With long-term goals in mind, Penguins avoid 'big fish' in free agency

As the NHL’s free-agency signing period opened Monday, things were different for Kyle Dubas than a year ago.

On July 1, 2023, he opened the Pittsburgh Penguins’ coffers and splurged by signing the likes of defenseman Ryan Graves and forward Lars Eller and re-signed goaltender Tristan Jarry.

Only 366 days later (this is a leap year), the franchise’s president of hockey operations and general manager looked at the bottom shelf of the NHL’s free-agent market and was far more frugal.

The gently used likes of defenseman Matt Grzelyck and forward Anthony Beauvillier were imported, and expensive forward Reilly Smith was jettisoned to the New York Rangers (along with most of his salary).

Monday bore little resemblance to the opening of the 2023 free agent signing period in Dubas’ eyes.

But it did spark memories of when he started his NHL career as an assistant general manager with the Toronto Maple Leafs and helped initiate the laborious process of rebuilding that franchise in 2014.

“We weren’t huge buyers then,” Dubas said in Cranberry. “And then every other year since then … it’s been going into free agency and trying to be involved in all the big fish, per se. So, this year kind of brings me back to my first couple of seasons in the league.”

“I think you have to be very patient. It’s exciting to go out and bring in players longer term that are very proven players, but those contracts can have varying impacts as you go. … Today, it’s been different, being able to focus on very short-term contracts. And we’re focused on trying to find younger players that can come in.”

Dubas did not specifically use any form of the word “rebuild” Monday. But much of what he’s done since trading All-Star forward Jake Guentzel in March for several future assets is congruent with that pursuit.

The most prominent transaction the Penguins made Monday involved Smith, who was sent to Manhattan for a handful of draft picks. The Penguins will retain $1.25 million of his $5 million salary cap hit.

Beyond that, they mostly collected several spare parts for the NHL roster by signing forwards Blake Lizotte (two years, $1.85 million salary cap hit), Beauvillier (one year, $1.25 million) and defenseman Grzelcyk (one-year $2.75 million) to short contracts. Their additions came two days after the team acquired forward Kevin Hayes from the St. Louis Blues. Because of a previous transaction, only $3,571,429 of his overall cap hit ($7,142,857) counts against the Penguins’ books for the final two years of his contract.

Additionally, they supplemented the organizational depth — i.e. added some players to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins’ roster — by collecting signatures for one one-year, two-way deals from forwards Jimmy Huntington and Bokondji Imama as well as defensemen Nathan Clurman and Mac Hollowell.

In mostly lateral maneuvers, dependable reserve defenseman Ryan Shea was re-signed to a one-year, two-way contract, and bottom-six forward Emil Bemstrom was re-signed for one year and $775,000.

Curiously, 25-year-old defenseman P.O Joseph, who finished the 2023-24 season on the top pairing with Kris Letang, was allowed to become an unrestricted free agent Monday after not receiving a qualifying offer — a formality — as a pending restricted free agent.

Dubas cited a potential arbitration award that could befoul the Penguins’ salary cap figures and indicated the door is still open for Joseph to re-sign.

“The other (pending restricted free agents) who don’t get (qualifying offers) impacts the arbitration case,” Dubas said. “If a number of players that are in that grouping don’t get qualified, you put yourself at more risk. As that information came to us as we went into yesterday, we had (Penguins director of hockey operations and legal affairs Vukie Mpofu) in constant discussion with his representative (Olivier Fortier). We said, ‘This is what we would do.’ Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be qualifying. They elected to take it. They could test the market out. Initially, with the number of similar players, I thought it would be a slam dunk to qualify.

“But as the situation changed, you always have to be cognizant of that.”

What is becoming increasingly apparent is the Penguins aren’t necessarily immediately focused on the postseason. Or at least simply being a participant.

Dubas’ aspirations are much grander than that.

“We’re not looking to simply squeak into the playoffs, it’s to return the team to become a contender as soon as possible. Can we do that this season? Can we do that next season? It’s hard to put a timeframe on it. But this is obviously not a strip-it-down-to-the-studs situation here. The people in the room are too good for that.

“What we’re not going to do is get into the free-agent quick fixes like some of the longer-range things that we’ve seen (Monday). If we had been in a situation where we had been a playoff team and close to being a contender, we would do that. But I think the appetite here is to try to get the team back into contention.”

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