Penguins/NHL
LATEST PENGUINS BUZZ
New GM, same targets. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet connected the Penguins to Panthers forward Brad Boyes this week in his weekly 30 Thoughts feature. The Penguins have liked Boyes for a few years now and made a strong play to trade for him prior to last years trade deadline but Panthers GM Dale Tallon was committed to keeping Boyes and signed Boyes to a two year extension.
Tallon is not actively shopping Boyes and with Boyes having another year on his contract, the cost to get Boyes would be a top tier NHL ready prospect in the mold of Brian Dumoulin, one NHL source said, compared to likely being valued as a second round pick if he was a pending UFA.
Nothing serious said to be going on between the two sides and the Penguins really prefer another Patric Hornqvist type player. However, one Panther that would be easy to pry away as a buy-low candidate is Tomas Fleischmann at the deadline.
— The word out of the organization is don’t expect any impact moves until after the New Year. There are a couple non rental targets currently not available that the Penguins believe could be at somepoint, which has the team lukewarm about tying up cap space right now to a rental player.
— Western Conference teams asking about the availability of Paul Martin have all been receiving the same message, he’s not available. The Ducks were the latest team to be shutdown, a source says. Many executives continue to believe the Penguins are locked in to keeping Martin after not trading him over the summer. “That’s a tough sell to those players,” one executive said of a Cup contender like the Penguins trading a player of Martin’s caliber during the season.
That said, the Rangers traded a pretty important player in Ryan Callahan last season and made it to the Stanley Cup Final. The only deal the Penguins would jump at is the type of deal the Rangers – Lightning made that netted a significant player coming the other way for each team. However, that was more of a special situation and few of those trades are made in-season anymore.
— Due to the close proximity of both franchises, top executives in the Penguins organization make the short track to Columbus for scouting purposes often. There’s not a potential UFA who Penguin officials view as a better fit for them from a [type of player/style/cap hit] standpoint than Blue Jackets winger Nick Foligno who the Jackets would like to keep long-term. There is significant interest in Foligno, one source alluded to. Another Blue Jacket of interest to the Penguins is Cam Atkinson, 25 years old, two years away from unrestricted free agency.
— If the Penguins want to get into the mix for David Perron or even Jordan Eberle whose $6 million cap hit scares them, they would have to show a willingness to move Brandon Sutter.
