At the moment, there's no reason to believe that the Penguins are shopping for any more free agents.
Per CapFriendly, the Penguins currently have a projected $121,795 in cap space based on a 23-man roster. That's a figure that includes Juuso Riikola and Dominik Simon among those waived and in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton to start. The only waivers-exempt player on that 23-man roster is Radim Zohorna and his league-minimum contract, giving the Penguins few options to free up some cap space without additional moves before the start of the season.
"We don't have much wiggle room in terms of cap space, so we'd have to get creative," Ron Hextall noted earlier this month.
Still, it's possible that the Penguins aren't done making some tweaks to the roster. Prior to the start of free agency, Hextall said that he "suspects there's going to be players in August that aren't signed," players that teams may be able to get on inexpensive contracts as the start of the season nears.
The Penguins have addressed the losses of Brandon Tanev and Jared McCann in free agency, adding Brock McGinn and Danton Heinen. The one loss that they haven't addressed is that of Cody Ceci.
Earlier this month, Hextall left open the possibility of adding a player to replace Ceci, but also expressed confidence in the ability of some in-house candidates already on the roster.
"We'll look to upgrade at any position. If we can upgrade on defense, we'll certainly look at it," Hextall said. "I think (Mark Friedman and Chad Ruhwedel) are both guys that we feel can certainly play in the league, along with (Juuso RIikola) and obviously (P.O Joseph). The other thing is you look at guys like like (Marcus Pettersson) and John Marino and we think there's more there. They're both young players. There's more there than they gave us last year, and both talking at year-end end feel like there's more there. So we feel in some ways like there's upside in those two players, which could really help solidify our defense."
Dave Molinari recently wrote this story, taking a look at some available players still on the free agent market. The first name on the list is a name I see readers bring up on almost a daily basis in the commenting section here, and is a familiar face in Pittsburgh.
Erik Gudbranson.
Gudbranson, 29, remains unsigned after spending last season in Ottawa and then Nashville.
Gudbranson wasn't in Pittsburgh very long. The Penguins acquired Gudbranson back in February 2019 from the Canucks in a trade that sent Tanner Pearson to Vancouver. Seven months later, they traded Gudbranson to the Ducks for AHL forward Andreas Martinsen and a seventh-round pick in 2021, used this summer to draft defenseman Ryan McCleary.
Are there any reasons why a Gudbranson reunion might make sense, if the Penguins could find a way to fit him in under the cap? Why might he not be a good fit? Let's take a look.
The obvious main draw with Gudbranson is the size and muscle he'd bring. He's 6 foot 5, 217 pounds. I'm pretty sure his arms are the size of tree trunks. He fights. Other Metro Division teams got tougher this season -- notably with the Rangers adding Ryan Reaves and Jarred Tinordi -- and the Penguins didn't. He'd bring some truculence.
The drawbacks with Gudbranson are pretty much ... everything else. He's an above-average penalty-killer, but his even-strength defense, offense capabilities are toward the bottom of the league, as shown in this graphic from JFreshHockey, which averages data over the last three seasons and expresses it in the form of a percentile:
Looking at the timelines on the right side of the graphic, his defensive numbers have especially dropped off since he was in Pittsburgh.
The isolated impact visualizations built by HockeyViz look at a player's contributions on either side of the puck at five-on-five, accounting for quality of teammates/opponents and deployment usage among skaters. Red areas on the charts show when a player's presence is associated with more shots than the league average, and blue is fewer. The percentage given is the change in expected goals, a stat that aims to show the probability of a goal happening, based on the quantity and type of shot taken. In looking at the charts and result percentage, you want to see more red and a positive percentage for a player's impact on the offense, and more blue and a negative percentage for a player's impact on the defense. Gudbranson's been the opposite of what you want to see the last three years, and had an awful impact defensively last season:
Is there any reason to believe that any of this might improve in a return to Pittsburgh, though?
There actually is!
Gudbranson's primary defense partner in Pittsburgh was Pettersson. The two spent 286:22 together on the ice as a pairing at five-on-five. And the results were really, really good.
They were deployed in more of a shutdown role, and didn't get many shift starts in the offensive zone. Only 39.24 percent of their shifts began in the offensive zone. But when they were on the ice, the difference was significant.
Looking at expected goals (the stat that aims to assign a value to a shot attempt based on several factors based on how likely that shot is to result in a goal), the Pettersson-Gudbranson pairing had the second-highest expected goals for percentage of any pairing the Penguins used over the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons (trailing only Brian Dumoulin-Marino), with the Penguins controlling 61.15 of the expected goals for when that pairing was on the ice. That's exceptionally high, especially considering that they weren't often starting their shifts in the offensive zone.
Over those two seasons, the Pettersson-Gudbranson pairing also saw the second-best shot attempt differential among all pairings, with the Penguins controlling 55.25 percent of all shot attempts when those two were on the ice together. They had the best high danger shot attempt differential (by over a five percent margin) of any pairing, with the Penguins controlling 70.33 percent of all high-danger shot attempts when they were on the ice.
The pairing also had the third-best scoring chance differential over that span, with the Penguins controlling 59.24 percent of scoring chances while they were on the ice.
Right now, the Penguins two available right-handed options to replace the right-handed Ceci are Friedman and Ruhwedel. For someone like Joseph or Riikola to take advantage of the open spot, either they, Pettersson, or Mike Matheson would have to play on their off side.
Gudbranson is right-handed, and could be reunited with his former partner Pettersson, which would then move Marino alongside Matheson.
Given the success Gudbranson once had with Pettersson, albeit in a somewhat small sample size, that could be an upgrade over the current available options.
Figuring out a way to fit Gudbranson under the salary cap would be a concern. He made $4 million on his last contract, and is definitely not in line for a contract with a similar value. Still, to fit with the Penguins he'd likely need to be on a deal close to league-minimum.
One option would be signing Gudbranson to a professional tryout contract. That would allow him to participate in training camp and play in the preseason, giving the Penguins a limited chance to see how he might fit. But he'd need to be signed to a full contract in order to play in the regular season.
With just under a month until training camp, the Penguins certainly have time to make changes to the roster before the season begins.
