Once again, Penguins general manager Ron Hextall likes his team
On April 7, 2021, Ron Hextall held a conference call with local media and addressed the upcoming trade deadline that was five days away.
Hextall professed satisfaction with his roster as it was constructed at that time.
“I like our team,” Hextall proclaimed. “I like our depth. … I like where we’re at right now.”
Five days later (at roughly 1:30 a.m. to be precise), Hextall pulled the trigger on a major trade that brought forward Jeff Carter from the Los Angeles Kings for a handful of draft picks.
There was little at the time to suggest that Hextall was on the verge of a transaction that significant April 12. He acquired Carter without much word leaking out until the late hours of April 11.
Roughly 11 months later, Hextall is in a similar position as the 2022 trade deadline approaches March 21.
He has limited salary cap space to operate with and has taken a stance of being less-than-willing to part with future assets such as prospects or draft picks.
And he has given little indication of what direction he might take with any potential trades.
On Friday, Hextall held court with media at PPG Paints Arena and spoke quite a bit over the course of 13 minutes but did not say much that could offer any clue as to what — if any — trades he might make.
“In a cap world, we all have areas that we’d like to fill in a little bit,” Hextall said. “But I feel pretty good about the depth of our team. If you look at our defense, we’ve been pretty healthy all year, obviously. We have guys … P.O (Joseph), Juuso (Riikola). If you look up front, we’ve got (Drew O’Connor, Radim Zohorna, Valtteri Puustinen, Filip Hallander and Kasper Bjorkqvist). So I feel good about the depth of our team.
“Would we like to add a little bit up front? Yeah, that would be a fair statement. But I think every team would like to add a little bit up front or on the back end. I feel good. I don’t feel like I don’t have to do anything. But if we can get better, we’re certainly going to try.”
With hobbled forward Jason Zucker expected to come off long-term injured reserve before the end of the regular season, the Penguins won’t have a great deal of projected salary cap space. Any potential trades would require some level of salary retention by another team — such as what happened in the Carter trade — or jettisoning an incumbent player from a roster with which management claims to be satisfied.
Regardless, scoring depth on the wing of the team’s middle two, or even bottom three, lines appears to be a glaring deficiency on the current roster.
“When you look at our first maybe 35 games, the depth scoring was there,” Hextall said. “Then recently, we can look at the numbers and see who it’s dried up for. They’re certainly capable of it. (Forward Kasperi Kapanen) had (eight goals in his first 33 games). Now, he’s got (one goal in the past 24 games). It’s there. There’s some guys that need to play a little bit better. But I think scoring has a little bit of a feel. Even sometimes top scorers, it comes and goes. Our guys need to do a little bit better job. When you’re not scoring, you dig in a little bit more and get to the net. I think we can do a better job of that. I do have confidence that if we can’t do something (with a potential trade) that we do have enough scoring. Would we like to add a little bit? Of course.”
Seemingly since the day he was hired in early February of 2021, Hextall has maintained a stance of needing to replenish a pool of future assets such as prospects and draft picks. Though, the Carter trade did operate against the premise (a second-rounder in 2022 and a third-rounder in 2023 went to the Kings).
He’s not entirely opposed to doing something similar between now and March 21. But not overly eager to do it, either.
“Do we want to get into our prospect pool and our picks?” Hextall said. “Not necessarily. But if the right thing comes up that will help us short term but also a little bit longer term, we would certainly look at it. We’ve talked to some teams, and I have no idea if anything is going to flush out here. We want to be as good as we can be going into the playoffs. If there’s a move that makes sense that makes us better — obviously we have a cap situation that we have to maneuver around — but if everything aligns and we can add someone that helps us for the push here, we’ll definitely do it.”
League-wide, little has happened on the trade market in recent weeks. Hextall suggested once a significant trade is made, that could break the dam for other transactions.
“It’s hard to gauge right now because there hasn’t been a lot done,” Hextall said. “Typically, the first deal that happens sets the market to a degree. There hasn’t been a ton happening yet. So it’s hard to say. There’s quite a few sellers. The (Eastern Conference), it’s not typically like this where there’s such a gap between the playoffs teams and non-playoff teams at this point. It’s typically closer. So I think it’s made a few more sellers. But I think there’s also a lot of teams against the cap. So it’s really finding a fit. It’s going to be an interesting deadline. It always is. I anticipate there being a lot of moves. But who knows? The market, sometimes it also drops off the last day or two. So we’ll just keep a pulse on it and keep conversations going and see if there’s a way for us to improve.”
Another pressing matter is the future of forwards Evgeni Malkin and Bryan Rust and defenseman Kris Letang, all pending unrestricted free agents this upcoming offseason.
Hextall offered little of note on those discussions.
“We’ve certainly been working,” Hextall said. “Obviously (Malkin) and (Letang) are two of our top priorities. It’s got to work for both sides. Hopefully, at some point, we can make something happen that works for both sides, along with (Rust). We’ll continue those talks. Whether we shut them down at the trade deadline or not, I’m not sure yet. Typically, when the trade deadline comes, I like guys to focus on hockey. But we will work. If we’ve got to pick them up after this season, we will do that.”
Hextall and president of hockey operations Brian Burke have stated a long-standing desire to add some physicality to the lineup. But it appears that pursuit has waned.
“You always want to be a big team, but you also want to be fast. You also want to be skilled,” Hextall said. “It’s always that fine line of do you want to get big and slow and a little bit more unskilled? Or do you want to keep your skill? The one thing that I know about this team in my year here is that we play through things.
“Sometimes, when you have a team that’s not the biggest team in the league, you ask yourself the question, ‘Can we play through?’ Our team does play through. It’s not all about being (6-foot-4). It’s the thickness. … Sid is a great example. Sid’s not the tallest guy, but he’s thick and Sid is considered a big player. So we have a combination, we go height and weight. … You look at guys that are 6-feet, that’s not very big. But a six-foot thick guy versus a six-foot guy that has an average build, there’s a big difference in that. I don’t feel a real need for that. You’d love all your players to be (6-foot-2) and 220 pounds and skilled and fast and everything else. But that’s just not the way it works.”
Hextall professed faith in his team’s secondary scoring — i.e. forwards such as Danton Heinen, Evan Rodrigues, Brock McGinn, etc. — despite those players not finding goals as often as they did earlier in the season.
“Scoring is something that you always want to improve on,” Hextall said. “Again, if you look at the first 35 games, we scored a pretty good rate and things have dried up a little bit. There are ebbs and flows in the season so you certainly don’t want to overreact to a lack of scoring in your middle six (forwards) or your bottom nine (forwards). We know those guys have scored. We know they’re going to pick it up. (Sullivan) is pushing to help them pick it up right now. Again, it’s something that we’d like to add. But with the cap situation, asset-wise and fit-wise, it’s all got to fit together. So we’ll continue to look.”
Seth Rorabaugh is a TribLive reporter covering the Pittsburgh Penguins. A North Huntingdon native, he joined the Trib in 2019 and has covered the Penguins since 2007. He can be reached at srorabaugh@triblive.com.
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