year term, Rakell must’ve thought that was better than he was going to get anywhere else.

In Pittsburgh, it’s clear Rakell was Hextall’s fourth priority. After extending Bryan Rust and then Kris Letang. After trying to work out a deal with Malkin. What Rakell seemed to get was the lion’s share of the franchise’s salary cap leftovers.

That is, until more money was pulled from the Penguins remaining $10.3 million in cap space, so Malkin could sign a contract worth $6.1 million per year about 24 hours later. According to Cap Friendly’s math, that leaves Hextall with just $4.2 million heading into free agency on Wednesday.

Maybe that was the final goosing Malkin needed to sign his contract, knowing that he wanted to stay in Pittsburgh all along and that he couldn’t play chicken with Hextall once free agency began. And seeing how the Rakell contract left the Penguins with so little wiggle room to negotiate under the cap.

Now the question becomes, after being so intertwined this offseason, will Rakell and Malkin mesh as linemates in 2022-23? Or will Rakell begin the year on Crosby’s line with Rust starting on Malkin’s wing?

In a recent conversation with TribLIVE’s Seth Rorabaugh, president of hockey operations Brian Burke insisted that the team’s reaction to Malkin’s initial decision to pursue free agency wasn’t negative. That proved true.

So, by extension, I suppose we should believe that the club simply likes Rakell that much and suddenly had the money to pay him when Malkin bluffed about free agency.

While Rakell wasn’t necessarily chosen over Malkin per se, it would’ve been perceived that way by the hard-core, Geno-bot subsection of Penguins fans who can’t wrap their brains around the concept of a Penguins roster without Malkin on it.

Fortunately for them, they won’t have to for four more years.

Now, ironically, Rakell and Malkin—together—could go a long way toward helping the Penguins get out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2018.