Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Six Degrees of Chris Chelios episode on teams continuing to call the Pittsburgh Penguins to see what could be available. Will they make one of their goaltenders available?
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Friedman: “The other thing I just want to mention about the penguins is it’s pretty clear to me that after they lost at home to LA in the Jagr retirement night, that teams started calling them and they said what exactly is available here?
And, again, I, the cornerstone players are not available. I think there’s other players that have trade protection that they’re really not eager to go to. I’ve heard that they said they are going to try to respect trade protection as much as they can.
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And so unless you’re going to blow them away for someone who has a no-trade or no-move, who’s not a cornerstone player, and like for example, I think one of those guys is Brian Rust. He’s got, like I’ve heard Pittsburgh told teams were going to retry to respect the protection here and Rust actually got hurt on Sunday, unfortunately.
So, but other than that, they’re you know what Dubas apparently told teams was, it is his job to learn the market for these players. And one position. and someone actually called me on Sunday morning and told me there’s been some talk around Pittsburgh that the Penguins are going to trade a goalie. Now initially my assumption was Nedeljkovic. He’s making $1.5 million. He’s a UFA after this year. I know he had a really rough night in that game last week that they lost on Thursday night, the one in overtime against the Islanders, but generally he’s been very good. And I can see some teams you need, like a B, a 1B, who could really use him.
But somebody said that this is not limited to Nedelkovich that I think teams have asked about (Tristan) Jarry. I think teams have asked about (Joel) Bloomqvist who’s their top prospect who has played very well in Wilkes Barre (AHL) this year. So what I do think there is that Pittsburgh has an extra goalie and they will listen. That is not impossible a goalie moves out of Pittsburgh.
I mean, look, if you’re trying to win, and they are, even though he’s doing a retool, I still think they want to compete. It’s kind of hard to see Jarry being the one who goes. He’s the best goalie they have. He leaves the league in shutouts. I mean, the only concern I have about Jarry is he gets hurt a lot. Like that’s, that’s something that makes you a little bit nervous, especially since he signed a term but people just said to me, it’s not impossible a goalie goes here.
So in addition to everything else we’re thinking of with Pittsburgh, that’s another thing to put on the radar.”
Marek: “Interesting on headlines, some of the teams that you mentioned swinging back to Jake Guentzel: Vegas Vancouver, Edmonton, Florida, Carolina. The caveat to all of that is, there has to be more.”
Friedman: “Yes.”
Marek: “When you have someone like Jake Guentzel available.”
Friedman: “You know, on in the last pod we talked about Detroit. I don’t know that Detroit’s interested and it’s not like (GM Steve) Yzerman is volunteering information to anyone. But there are a lot of people who see it as a fit.
You know, the one thing about Yzerman is, is that they have a spot on the left side there. It certainly is a positional fit on the team.”
