Signing Hossa wouldn't mean losing Malkin

A lot has stirred up recently regarding the Penguins contract situation, the hockey world is eyeing Pittsburgh especially as word has come out the Pens are interested in making a serious offer to retain Marian Hossa.

If, as Evgeni Malkin mentioned himself, his deal is at or below what Sidney Crosby got (5 years, $43.5 million or $8.7 million cap hit) then the Pens are in good shape. Most observers previously said Malkin was going to take $9-10 million a year to sign. If he, hypothetically, signs for about $8.5 million he and Crosby would have combined to leave about $4.0 million dollars on the table for the Penguins to spend on others.*

*Each player can sign for 20% of the salary cap, so Crosby could have gotten about $10.3 million a year if he demanded the max, and if the cap rises, as expected, to about $56 million, Malkin could demand no more than $11.2 million a year.

The additional $4 million in savings is the difference between keeping a guy like Ryan Malone and keeping a guy like Hossa.

Can the Penguins afford to have four players (Crosby, Malkin, Hossa, Whitney) hogging up about $28-29 million and still have to worry about long-term deals for Marc-Andre Fleury and Jordan Staal? Probably. Is it a wise idea? Who knows. The easiest comparision to make is Tampa Bay, who won a Cup but then fell apart with so much of their budget dedicated to a few players. But Tampa was about $11 million under the Cap last year, they were having an ownership sale and obviously were trying to keep liability and costs down to make them more attractive to potential owners.

So our buddy Greg at Puck Daddy suggests that Hossa could be the beginning of the end for Malkin's tenure in Pittsburgh. We don't buy it. James Mirtle MD does point out the reality of signing a few means not much of the pie to round out the team, but we think this is managable as well. Players on entry-level deals are the key. They usually come in around $600,000 and guys like Tyler Kennedy and Kris Letang did well for the Pens this season. In years to come, if the drafting/developing continues, this trend could continue as well.

Looking around the league, dedicating a large chunk of your cap to your important players is becoming a trend. New York Rangers have $21.8 million of their cap allocated to three players (Gomez, Drury and Lundqvist) through 2011-12, the Flyers have $28 million going to five players (Briere, Hartnell, Gagne, Richards, Timonen) through 2010-11 and Ottawa's on the hook for $19 million for their "Big 3".

Given the choice of those players, wed rather have the Pens nucleus. Things will slide into place, we'll just have to see how it turns out. Even if Pittsburgh has offered Hossa and extension and has planned to move on without Malone, none of it has been written in stone just yet.

Actions speak louder than words...

Yahoo! says:

Hossa expects his agent, Rich Winter, to start talking with Shero soon.

“I’d rather take less and play on a good team,” Hossa said. “Hopefully, I can return here and be part of this organization but, with the salary cap, I know how hard it is. There’s lots of players to be signed, so we’ll see what’s going to happen.”

If we're Penguins general manager Ray Shero, we go to Hossa and his representatives bright and early Monday morning and say the following....

"Hey Hoss, you were great for us, everything we wanted when we went out and traded a large chunk of the future for you. Things went great, you came in, worked hard and produced big time points. We'd love to keep you. You say you're willing to take a little less for a good team and you know you'll never find a better situation than playing with Crosby, the best playmaking center in the game. Sid took about $1.5 million less a season to help us keep everything together. We're gonna ask you to do the same, because we have to. So here's an offer for $42 million over six years. As you know, it's guaranteed money. Let's gear up and go again, we want you back and, due to the circumstances, you know this is the best we can do. Surely you could get more money from a team in July, but you won't be with Crosby and this club. Think about it."

If he signs, awesome. If not, the most important word in the Hossa quote above is the one we highlighted for emphasis.

Unscientific look at fitting under the cap

We really wanted to focus on the Pens Stanley Cup run, but we had some extra time today and fiddled around with the numbers. Go to any website and a lot of places caution that this is the Penguins last chance for a while to be competitive. To be sure, the Penguins have a lot of unrestricted free agents and next year's team is certainly going to be much different than this year's version.

With that in mind, we made two charts. The first is the current outlook of the Pens contract situations. All contract numbers were derived from nhlnumbers.com

(Click to enlarge)

As you can see, we omitted all players that are not signed for next year and didn't include (with the exception of Alex Goligoski) any minor league players (like Ryan Stone and Jonathan Filewich) that could be on the NHL roster next season.

Now here's what could be....Will all of this happen? Probably not. We have no idea if Marian Hossa would accept something like a $42 million six year contract. He could likely fetch more on the open market. But who knows if he would want to take the chance of leaving Sidney Crosby and a great hockey city like Pittsburgh for another hockey oasis like an Atlanta-esque market.

The same could be said for Marc-Andre Fleury and Jordan Staal accepting long-term deals that would "only" pay $4.5 million annually. We haven't negotiated with them and don't know what they're looking for, we're just guessing based off what others in their age range have gotten. Those same words go for Evgeni Malkin. If he wants $10 million, the Pens may very well give that to him. We put $9 million long-term for the sake of argument, since that's about the range of where Crosby and Alex Ovechkin are.

There it is, a rough-draft blueprint of how it all could work (all hypothetical changes have be put in bold). Would it be pretty harrowing to sign 11 players for about $15 million in 2009-10? Yeah. But there are so many variables like the change in salary cap that it's difficult to look that far in the future.

As you could see, we also envisioned Ray Shero dealing Ryan Whitney to a team and then using much of the money currently allocated to him to sign Brooks Orpik. Whether either of those two events could occur is probably very much up for debate.

We're just throwing ideas against the wall here. Don't think we want all of this to happen, or are predicting it. If Hossa walks and signs for $8-$9 million it won't be surprising, it's probably the expected course of action for him to take. We just wanted to show one possible (albeit very unlikely) scenario in which the Pens can retain their core players and still keep some of the important pieces to the puzzle that are currently around.

We'd be very interested as to anyone's thoughts on this matter in the comments. We'll probably have all summer to stew on this issue anyways.....Or main hope (and focus) is that that summer doesn't begin tonight.

Mirtle, Buccigross weigh in

Noted blog-ologist James Mirtle (MD) weighed in on the big issue that will dominate our summer: just how in the heck the Penguins are going to make this work...

But if you're looking for the window, it's small.

Case in point, the Penguins, who have two incredible stars complemented by some pretty nice young talent. Despite the relative youth of Pittsburgh's lineup, the fact that both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are both going to command near-max contracts in the near future necessitates that the team-building process is sped up.

Forget the fact that this might be before their time — the Penguins' window is right now, when someone like Malkin can win a Hart Trophy and still be paid under $4-million next season.

Pittsburgh has $27-million committed for 2008-09, but there are about eight significant unrestricted free agent holes coming July 1, and Marc-Andre Fleury, an RFA, is due a raise. Come the season after next, 2009-10, and Malkin and Crosby are making $9-million a season, or about one-third of the Penguins' cap, and Jordan Staal is due a new deal.

There's no room, in other words, for a Marian Hossa, who will command an enormous deal as a 29-year-old UFA. Think $50-million plus over seven years and find a spot for that behemoth long term

Mirtle was probably citing nhlnumbers.com (a must read for NHL contract details), but if you look down the column for 08/09 contracts, their numbers tally nine players under contract for$26.8 million. But one can clearly see, as we did earlier tonight, that the Penguins do have 15 players (including possible farmhand Chris Minard) as being under contract. Tally up the cap hits (the number on the left) and that's where we got the $34 million figure. NHLNumbers is probably a little behind with the Gill trade and the site doesn't seem to have included players that will be under contracts on their entry year deals next season (Malkin, Staal, Kennedy, Letang, etc).

Not that what Mirtle writes is far off; yes Crosby, Malkin and Staal will be eating up a large chunk of the cap and Hossa will command a ton of money.

No one can tell what will happen in the future; case in point this time last year it was a "given" that Crosby would be signing league maximum and he didn't. Will Malkin sign for $8 million? $9 million? More? Less? No one knows and speculation on it is too hard to predict until it actually happens.

Mirtle went on to cite a recent John Buccigross column where Bucci actually seriously made a pitch for the Penguins to trade Malkin this summer. Hah!*

A lot of people point to Tampa Bay as an example why an NHL team can't spend such a huge chunk of their alloted cap space/budget on just 3 or 4 players. Those same people don't usually point out that Tampa was well under the salary cap due to be up for sale and couldn't round out their team very well.

Similiarly Pittsburgh is quite a bit under the cap. Their billionare owner has seemed to take bigger interest in the team now that: A)There's a new cash-cow arena on the horizon, B)The team is winning and C)It's a hot product, they're selling out every single night.

If Ron Burkle is really willing to take a little bit of a hit in the pocketbook (and for his bank account the word "little" should be stressed) for the short-term to keep the team intact before new revenue streams from the state of the art 18,000+ arena, the nucleus will stay intact and management should be able to surround more skill around their stars than the uncertain situation in Tampa.

At the end of the day, it's not how you spend it, it's who you spend it on. Some teams like the Rangers will give a combined $14 million on two players longterm (Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Henrik Lundqvist). Philly's spending about $23 million longterm on 4 players (Daniel Briere, Mike Richards, Scott Hartnell and Kimmo Timonen). Pittsburgh's probably going to be in that neighborhood on three players, but those players are Crosby, Malkin and Staal. Pittsburgh's players are a lot younger and will easily outplay any of the above named

We're not predicting for sure the Pens can/should retain Hossa, but it might be a little more of a possibility than most think it is right now....Hey, Gary Roberts was running right back to Toronto or Ottawa just as soon as he hit FA too, right? Sure the situation couldn't be more different between an aging player and a superstar in his prime, but the point is almost everyone in the media proclaimed Roberts to be a rental, and he ended up back.


*Although, in a very brief moment of weakness, we must confess did think how it would be if Nashville offered Alex Radulov, Shea Weber, Dan Hamhuis and a 1st rounder for Malkin and Ryan Whitney's $4 million deal

Extension for Malone to wait 'til summer..

..If at all.

One of the biggest changes the NHL has gone through since instituting the salary cap has been granting players unrestricted free agency at a younger age. That's a big reason you're seeing teams lock up players that are 24, 25 years old or younger for 5, 6, or even 12 or 13 years now.

Ryan Malone is a poster boy for this. At 28 years old, he's at the prime of his career. And, fortunately for Bugsy, he's having a career year (24 goals, 45 points and counting). At 6'4 and 220 pounds, he's always been big. But he's using it more effectively and consistently. That sound of lip smacking is about 30 general managers imagining adding a power forward to their lineup.

But Malone will hit the market with fewer than 300 career NHL games for the Penguins. He was drafted in the old CBA, where teams had a lot more time before they had to start developing prospects professionaly. Malone was drafted in the summer of 1999 but didn't join the Penguins until finishing his senior year at St. Cloud State. Throw in the lost lockout year and he's only had four seasons in Pittsburgh's organization.

Through teams good and bad Malone's always been a consistent 20 goal scorer (last year he netted 16 in 64 games of an injury shortened season). But he's never been this good.

So, how are the negotiations going?.

The Penguins are believed to have recently offered Malone a long-term contract,but not at significantly more than his current $1.45 million salary.

Uhh that's not going to get it done for a guy who will hit the open market. Teams historically over-pay for talent on July 1st---$8 million on two years of Todd Bertuzzi and Robert Lang, $20.4 million on six years for Dainius Zubrus last summer and so on and so on. It's easy to make a case that al of those guys are more established than Malone, but they were also older and had more "wear in the tires" too.

It's not crazy to think some team will swoop in and offer at least $12 million for four years for Malone...But would he leave?

Malone has publically stated he hopes to remain a Penguin. And who wouldn't? It's a bright time for the organization and Malone's played with centers like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin for the past two and a half seasons. Taters has been a physical force, but he's not been the one primarily lugging the puck up the ice or making many decisions with the biscuit. It's simple; drive to the net, create room for the playmakers, cycle the puck and throw the body around and the puck on target.

But Bugsy is a Pittsburgh boy, you say. While true he spent his formative years (from high school senior through college) in the upper middle west. And, what will come as a newsflash to many Pens fans who believe Malone is the prototypical "hometown discount" remember that he makes his offseason home not in Pittsburgh, but in Minnesota.

There was a very telling quote by Ray Shero in that article, one that sounded more than willing to acknowledge this might be it:

"For every goal he scores, assist or fight he has - look, we're rooting for him. I hope he has a great playoff," Shero said. "It's the way the system is, and Ryan knows what our feelings are."

The Penguins have a general plan and they know what they're doing. Priority #1 this summer is obviously locking up Evgeni Malkin....Marc-Andre Fleury will also need new deal and the Pens can look to extend Jordan Staal if they want to as well. As crazy as it sounds, don't sleep on the the Pens not making at least a pitch for Marian Hossa either. If they're willing to spend to the salary cap, like has been reported it might be workable.

Immediately, There's 13 players next season under contract, the forwards are: Crosby, Malkin, Staal, Petr Sykora, Maxime Talbot, Tyler Kennedy. The defense is a lot more set: Sergei Gonchar, Ryan Whitney, Hal Gill, Darryl Sydor, Kris Letang, Rob Scuderi (and Alex Goligoski) are under contract. Dany Sabourin is too, but that's a different issue for a diferent day.

By our unscientific math that's a cap hit of right at $34 million...That leaves about $18 million to what's expected to be the cap; even if they don't make any moves on trying to shed a guy like Sydor ($2.5) or Whitney ($4) It'll be decision time to see who the Penguins want to bring back, who they're able to bring back and what will happen.

Start with Ryan Malone, end up with a thesis paper about the Penguins salary cap next season...That's Sweater Ted style, baby.