Penguins/NHL
Evgeni Malkin will be back in Pittsburgh for his 21st NHL season. The Penguins and Malkin on Tuesday officially inked a one-year contract worth $5.5 million as the franchise icon has a golden opportunity to finish his career start to finish in Pittsburgh. Determined not to drag the contract situation to the eve of free agency like what happened in June 2022, negotiations started to heat up last week. This was always an inevitable deal. The question was always going to be the setup of the contract and the language in it. JP Barry and CAA Sports came out with a very impressive structure in the deal as Malkin has easily attenable performance bonuses where he could make up to $9 million next season.
- $2.5 Million Salary | $3 Million Signing Bonus
- 42 Games Played= $250,000 Bonus | 63 Games Played = $250,000 Bonus
- $1 Million Bonus if Penguins Qualify for Playoffs
- $500,000 Bonus after each Playoff Series Win
The rising cap and an atrocious free agent class, Malkin had a stealth free agent market looming with multiple offers in the $7-$8 million per year range were coming his way the Malkin camp was 100% To read this insider news, subscribe to get “Inside Access”!
At the end of the day Kyle Dubas was never going to win the PR game of moving on from Malkin. It just wasn’t worth irritating a Sidney Crosby but it wasn’t just Crosby who was strongly in favor of retaining Malkin. Exit meetings with the coaching staff led to stronger support for a Malkin return, team sources say, and the new ownership group while strong believers long-term of building through the draft and prospects, are steadfast of building off this past season and playing to win next season by bringing the same group back minus some tweaks around the edges. The message they gave Dubas was clear do what you have to do to retain Malkin, so much so was agreeing to a $3 million signing bonus due July 1 on the deal. The ability of the new ownership group to pay out signing bonuses will not be the norm moving forward as Pittsburgh’s ability to structure deals in the future will be similar to how the Lemieux group operated than FSG’s first couple seasons as majority owners. Playoffs and Gate Reveunes is going to be very important.
Kyle Dubas at his season ending press conference was not sugar-coating things when he said his group determined Malkin is not blocking anyone on the roster. They proved it by awarding Malkin a pretty substantial deal when you factor in the incentives. The Penguins have a lot of quantity in their system that may hit and may not. What they lack is quality-level prospects to push the old dogs out. There is some truth that going into this past season Pittsburgh had little expectations of bringing Malkin back. As one team source put it, Malkin’s return having pretty much universal support in the organization is an indictment on two specific players in the Penguins system:
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