Well black-and-gold fans, it’s official. With the start of the 2021 NHL regular season just around the corner, the Penguins finalized their roster today.
Forwards — Teddy Blueger, Sidney Crosby, Jake Guentzel, Mark Jankowski, Kasperi Kapanen, Sam Lafferty, Evgeni Malkin, Jared McCann, Evan Rodrigues, Bryan Rust, Colton Sceviour, Brandon Tanev and Jason Zucker.
Defensemen — Cody Ceci, Brian Dumoulin, Kris Letang, John Marino, Mike Matheson, Marcus Pettersson, Juuso Riikola and Chad Ruhwedel.
Goaltenders — Casey DeSmith and Tristan Jarry.
No real surprises there. However, the six-man taxi squad might contain a couple. Most notably left wing Drew O’Connor, a rookie pro who obviously made a favorable impression during camp, and promising defenseman Pierre-Olivier Joseph.
Here’s the complete taxi squad.
Forwards — Anthony Angello, Frederick Gaudreau, Drew O’Connor.
Defenseman — Pierre-Olivier Joseph.
Goaltender — Alex D’Orio, Maxime Lagace.
Among the noteworthy demotions, 2019 draft picks Nathan Legare and Samuel Poulin were returned to their junior clubs. Defensemen Kevin Czuczman and Cam Lee and forwards Josh Currie and Radim Zohorna were assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, along with physical left wing Jordan Nolan, who was released from his professional tryout contract.
Zach Aston-Reese, still recovering from off-season shoulder surgery, Josh Maniscalco, Sam Miletic and Zach Trotman (who may be injured) will be assigned tomorrow.
What We Can Expect
During Monday’s practice, coach Mike Sullivan used the following combinations. Again, no real surprises.
Forwards: Guentzel-Crosby-Rodrigues, Zucker-Malkin-Rust, McCann-Jankowski-Tanev, Lafferty-Blueger-Sceviour.
Defense: Dumoulin-Letang, Matheson-Marino, Pettersson-Ceci, Riikola-Ruhwedel.
Kapanen figures to be a lock to join the first line upon his return, which would likely drop Rodrigues to a bottom-six role (or the press box).
A stray thought. With Joseph looming on the horizon and by most accounts NHL-ready, could Pettersson…who appears to have been demoted to the third pairing…possibly be considered trade bait? Of course, there’s the not-so-small matter of his $4.025 million cap hit, which may be too rich for opposing GMs to swallow during these difficult financial times.
Still…things that make you go hmmmm.
Hey all,
There’s a really interesting piece posted on Pensblog (the Sports Daily) titled “Offseason roundup: Get to know the newbies.”
Kind of a withering statistical analysis of the newcomers based on WAR, along with all sorts of offensive and defensive metrics.
Based on the past three seasons, only one newcomer had a WAR in the blue (above 50 percent)…Mark Jankowski at 53 percent.
Kasperi Kapanen was 44 percent (weak defensively), Colton Sceviour was 42 percent (marginal defensively…thought that was his strong suit).
It gets even worse on defense. Matheson was 25 percent (giveways and a lack of driving offense aside from his excellent shot) and Ceci was 13 percent (in the red [bad] zone on virtually every metric).
Yikes!
Rick
Hey Rick,
Just last week Sully was making noise as if the doors were wide open for at least 1 kid making the roster – so much for an open mind. This roster was a fait accompli – SOP.
To say I was disappointed when I saw the final roster is a bit of an understatement, particularly when it came to Legare. With all of the talk about how impressive Legare, the Jrs not starting back up until Feb and the ruling that underage players could stay on the taxi squad until their Jr team started playing, Legare should still be here and practicing, that is unless he really wasn’t that impressive and everything they were saying was just bull. And I don’t believe it was bull, he was part of the teams best line (Bjorkqvist – Lafferty – Legare) last seasons training camp.
Oh well, all of the speculation ends tomorrow and we finally have hockey back and we will finally get a chance to see if JRs dice rolling for Matheson, Scevious, Ceci, Jankowski, and Rodrigeus will pay off.
PS Rick,
re Pettersson – you know he underwhelmed me last season and I have been less than happy about his Cap hit vs his contribution. I don’t like to get too down on Defensemen under 27, since that is the age when they usually come into their own and had JR not thrown $4+ million at him, I would still be an advocate of patience towards him, but 3rd pairing is about right for what he showed last season. Unfortunately, $4 million for a 3rd pairing is too much.
I was not all that impressed with Joseph last season and although I didn’t see any of the camp, all the reports on Joseph that I read were unimpressive, but he is younger and not getting paid $4 million.
I would rather see Riikola be in that top mix, but Joseph works as well. It certainly would open up more cap space. It is hard to imagine Pettersson being worth 4 times better than either of those 2.