Josh Yohe of The Athletic: Pittsburgh Penguins GM Jim Rutherford knows the salary cap won’t be going any higher than this year’s $81.5 million. They will have limited room once again and it could cost them one of their goaltenders.
The Penguins have two restricted free agent goaltenders who will be looking for a raise – Matt Murray and Tristan Jarry. The Penguins have $68 million already committed to contracts for next season.
“Well,” Rutherford said, “I’ll say this: If we are going to keep both of them, we’d have to move a few things around on our team. There is a way to do things and to make that work, yes. There are some very, very tough decisions ahead.”
Murray is coming off of a $3.75 million deal, Jarry was only making $675,000. Could they try to keep both somehow?
“It’s an obvious answer if you’re asking me if I want to keep them together,” Rutherford said. “We will be a better hockey team if we have both of those guys on our roster next year. We know that. We would have been a better hockey team in (the 2017-18 season) if we had Murray and Fleury. But the cap system doesn’t always let you do things in that way. Will we be able to keep them together because of the cap? It’s going to be tough. It gets a lot tighter when you know the number isn’t going up. I try not to think about it too much right now because we really don’t know what that final number is going to be. We can’t make the decisions at this moment. But we know it won’t be easy.”
Dan Kingerski of Pittsburgh Hockey Now: The Pittsburgh Penguins started receiving calls about their goaltending back at the trade deadline. GM Jim Rutherford wasn’t interested in trading one at that time, but something could happen towards/at the draft.
Multiple sources in February said the Colorado Avalanche had called the Penguins about their goaltenders. Sources were split on if Murray or Jarry was the target. A ‘senior’ source said it was Murray. Now both sources are saying that Murray is a more likely target.
One source: “I know (Sakic) likes Jarry, a lot,”
Penguins Salary Cap Projections