The Pittsburgh Penguins have interest in signing veteran winger Chris Kunitz, reports Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. However, at this time, the team is focusing on creating extra salary cap space. The team presently has just over $9MM in cap room per CapFriendly but still has several players to sign to fill out their roster, including RFA winger Bryan Rust.
Kunitz is coming off of a quality regular season with Tampa Bay. Despite playing in predominantly a fourth-line role, he managed to still be somewhat productive as he collected 29 points while also playing in all 82 games for the first time since 2011-12. However, his output dipped to just a single assist in 17 postseason contests and the Lightning announced on Friday that they would not be bringing Kunitz back for 2018-19.
The 38-year-old is no stranger to playing in Pittsburgh as he spent parts of nine seasons with the Penguins and was part of three Stanley Cup runs. If he was to return to them, he’d likely be in a similar depth role to the one he had in Tampa Bay and would garner a comparable contract. This past season, he received $1MM in salary with an additional $1MM in performance bonuses. By the time Pittsburgh fills out their roster, they should have that much room left in the budget but that would pretty much cap them out. Accordingly, expect GM Jim Rutherford to be active these next few days to try to free up some additional funds to allow them to do more offseason shopping.
Please no. If this team is supposed to be built on speed, adding him would do nothing but slow things down.
True, but the team was missing a lot of grit and agitators after the Reaves trade and even before. That showed up against Washington—when pushed, they didn’t push back.