The competitive portion of the Pens season is over, but league rules and the salary cap will prevent opportunity for younger players
The Penguins find themselves in the awkward spot of having a significant number of games left this season (12, if you’re keeping track), but no true hope or purpose in them. The team isn’t going to the playoffs with a 3-9-2 stumble down the stretch confirming what was already known over the first 50 or so games.
With nothing to play for, the attention at this point naturally turns to the next page. What about the youth and giving a shot to new players? At least freshen the lineup up since the results of the games don’t matter any more. Giving younger players a look to see how they measure up against NHL competition would be as good of an idea as any others to close out the string.
To a degree, that has happened. Jack St. Ivany made his NHL debut over the weekend. However, that debut only happened because a veteran was unavailable — in this case Ryan Graves needing to stay back in Pittsburgh with his wife’s impending labor for their first baby. Similarly, don’t expect a serious youth movement in Pittsburgh over these last dozen games unless NHL roster players have injuries to open up room.
Some of that can be milked, Jeff Carter had what was called a minor injury last week, yet didn’t travel for this recent road trip. Good idea, there would have been no point in it, even if Carter could have been in the lineup yesterday. Carter’s absence opened up a spot in the lineup for 25-year old Jesse Puljujarvi to play, and even score a goal yesterday against Colorado.
That sort of situation can and will happen — there’s no reason to have veterans rush back into the lineup with where the Penguins are at this season. Similarly, Matt Nieto was expected back from knee surgery this month but hasn’t been around the team on the ice, opening up a spot for a player like Emil Bemstrom to play. Had Pittsburgh been in the playoff race, Nieto probably is gearing up to rejoin the team by now. Situations like that are how the Pens can ice a younger lineup.
Calling up a mass of AHL players, however, isn’t in the cards. The NHL limits four “regular” recalls from the trade deadline until the end of the season, and unlimited “emergency” recalls to fill in if the team has less players than spots in the lineup. According to CapFriendly, the Pens have used two of these in the paper transactions that it took to keep Valterri Puustinen and Jonathan Gruden eligible to play in the AHL for the rest of the season. It’s possible the true number is even lower than that — Gruden was recalled and played a game last week when presumably the team had 12 other healthy forwards, which wouldn’t make for an emergency call-up. Big picture takeaway: the NHL-mandated restrictions on NHL/AHL movement serves to prevent any large scale ability for a team to use AHL players in the NHL at the end of the season.
Another impediment is the salary cap, which is still in place — and the Penguins still have almost no space (only $55k to spare, with St. Ivany currently on the NHL roster). Short of current NHL players going on LTIR, there’s no financial ability to bring up any further players either at the moment.
To keep piling on, one of the young players who was an NHL call-up possibility is also now out for a while. Vasily Ponomarev, the most NHL ready prospect acquired in the Jake Guentzel trade, is now out on a “week-to-week” basis. Pittsburgh only has about 3.5 weeks left in the season.
An injury update from #WBSPens HC JD Forrest to @InsideAHLHockey on C Vasily Ponomarev, who left Friday’s game in Syracuse.
“Lower body, week-to-week.”
So, it’s a little more serious than a typical “day-to-day” injury designation I often get when asking for WBS injury updates.
— Tony Androckitis* (@TonyAndrock) March 24, 2024
Add all of those factors up, and the comfort of seeing multiple players currently in the AHL getting a shot with the Pens is likely not going to be in the cards down the home stretch. Injuries or absences might give some a shot (as perfectly illustrated by St. Ivany over the weekend) but they will be more adaptive to opportunity rather than a plan the team is able to make to grant new opportunities.
But while there won’t be many brand news faces likely to pop up down the stretch, there are still storylines with younger players to follow.
- Drew O’Connor is getting a chance to carve out a spot with Sidney Crosby, how that audition goes could be a factor moving forward in the summer. It’s unlikely the Pens won’t try to bring in more top-end talent, but as seen from the Pascal Dupuis days, sometimes the style of player next to Crosby and chemistry with Crosby can mean as much or more as the star power of the names on the free agency or trade market.
- Puustinen is starting to produce like an NHLer by putting up nine points in his last 19 games. His role is growing too, having played an average of 13:43 per game in March (compared to just 8:39 over 11 NHL games in January when the Pens were more in gear to attempt to compete and less likely to lean on inexperienced players).
- P.O Joseph is back in the lineup as a regular and his 15:41 per game in March is the highest its been all season. Ditto John Ludvig, although his playing time is at its highest of the year, it’s still a modest 12 minutes per game. The performance down the stretch of these two players might be held up against one another for one spot on the third pair next season.
- Bemstrom and Puljujarvi, as mentioned, are still around. Both are relative newcomers to the organization and both have a chance down the stretch to carve out a better niche for next season. Conversely, poor performances could do the opposite and have the team look at other options for next season.
These aren’t the most exciting possible things to track at this time of year compared to gearing up for the playoffs, but those are the most realistic young player performances to watch in Pittsburgh over the last dozen games. Ideally the cap will allow to see one more AHL player, such as Sam Poulin, at some point, but it shouldn’t be expected to see a wave of new players coming up from the minors in the season’s final weeks.