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Justin Schultz

Washington Capitals Announce COVID Absences

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The Washington Capitals have made a number of transactions in response to several players entering the COVID protocol. The team has announced that Daniel Sprong, Justin Schultz, Nick Jensen, Vitek Vanecek, Dennis Cholowski, and Martin Fehervary are all unavailable due to COVID protocol. Pheonix Copley and Michal Kempny have been recalled to the active roster, while Lucas Johansen, Alex Alexeyev, and Brett Leason have all been assigned to the taxi squad.

The Capitals are scheduled to play on Wednesday night against the Nashville Predators, but now are now without a good chunk of their roster. Evgeni Kuznetsov and Nicklas Backstrom were on the ice for practice, according to J.J. Regan of NBCS Washington, a good sign that they will be eligible to return for the upcoming game.

With the COVID absences continuing across the league, however, the schedule is certainly not written in ink. The Capitals, like any other team, will have to wait and see whether their upcoming games are affected.

Schultz Placed On Injured Reserve; Eller Returns From COVID Protocol

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The Washington Capitals have moved Justin Schultz to injured reserve, after the veteran defenseman left Wednesday’s game with an upper-body injury. Schultz had already missed the Capitals last game and his IR stint is likely retroactive to November 24, meaning he could return partway through next week if healthy.

The team has not announced a recovery timeline, but moving Schultz to injured reserve would open a roster spot for Lars Eller who is set to return from the COVID protocol and play this afternoon. Eller has missed six games, last playing on November 14 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The two-way center had eight points in his first 15 contests and is an important piece of the Capitals lineup.

Schultz meanwhile has been moved down in the lineup this season, averaging just over 17 minutes a night before exiting early in his last game. The 31-year-old has just two points in 20 games this season, a far cry from the 27 he registered in 46 during the 2020-21 campaign. Still an effective enough option at even-strength, Schultz will be missed for the next few games even if he’s not relied on to the same level as years past.

In his place, Dennis Cholowski moved into the lineup on Friday night and played just over 16 minutes. The 23-year-old former Detroit Red Wing has just two games at the NHL level this season.

East Notes: Reinhart, Capitals, Carlo, Gostisbehere

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As a result of the Sabres losing Jack Eichel to injury plus Eric Staal and Curtis Lazar to trades, the Sabres were forced to put Sam Reinhart back at center, a position he hasn’t played at much over the last few seasons.  As Bill Hoppe of the Olean Times Herald points out, that position change has sparked the 25-year-old as he has 10 goals and five assists in 16 games since the move heading into tonight’s game against Boston.  Reinhart is a restricted free agent for the final time this summer after avoiding arbitration last fall with a one-year, $5.2MM deal.  That number represents his qualifying offer and if the team believes he can be a regular down the middle moving forward, he’d enter those contract discussions with a bit more leverage.

Elsewhere in the East:

  • Capitals defenseman John Carlson was a late scratch for tonight’s game due to a lower-body injury, the team announced (Twitter link). He’s listed as day-to-day.  Carlson is currently tied for second on Washington in scoring with 10 goals and 32 assists in 49 games.  The Caps did get some good news on the back end though as Justin Schultz returned after missing three straight with a lower-body injury of his own.
  • Boston blueliner Brandon Carlo is hoping to return next week, relays Eric Russo of the Bruins’ team website. It has been a rough couple of months for him; after returning from a concussion suffered on a hit from Washington’s Tom Wilson, he then suffered an upper-body injury in his second game back in April 1st and hasn’t played since.  Carlo is averaging 18:29 per game this season in 23 contests.
  • Flyers defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere is expected to return to practice on Friday and could be available to return as soon as Saturday, notes Sam Carchidi of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. He has missed two straight games (including tonight’s contest) with a sprained knee.  After a rough first half of the season, he quietly has 11 points in his last 21 games.

Washington Capitals Agree To Terms With Justin Schultz

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The Washington Capitals needed to add some defense after Michal Kempny suffered a torn Achilles in offseason training and they’ll pick up a former rival. Justin Schultz has agreed to a two-year contract with the Capitals that will carry a $4MM cap hit.

Schultz, 30, was a 51-point defenseman just a few years ago but has seen his offensive production almost completely dry up. When you’re supposed to be a play-driving defenseman, 12 points in 46 games just isn’t cutting it. Over the last three seasons, Schultz has played in just 138 games and has just 54 points, not enough when you also don’t provide much polish at the defensive end.

Perhaps it’s just the injuries that have sapped his production, but given how poor his possession statistics have also been it’s hard to know exactly what the Capitals are getting. For $4MM per season on a Stanley Cup contender, that’s a big risk to take.

Schultz fits in just ahead of the re-signed Brenden Dillon on the salary chart and reduces the Capitals remaining space to almost zero. Moving Kempny onto long-term injured reserve will give them a little more wiggle room, but without moving money out there isn’t a lot more the Capitals can do.

Free Agent Focus: Pittsburgh Penguins

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With free agency now just a few days away, teams are preparing for a frenzy of action.  There will be several prominent players set to hit the open market while many teams have key restricted free agents to re-sign.  The Penguins have some key decisions to make, but with a plan to keep their cap number down and their overall goals of making changes to keep their team in the playoff picture for the next few years, they may have to let some players go.

Key Restricted Free Agents

G Matt Murray – With the signing of Tristan Jarry on Saturday to a three-year deal, the Penguins are basically making it clear that they have chosen Jarry over Murray in net. While they could conceivably keep both as it is expected that the team will tender a qualifying offer, it still is more likely that Murray will be traded shortly. That’s a far fall for the “goalie of the future” three years back when they allowed Marc-Andre Fleury move on. Many teams are waiting for the huge free-agent goalie market to disseminate in the next week as Murray sounds like a cheaper option, but the 26-year-old’s lack of consistency likely worries plenty of teams. Murray finished the season with a 2.87 GAA and a .899 save percentage in 38 games, although the netminder did fare better in three postseason games as he had a 2.50 GAA and a .914 save percentage in three games.

F Dominik Simon – Hardly a top-six player, but the versatile Simon suddenly looks like he could be a cap casualty as The Athletic’s Rob Rossi reports that he could make as much as $1.25MM, a high price for a capped-strapped team. The 26-year-old played all over the lineup, but has never managed to post more than 30 points in his career. He tallied seven goals and 22 points last season in 64 games. The forward is also recovering from shoulder surgery in late April, which was expected to keep him out six to seven months.

Other RFAs: F Pontus Aberg, F Anthony Angello, F Graham Knott, F Sam Lafferty, F Sam Miletic, D John Nyberg.

Key Unrestricted Free Agents

D – Justin Schultz – The blueliner was singled out last month by general manger Jim Rutherford as one of the problems on the Pittsburgh blueline. That likely means that the team will allow Schultz to explore other offers around the league. The team did get an impressive year out of John Marino, suggesting the team can get along without him and $5.5MM cap hit that came with him. It’s highly unlikely he will get anything like that on the market anyway, but Schultz definitely struggled since signing that three-year, $16.5MM contract. Since posting a 51-point season with the Penguins and signing that deal, he has posted just 54 points combined in those three seasons and has dealt with a number of injuries that has affected his overall game.

F Conor Sheary – The Penguins re-acquired Sheary at the trade deadline from Buffalo after trading him there back in 2018. The 28-year-old winger scored 23 goals in his second year with the Penguins back in 2016-17. Those goals, however, have declined every year to 18 to 14 to 10 last season. The team has made it clear it doesn’t want to put Sidney Crosby next to lesser players like Sheary has, meaning if they held onto him, they would more likely move him down to the third line. The question is whether Sheary is affordable enough to bring back to the team.

F Patrick Marleau – The Penguins picked up the legendary winger from the Sharks for their playoff run, but he managed to scored just one goal and two points in eight games before the shutdown and was scoreless in four playoff games. It isn’t likely that the 41-year-old will return to Pittsburgh, although a return to the Sharks for one final season isn’t necessarily out of the question.

Other UFAs: F Riley Barber, F Thomas Di Pauli, F Adam Johnson, F Kevin Roy, F Phil Varone.

Projected Cap Space

Rutherford vowed to change up his roster this offseason in hopes of giving Crosby and Evgeni Malkin every opportunity to win another Stanley Cup before their time in the NHL is up. That will require some major decisions in both free agency and through trades, something that Rutherford is an expert on. The biggest problem remains the salary cap where the team has just $2.6MM in available cap space to make all these moves.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

East Notes: Schultz, MacLean, Pastrnak

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Jim Rutherford’s comments last month that singled out defenseman Justin Schultz certainly made it seem like the Penguins would be walking away from the pending UFA next season.  He put any possibility of a reunion to rest recently, confirming to Mike DeFabo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that they won’t bring the veteran back:

We’ll move on from Justin.  He’s going to do better in the marketplace than what he can do here, based on our cap situation.

Schultz was quite productive in his first full season with the Penguins when he had 51 points in 78 games but he has had trouble staying healthy since then, suiting up in just 75 games over the last two seasons combined.  His production has tapered off in that time while he struggled defensively as well.  A change of scenery could certainly do the 30-year-old some good although he’ll certainly be looking at a big dip in pay from the $5.5MM cap hit he had this season.

More from the Eastern Conference:

  • The Blue Jackets will be parting ways with assistant coach Paul MacLean, reports Aaron Portzline of The Athletic (subscription required). He joined Columbus partway through this season with the hopes that he’d be able to help their power play.  However, losing several of their top forwards proved to be too much to overcome; while the team was slightly better with the man advantage after he joined them midseason, the gain was only incremental from 15.6% to 16.8% and overall, they finished in the bottom five in the league.  Things weren’t any better in the playoffs as their power play limped to just an 8.8% success rate.
  • Bruins winger David Pastrnak played through the postseason with a lingering lower-body injury that also played a role in his limited participation during training camp, relays NBC Sports Boston’s Joe Haggerty. Despite the injury, he was still productive in their series loss to Tampa Bay, picking up two goals and four assists in the five games.  Head coach Bruce Cassidy indicated that he doesn’t believe that Pastrnak, or any of Boston’s other players that are banged up, will need surgery.

Penguins GM Jim Rutherford: “Changes Need To Be Made”

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The Pittsburgh Penguins were one of the biggest surprises of the qualification round, ousted by the 12-seed Montreal Canadiens. Not only was it surprising because the Canadiens likely weren’t even going to make the playoffs had the season not been cut short, but the Penguins had fought through so much adversity to even get to that point. Head coach Mike Sullivan had guided his group through catastrophic injuries to almost all of the team’s top players while dealing with a horrendous performance from his expected starting goaltender.

Now that they’re out, GM Jim Rutherford didn’t hold back when discussing the offseason with reporters including Josh Yohe of The Athletic:

There is something wrong. Changes need to be made. 

Rutherford went on to say that the team starts to “fizzle out” when things don’t go their way and that even though the coaching staff navigated the regular season well there is a pattern developing at the end of the year. The entire availability was an executive who is primed to make sweeping changes, though Rutherford did explain that he is still committed to the core—Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang especially.

The Hall of Fame GM has never been shy about pulling the trigger and making splashy headline-grabbing moves. Last summer after he felt his team needed a change Rutherford twice traded Phil Kessel, only for the first one to be blocked by the enigmatic winger. During the year he pushed his chips to the middle again and tried to give them a chance to win by acquiring Jason Zucker, only to see them go down before even reaching the regular playoffs.

This time, it sounds as though one of the big changes will come on defense. Though Jack Johnson has been pummeled in the media for his disastrous play during the short postseason, Rutherford pointed the finger directly at his partner instead. Again, from Yohe:

I know everybody picks on Jack and they have for a long time, but I think, in that pairing, Justin Schultz had a lot more to give.

Schultz happens to be an unrestricted free agent this summer while Johnson still has three years on his deal, but it now seems unlikely that the pair will be reunited in the future. The 30-year old Schultz had an outstanding season in 2016-17 when Letang was injured for much of the year and earned himself a three-year, $16.5MM extension. That deal started poorly and ended even worse, however, given the performances that followed. In 46 games this season, Schultz only recorded three goals and 12 points.

But letting Schultz walk away won’t be the only move Rutherford makes. He also once again mentioned how it will be difficult to keep both Matt Murray and Tristan Jarry, given they are both restricted free agents and the salary cap will not be increasing. Moving one of them could help in another area, but don’t be surprised if you see even more drastic and sweeping changes to the Penguins before the 2020-21 season begins.

Pittsburgh Penguins Activate Justin Schultz From IR

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The Pittsburgh Penguins do not return to action for more than a week, when they square off with the rival Philadelphia Flyers on January 31st. However, fans now have even more to look forward to than just the return of their team. Joining them back on the ice will be defenseman Justin Schultz, who CapFriendly reports has been activated from the injured reserve.

This news comes just days after Schultz made his return to practice for the first time since his injury occurred back on December 17. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Seth Rorabaugh wrote on Tuesday that Schultz was all but ready to return than night – also against the Flyers – after participating fully in practice, but the team had opted to exercise caution with the long break ahead. While Shultz has reportedly been activated today, it is nothing more than a paper move with the team disbanded for the All-Star Game and bye week. He will get extra rest during this time, with the hope being that he can hit the ground running in his return.

Schultz suffered his lower-body injury in mid-December as part of a rash of injuries for the Penguins. Captain Sidney Crosby has recently returned from the injury he suffered in November, but Pittsburgh still awaits the returns of Schultz, fellow defenseman Brian Dumoulin, and forward Nick Bjugstad, who has been out the longest with a core muscle injury. Evgeni Malkin and Bryan Rust have also missed substantial time due to injury this season, while Jake Guentzel saw his season ended by a shoulder injury not long after Schultz went down.

It has been a difficult season health-wise for the Penguins, but their absences have not been all that apparent. The team has had miraculous success given their numerous injuries, not only keeping pace in the competitive Metropolitan Division, but in fact making a play for the division lead. Pittsburgh sits just four point back of the Washington Capitals with the third-best record in the Eastern Conference. If they are able to accomplish that with so many big names out the lineup, who knows how they might perform once everyone is healthy. There is hope that Dumoulin and Bjugstad will soon be healthy, but in the meantime the return of Schultz should make an immediate impact. The 29-year-old defenseman, who is in the final year of his contract, struggled with injuries last season as well, but when healthy has recorded 109 points in 215 games since arriving in Pittsburgh in 2015. Capable of playing big minutes and putting up big points, with a history of playing his best in the postseason, plus the additional motivation of a free agency payday, Schultz could be a game-changing asset for the Penguins in his return.

Snapshots: Three Stars, Penguins, Miller

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The Metropolitan Division is well represented in the NHL’s Three Stars of the Week, as the league announced that the Capitals’ Alex Ovechkin and the Blue Jackets’ Elvis Merzlikins have been named the first and second stars, respectively. Ovechkin is no stranger to the honor, but was certainly deserving of recognition once again with a whopping eight goals in three games, including back-to-back hat tricks. The 34-year-old trails only David Pastrnak in the NHL goals race right now and is eight goals away from cracking 700 in his career. Meanwhile, Merzlikins is brand new to both the NHL and any sort of league recognition. The young goaltender, who dominated the Swiss ranks for many years, got off to a rocky start this season after signing with Columbus last spring. However, he has performed admirably in the place of injured All-Star Joonas Korpisalo, including winning each of his past four start with three shutouts mixed in. In 20 appearances on the year, Merzlikins is now up to a .928 save percentage and 2.36 GAA in an impressive rookie campaign. The third star of the week belong to another familiar name, Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews. Toews shook off a cold spell, recording three goals and nine points in four games this week, extending his point streak to six games. As Toews goes, so do the Blackhawks, who have been surging of late back into the postseason conversation.

  • The Pittsburgh Penguins are among the top-five NHL teams in man-games lost this season and first in lost production due to injury. However, they have weathered the storm, not just maintaining through their losses, but actually improving. Now, they are getting healthy once again, with Sidney Crosby now back (and red-hot) and defenseman Justin Schultz getting close, per a team report. Schultz was cleared for full participation in practice today and appears ready to go, but stated that he and the team will be “smart” with the decision, especially with the All-Star break approaching and the opportunity for even more rest if they opt not to rush him back this week. Meanwhile, after leaving Sunday’s game, Dominik Simon has avoided any lasting injury, the Penguins The same can’t be said for Dominik Kahun, who suffered a head injury and has entered the concussion protocol. That just seems to be how things have gone for Pittsburgh this year though – for every player back to full strength, there’s another player sidelined.
  • One of the Penguins’ biggest rivals for the Eastern Conference title could be getting a somewhat forgotten player back in the mix. The Boston Bruins, after not having an update on defenseman Kevan Miller for some time, surprised the media by stating that he returned to the ice with the team yesterday. Miller has not played a single game this season, nor has he even been part of the active roster. The veteran defenseman has suffered multiple setback in his return to health after a litany of injuries last season. Should he reach the point that he is fully able to return to action, the Bruins would welcome him back, despite their logjam on the blue line, as Miller would bring the physicality and checking ability that the team has been missing too often this year. Of course, his return could pose some cap problems in addition to roster questions, but given Miller’s inability to get healthy this season, that is a bridge that the team will cross if and when they come to it.

Injury Notes: Seabrook, Kuhnhackl, Schultz, Eichel

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On Wednesday, it was reported that Blackhawks defenseman Brent Seabrook’s absence from the lineup was due to him being a healthy scratch.  It turns out that this may not have been the case.  The team announced (Twitter link) that the blueliner wasn’t on the road trip for their game tonight in Winnipeg and is “undergoing further medical evaluation”.  To say this season has been a trying one for the 34-year-old would be a big understatement.  He has just four points in 32 games while logging a career-low 18:09 per night.  Considering his diminished role, it makes sense for Chicago to shut him down if Seabrook is indeed playing through some sort of issue but the way things have been trending for him, there may not be a lineup spot to return to when he’s cleared.

More injury news from around the league:

  • The Islanders announced (via Twitter) that winger Tom Kuhnhackl has been activated off LTIR. He has been limited to just six NHL games this season due to a lower-body injury that he suffered in late-October although he did get into four games on a conditioning stint before returning to the IR earlier this week.  As New York was carrying only 22 players, there is no corresponding move required to bring him back onto the active roster.
  • Pittsburgh has dealt with significant injury issues this season and their list has grown. Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan told reporters, including Mike DeFabo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, that defenseman Justin Schultz is out week-to-week with a lower-body injury that he suffered back on Tuesday in his first shift against Calgary.  It’s the second time in the last month that Schultz has had a lower-body issue but it appears this one may keep him out longer than a week and a half like the first one did.
  • Just prior to puck drop tonight, the Sabres announced (Twitter link) that star center Jack Eichel was being scratched due to an upper-body injury; TSN’s Darren Dreger adds (via Twitter) that it’s likely the flu. Eichel is in the midst of a 17-game point streak but that has now come to an end.

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