Ron Hextall made it known long ago that he didn't expect the Penguins to be major players in free agency.
It's not that they didn't have personnel needs that he would like to address.
Just that he didn't have the salary-cap space needed to give his roster a high-impact upgrade.
So while some of Hextall's colleagues around the league spent Wednesday handing out high seven-figure salaries as if they were leaflets on a street corner -- "I was joking with a couple pf other GMs that we smartened up a year ago and we got back to our regular selves today," he said. -- he had to settle for adding bottom-six winger Brock McGinn from Carolina, re-signing utility forward Evan Rodrigues and bringing back Dominik Simon on relatively modest deals.
McGinn got four years, with a cap hit of $2.75 million, while Rodrigues re-upped for one year at $1 million. Simon accepted a two-way contract worth $750,000 if he's in the NHL, $375,000 if he's in Wilkes-Barre.
Per CapFriendly.com, the Penguins have just under $3.7 million in cap space remaining. They still have to re-sign restricted free agents Zach Aston-Reese and Radim Zohorna, so Hextall won't have much with which to work after those contracts are settled.
Getting McGinn, 27, was the Penguins' biggest move.
He is 6 foot, 187 pounds and had eight goals and five assists in 37 games last season.
While McGinn definitely is not a clone of Brandon Tanev -- face it, there aren't a lot of those around -- Hextall believes those two do share some qualities.
"(McGinn) plays a real inside game," he said. "He's got really good energy. Physical player. Plays the same way every night. We just really valued the player, but we also value the intangibles that he brings on a nightly basis and some of that stuff that he's going to bring into our locker room.
"Brock's an insider player who scores goals around the net and blocks shots and does all the things you need to do to win games. He was certainly high on our list and we're thrilled to add him."
McGinn projects as a capable third- or fourth-liner and penalty-killer, a niche Frederick Gaudreau filled effectively enough last season that Minnesota signed him to a two-year deal with a $1.2 million cap hit.
The Penguins' biggest loss of the day, though, was defenseman Cody Ceci, who played well on the No. 2 pairing with Mike Matheson and who the Penguins definitely wanted to retain if they'd been able to make the numbers work.
But considering that Edmonton gave Ceci a four-year deal that carries a $3.25 cap hit, they didn't have a chance of even coming close.
"We wanted to re-sign Cody," Hextall said. "But you probably saw the numbers and there was no real way for us, at this point, to make that fit."
He didn't specify whether the Penguins would replace Ceci with a candidate from inside the organization or with someone acquired via a trade or free agency.
While it remains to be seen precisely who will be playing in front of the Penguins' goaltenders this fall, it doesn't sounds as if there's much doubt about who those goalies will be.
Although he did not overtly commit to Tristan Jarry and Casey DeSmith being the Penguins' goaltenders when the coming season begins -- there has been rampant speculation about the Penguins possible trying to acquire Marc-Andre Fleury from Chicago, even though finding the assets and cap space needed to pull off such a swap would be quite challenging -- Hextall didn't stop far short of it, either.
"Those guys did a good job for us last year," he said. "We anticipate them both being back."
But even if the Penguins are set in goal -- Hextall attached his usual caveat about being prepared to upgrade an position if the right opportunity comes along -- much of the rest of the roster remains subject to change before the regular season begins Oct. 12 in Tampa.
Hextall and president of hockey operations Brian Burke have, for example, repeatedly expressed a desire to add size and toughness, and that has't happened yet.
Which is not so suggest that they haven't tried.
As recently as Wednesday, in fact.
"We've looked around," Hextall said. "We tried hard today. We had a guy on a two-way contract (proposal) who went somewhere else. ... We've tried hard and we'll continue to look for that."