How Jim Rutherford's Last Couple Moves Backfired In Ways We Never Expected
The NHL's flat salary cap has completely changed how teams value players, and the Pens are hurting from it.
Jim Rutherford’s moves during his Penguins tenure seemed frantic and random at times, but generally followed two consistent guiding principles:
1) The Penguins are in “win now” mode and should not be worried about sacrificing futures to make the team better while they still have Crosby & Malkin.
2) Because the NHL’s salary cap tends to go up every year, contracts where players are locked-up long term will become better values year after year.
Assumption #1 is definitely correct, although Rutherford’s definition of “helping the team now” almost exclusively consisted of trading away draft picks to acquire veteran players and their cap hits. As we’re already seeing with the Kessel-for-P.O. Joseph trade, sometimes trading in the opposite direction helps the current roster; the Pens shed Kessel’s cap hit and added a possible impact left-D on an entry level contract, which also could allow them to shed salary further if they deal a left defenseman. But, generally, the impulse to try to make the team better now and not obsess over futures was the right one.
Assumption #2, however, has been completely turned on its head after the league’s COVID stoppage this past year. The NHL salary cap didn’t increase for the first time since 2013-14, and with teams still playing in empty arenas in a shortened season, the cap probably won’t increase next year either. And that’s only the cap — that doesn’t even account for franchises becoming less and less willing to spend in a time of unprecedented leaguewide economic uncertainty.
I’ll take a brief aside here to point out that the effect of COVID on the NHL’s salary cap is so freaking minor in the grand scheme of all of our lives, I feel like I’m insulting myself to even mention it. But, hey, this is a Pittsburgh sports blog, not a ‘deep existential despair as society careens into an abyss of uncertainty’ blog, so, I’ll keep the scope of this article narrow. Plus it’s barely an actual real-life problem, so it’s a less harrowing topic to write an article about than some rant about how COVID has shattered in our illusion that we live in a functioning society. Anyway…
There are two main effects of the flat cap, and they compliment one another. One, teams are now desperate to shed salary to become cap compliant (and to lose less money for their owners.) And two, teams are more wary of giving out money and term in the free agent market for those same reasons. Now, all the sudden, Jim Rutherford’s decision to lock up complimentary players long-term and to pay a premium to acquire players with salary remaining suddenly looks way worse than anyone could’ve possibly anticipated at the time of the moves, because the league’s whole concept of player valuation has been upended.
For example, when the Pens locked up Marcus Pettersson to a five-year contract extension last January, the move was easy to rationalize: Pettersson appeared to be a steady middle-pairing left D, and the Pens locked in his ages 24-28 seasons at a $4.025 million cap hit. It wasn’t a cheap deal for a player of Pettersson’s caliber, but it seemed fair for the spot he occupied on the roster. Plus, if the league’s cap continued to increase year after year and players’ salaries increased in proportion, having 27-year-old Pettersson under contract for $4 mil in a league where similar players are making $5.5 mil would become a borderline-bargain. You’d also avoid Pettersson approaching unrestricted free agency in his mid-20s and having to either let him go or to give him an even riskier contract to retain him.
Now, all the sudden, Pettersson’s contract looks borderline unmovable. Not because he’s bad or anything, but because in the league’s current climate, what franchise is going to want to give up assets to take on four years of a 4 million dollar mid-pairing defenseman? His skillset isn’t so unique that teams can’t sign similar players on the free agent market for the same cost or less. The Penguins are surely going to look to trade one of Dumoulin, Pettersson, or Matheson in the coming weeks after the emergence of P.O. Joseph, but all three of them make over $4 mil and the latter two have 4 and 5 years remaining on their deals, respectively. Finding a team that values any of those players highly enough to trade you assets for them without shedding equal or greater salary back is going to be near impossible.
The one Rutherford deal that looks really bad right now, though, is the Jason Zucker trade. Most of us were in favor at the time, and while I was more wary about giving away defense prospect Calen Addison than the draft pick (because Addison appeared to be relatively close to contributing at the NHL level), I talked myself into the deal because of the term remaining on Zucker’s contract: three full seasons at a $5.5 mil cap hit, which seemed perfect for a top-six scoring winger. Now, Zucker’s contract looks a little like Pettersson’s: not some franchise-crippling albatross, but a number just high enough that if you theoretically had the chance to wipe it off the books in the offseason, you’d probably consider it.
Tyler Toffoli and Evgeni Dadonov, two other top-six wingers who’ve been about as productive as Zucker over the last few seasons, signed for $4.25 and $5 million per year this offseason, and the acquiring teams didn’t have to give up any assets to sign them. Toffoli already has 10 goals. The Pens gave up a 1st round pick and a defense prospect to acquire Zucker, and now not only is Zucker off to a bad start, but his contract doesn’t look any more appealing than what’s readily available on the market. On top of that, Calen Addison just made his debut for Minnesota, so the Pens lost out on the very “win-now” advantage of having another young defenseman taking up a right D spot on an entry-level contract for a couple years. If you offered Zucker back to Minnesota right now for Addison or the 1st round pick, they wouldn’t take it.
Of course, I don’t fault Rutherford at all for not anticipating this literally-earth-shifting once-in-a-lifetime mega-event upending the league’s linear salary cap growth. But that doesn’t excuse the Kasperi Kapanen trade, which he made after the bubble season. On that one, he clearly jumped the gun. We’ll never know what Kapanen might have been available for otherwise, but everyone predicted the direction the NHL’s free agent and trade markets were heading in: we all knew teams like the Maple Leafs would be desperate to shed salary, and teams willing to take on salary would be able to acquire players for pennies on the dollar. Then, even knowing that, the Pens rushed to deal the 15th overall pick in the draft to add a $3.2 million cap hit for a player who’d spent the bulk of his career as a third-liner. There was no reason to make that deal, and it demonstrated a complete lack of foresight and creativity on Rutherford’s part.
We’ll never know what else the Pens could’ve done with that pick — moved Jack Johnson’s or Hornqvist’s contracts somewhere, keeping them clear of Mike Matheson’s contract and allowing them to make a run at Taylor Hall? Starting a Johnny Gaudreau conversation? Drafting a human? — but the Kapanen trade will go down as the last of Rutherford’s moves that hurts a little extra because of the league’s cap squeeze. Again, not because Kapanen is bad or because his contract is unreasonable, but just because in this current market, teams shouldn’t have to give up mid-first-round picks to add third-line wingers who aren’t cheap. A cynic might also point out that Kapanen’s real salary this year and next are a combined $1.2 million less than his cap hit, thus saving a little bit of money for the cash-strapped Ron Burkle who also secured a PPP loan and spent $22 million buying Michael Jackson’s ranch. Exceedingly normal stuff.
While none of us could’ve possibly anticipated the circumstances that led to the league’s current cap stasis, Jim Rutherford’s moves always carried an amount of risk — Jason Zucker declining as he approached 30, Marcus Pettersson never being more than a passable 2nd pairing D, trading away Addison, etc. But the league’s landscape (like the rest of the universe) has changed so drastically in the past year, those moves already look a lot worse right now, especially with Zucker struggling. When the Kapanen trade was made after the bubble, though, it was pretty clear Rutherford hadn’t fully grasped how thoroughly the league’s landscape had changed.
Retooling the Pens on the fly will be an exceptional challenge for new GM Ron Hextall largely because of how these last few moves have panned out, on top of the fact that the Pens are currently out of a playoff spot and don’t have a 1st or 3rd round pick. They’re still eating salary on Jack Johnson and Nick Bjugstad, and had to take an even-worse contract back in Matheson to move Patric Hornqvist. And that’s before even beginning to wonder how the league’s financial landscape may have ruined the chances of a Kris Letang or Evgeni Malkin mega-trade. Hopefully the league’s franchises will bounce back in the next year — it truly sucks to be sitting here basically arguing against players wanting to earn more money, plus we should all be wary of owners who use the pandemic as an excuse to be regular-cheap whenever the league’s revenues do rebound — but for the immediate future, Jim Rutherford’s last few moves have put the Pens in a position that looks a lot more precarious now than it did 18 months ago.
