Penguins III

Well the Pens have definitely made some strides in the right direction so far this off season. They seemed to have had a solid draft, and now have begun the process of signing free agents. Bill Guerin took a huge hometown discount ($2.5M) to stay on the same line as Sidney Crosby. He put his Herbie Hancock on a 1 year $2M deal yesterday. Guerin on being able to continue to play with Sid the Kid; " I'd be lying if I didn't say that was one of the big reasons I wanted to stay. It's so much fun to play with him." The Pens also did the smart thing and resigned Craig Adams to a 2 year $1.1M deal yesterday.

The Penguins 2009-2010 roster salary is now sitting right about $53M. The NHL raised the cap by 100K on Friday and it is set at $56.8M for 2009-2010. This means they have just under $4M to get Scuderi and another LW. Don't think they are going to be able to fit in the type of talent they need under that amount. I still think their best option is finding a way to dump Kunitz's contract. If anything, the most important player left is Scuderi. They can use some of their AHL talent to fill the gaps in the line up and maybe make a trade during the season. The roster now looks like so:

LW/C/RW
Kunitz/Crosby/Guerin
?/Malkin/Talbot
Cooke/Stahl/Kennedy
Dupuis/Adams/Goddard


D/D
Gonchar/Orpik
Letang/Eaton
?/Gologoski


Assuming they can get Scuderi for around $2.5M a year, they might be able to get a reasonable LW for $1/yr.