Eight Penguins players will be unrestricted free agents come July 1. Most will do the club a favor by departing.
It’s tough to imagine any circumstance where the Penguins keep Ruslan Fedotenko or Alexei Ponikarovsky. Jordan Leopold or Jay McKee might be retained at minimal cost, but probably not.
That leaves four players subject to debate.
*The Penguins will not be able to afford Matt Cooke. They should have signed Cooke when they could have, but now they can’t. He’ll get a year more than the Pens offer and at least a half-mil more per year than the Pens offer.
You can’t pay a third-line wing what Cooke will get, especially when you need first- and second-line wings. GM Ray Shero replaced Jarkko Ruutu with Cooke. Now he’ll replace Cooke with somebody else. No big deal.
*I can’t picture a scenario where Mark Eaton doesn’t return. He’s a good fit for the Penguins, the Penguins a good fit for him. Give Eaton two years at, say, $2.2m per. Easy.
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