There is still the matter of the NHL’s salary floor to contend with when it comes to potential trades.
The NHL offseason still has, roughly, six more weeks to it before training camps begin and there continues to be trade speculation surrounding the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Who will go. Who should go. How much will go.
While they have not made a true blockbuster move just yet, the Penguins have been active this offseason in terms of the quantity of transactions. They made a lot of draft pick trades, they added Connor Clifton, they added Matt Dumba’s salary to gain a future draft pick, they made an interesting trade to acquire goalie Arturs Silovs from the Vancouver Canucks. They made some short-term free agency signings that could potentially be flipped in March for even more draft picks or prospects.
Even though they might be mostly done on the free agent market, there is still something else looming on the trade market.
We just do not know what, or how much, or what it will look like.
Defenseman Erik Karlsson, forwards Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell and goalie Tristan Jarry are the four names most talked about in hypothetical trade talks, and there are a lot of thoughts on what the Penguins could or should do with them.
It is a good bet that somebody out of that group is going to be playing hockey for somebody else next season.
But it is also a good bet that not all of them will be playing elsewhere, and that at least one of them, and most likely two or three of them, will still be in Pittsburgh when the season begins.
Not necessarily because the Penguins are not interested in tearing everything down to the foundation as part of this rebuild (and I am still not convinced they are interested in that), but mostly because the Penguins are going to have to pay SOMEBODY to play hockey for them this season.
As of Thursday the Penguins sit $13 million below the NHL’s salary cap ($95 million) with an $82 million cap number. That would be one of their lowest payrolls (relative to the salary cap) in more than two decades.
But they are also only about $12 million above the NHL’s salary cap floor ($70 million) after taking on Matt Dumba’s contract in last week’s trade with the Dallas Stars.
Just for reference, here are the salary cap numbers of the four most talked about trade candidates:
- Erik Karlsson: $10 million
- Tristan Jarry: $5.3 million
- Bryan Rust: $5.125 million
- Rickard Rakell: $5 million
Based on the team’s recent roster moves over the past year-and-a-half it should be a safe assumption that any trades the team makes are going to focus on acquiring younger, cheaper players, prospects, or draft picks.
So let’s just pretend, just for laughs, that the Penguins are able to find a taker for Karlsson and trade him, and then trade one of the two forwards as well.
That’s over $15 million coming off the books if no salary is retained.
That would drop the payroll down to $67 million, which would be $3 million below the salary floor.
That means the Penguins would, at a minimum, either need to retain over $3 million in salary on those hypothetical deals (which is possible given that they have all three of their salary retention spots available to them), or take on at least $3 million in return as part of the trades, or find another $3 million in salary elsewhere just to stay above the floor.
Those numbers obviously increase if an additional player is traded.
In the cases of Karlsson and Jarry, I would assume any hypothetical trade would either see the Penguins retain some salary or take another bad contract back in return. So the money might pretty easily balance out. But the bottom line is this: They can’t just jettison everybody for draft picks or prospects or cheaper players to go full tank mode, because too much money going out with any money coming back will drop their cap number down too far.
With the salary cap increasing so much this season there are not many teams in desperate need of dumping salaries. So it may not be as easy to make more Dumba/Kevin Hayes/Cody Glass type of trades.
Perhaps retaining more salary in a Karlsson or Rakell trade, or taking on another team’s bad contract as part of the trade, can increase the return in terms of draft picks or prospects.
Maybe they swap Jarry for somebody that has a comparable contract.
But there still has to be some money involved somewhere. It can not just be straight salary dumps.
This is why I am not convinced the Penguins are going to completely empty the roster this offseason. There are a lot of reasons to keep some of these guys around and not be in a hurry to trade them, especially in the cases of Rakell and Rust. Not only are they still good players that could hypothetically still be somewhat productive players two or three years from now, but they don’t have to rush a trade for financial purposes. It’s not like they need the salary cap space. They can afford to be patient and wait for the right return. It also helps to still have good players that give a damn around a young roster and can bring some credibility. Nobody wants to become Chicago or Detroit or Buffalo.
Either way, when the 2025-26 NHL season begins the Penguins are going to have some players on the NHL roster making real money. It’s just a matter of who they will be and where they come from. Because if they want to trade any combination of the aforementioned four players (or any other big contract), there is going to have to be some money, somewhere, coming back.
The roster could look dramatically different than it does right now if they have to acquire more salary.
Or it could look very similar to what it does right now.
My bet would be more toward the latter. One of those players probably goes at some point. Maybe two of them. It will not likely be all of them.