Goaltending decisions for the Penguins
Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: It made sense for Pittsburgh Penguins GM Jim Rutherford back in 2017 to move on from Marc-Andre Fleury and go with the younger Matt Murray has their goalie of the future.
Fast forward to today and Rutherford has a tougher decision on how to deal with pending RFAs in Murray and Tristan Jarry. Murray will be looking to make more money on his next deal but has been inconsistent during the past three regular seasons. Murray has backstopped the Penguins to two Stanley Cups.
Murray is coming off a deal that carried a salary cap hit of $3.75 million. He could be looking for a new deal higher the John Gibson‘s $6.4 million, but would the Penguins even want to go higher than $6 million given his injury history? He could get in the $6 million range in arbitration.
“In a perfect world, you’d keep Murray and Jarry as a great 1A-1B combination. I think that would be the best scenario going forward,” Boucher said. “But you just wonder if that’s something Matt Murray wants to do. ‘Do I want to get paid or do I want to be on a but I may share the workload?’”
Jarry will be looking for a raise as well but may look at a short-term deal in the $2 to $3 million range. Could he get an offer sheet?
The Penguins also have Casey DeSmith at $1.25 million for another two seasons.
Expansion draft locks and options for the Penguins
Dan Kingerski of Pittsburgh Hockey Now: Pittsburgh Penguins Defenseman John Marino will be exempt from the 2021 Seattle expansion draft.
Obvious locks to be protected are Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel, Kris Letang, and Brian Dumoulin, with Bryan Rust, Jason Zucker and Marcus Pettersson likely protected as well.
The Penguins remaining two forward slots (if going the seven forwards, three defense and one goaltender option) could come from Jared McCann, Patric Hornqvist, Teddy Blueger, Brandon Tanev, Zach Aston-Reese, Dominik Simon and anyone else worthy that they acquire before the draft.
Teams may not be willing to trade draft picks/prospects as freely as they did with Vegas to better dictate who to/who not to select.