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A rundown of what Jim Rutherford's extension means

November 14, 2018, 1:13 PM ET [28 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
This was written before the Carl Hagelin trade. It doesn't really change anything about how I feel below.

The Penguins have extended Jim Rutheford for three more years as the Penguins General Manager. I can’t say this comes as a surprise. When the team allowed Jason Botterill to interview with other teams and let him eventually be hired by the Buffalo Sabres that was the team telling Rutherford he can stay as long as he wants.

What does this mean? The Penguins are all in and don’t expect many of the roster decisions to care about what lies ahead in five years. The trend of futures and first round picks being used to help the present time is going to continue. I am not totally against the mindset. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are never going to play for the Penguins again. You only get this opportunity one time. The issue moving forward is that you have a trigger happy general manager with no real direction on how to navigate the now.

Jim Rutherford has flipped back and forth from the speed and skill approach and the intangibles and toughness approach. His moves the past two years have hurt more than they helped. He is also running out of valuable futures to trade in order to improve the now. The few futures they have don’t really carry high value. Daniel Sprong’s value has been mushed just like Pouliot’s because they wouldn’t pull the trigger on a deal before dragging out the ‘will he play or won’t he’ saga. A first round pick is OK, but the Penguins are going to be in the later half of any draft. Calen Addison and Filip Hallander are nice prospects albeit not the kind that are going to be the center piece of any deal. Rutherford is in a situation where he has to rob Peter to pay Paul. You have to give to get and any value coming back from another team isn’t likely to significantly outweigh what they have to give up. These are going to be fairly neutral moves that just re-arrange the roster and not be straight up additions.

I can’t blame Rutherford for signing his extension right now. If he continues his streak of bad moves he is still going to get paid for an additional three years.



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