So far, I have brought up a couple of left wingers as options for the Penguins in Brandon Saad and Tomas Tatar. Today, I will address the right side which I think is a bigger need for the Penguins moving forward. It is no secret Bryan Rust is entering the final season of his contract. He is due a big raise based on past performance (as are most free agents including who I am talking about today).
The Penguins have a few options for Rust. The first is to play things out and let him cash in at the end of the year elsewhere. Some people are adamantly against it. I’m fine if it goes that way. It is the life of being a win now team with cap issues. The second option is to play things out this year and re-sign him. There is a path where I am OK with that as well. The third is to trade him instead of risking losing nothing for him which I like the least. The buzzer is about to go on this Penguins era and you can’t just kick the can down the road a year anymore. You can’t move your best right wing out the door because he might price himself out of town when you might be in the final year of the window. You would feel pretty dumb if you closed the door on a Cup run this late in the game because you were afraid of losing a player via free agency. The situation is what it is. Blame the last guy in charge.
There is a scenario where you might be able to sign Rust’s replacement and have him contribute on the team at the same time Rust is playing out his final year. This is where Zach Hyman comes into play. Hyman is an unrestricted free agent who is currently way underpaid and set to cash in very similarly to Bryan Rust. He is coming off two very strong offensive campaigns where he had 21 goal and 37 points in 51 games in 2019-20 and last year had 15 goals and 33 points in only 41 games. Like Rust, Hyman is 29 years old and relies on his speed to cause damage while taking advantage of playing with high quality centers. The same reservations you would have for re-signing Rust apply to Hyman as well. Here is the comparison
There are similarities even if they aren't exact, but where they differ the most is special teams. Bryan Rust has been very good on the power play while Hyman has not. Zach Hyman is decent on the PK while Rust weirdly enough doesn’t get time on the PK despite his speed and tenacity.
Both of these players are likely looking at the 5-5.5M range on their next contracts. Hyman’s would of course be this offseason with Rust being the next. I don’t think you can have both of these players long term, but there is a path to having them both next year. It will take some aggressive cap management from the front office to get it done.
The Penguins would have to shave Jason Zucker, Brandon Tanev, and Juuso Riikola from the books. They'd also have to part with Marcus Pettersson or less likely Mike Matheson. This would create enough money to be aggressive in free agency which is the Penguins best hope of bringing in quality depth players at this stage of the era.
Clearing those mid-tier contracts paves the way to feasibly go after Zach Hyman, but also a player I talked about yesterday, Tomas Tatar. Tatar will likely not get market value for his actual value. Hyman will likely get his market rate.
To accomplish this there are a lot of moving parts. I'm usually not a big fan of spending time on ideas with this many moving parts. It is a path I rarely go down and makes this route highly unlikely. For this to have a sliver of a chance it would have to be a Brian Burke led charge because he is the executive with the boldness to move these many parts. Ron Hextall wasn’t exactly known for his propensity to make lots of moves in Philadelphia.
If you want to entertain a world where this could happen a top nine of the following sure would make the Penguins interesting. This is about as much of a refresh as you could hope to see while keeping the main pieces intact.
Guentzel-Crosby-Hyman(5M)
Tatar(4M)-Malkin-Rust
McCann-Carter-Kapanen
Assuming one of Matheson/Pettersson is moved the defense group is still seven deep under contract:
Dumoulin-Letang
Pettersson/Matheson-Marino
Joseph-Ruhwedel
Friedman
You’d still have a shade over 7M in cap space to fill out the 4th line. I wouldn’t use all 7M on the fourth line as the goaltending situation still needs to be addressed, but that remains dependent on the team’s ability to move out Jarry anyways.
I don’t know what do you think? Am I Hyman?
Thanks for reading!
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