Why influx of youth isn't coming for Penguins before playoffs

If you read anything I write throughout the year, you know that I'm the biggest advocate for giving guys from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton the shot they deserve.

That goes back years, like when I was writing story after story in 2018 about the Latvian prospect Teddy Blueger down in the minors, ready and waiting for his shot.

And if you follow my live game updates, you know that the games when those players do get their shots are my favorite games to cover.

I understand where fans are coming from throughout the year in calling for an infusion of youth, giving guys like Drew O'Connor, P.O Joseph and Valtteri Puustinen better looks, Filip Hallander and Jordy Bellerive their debuts, and Alex Nylander his first game as a Penguin.

For most of the year, those calls make sense. And with some of the Penguins' established players cooling off as of late, it would be great to see if any of those young players could be improvements.

But for a number of reasons related to the salary cap and recall restrictions, it's just not feasible right now, at least to the level some fans are calling for.

Let's break down the circumstances.

From the start of the regular season to the trade deadline, there's a 23-man limit when it comes to how many players a team can carry on its active roster at once. From the trade deadline through the end of the season, that limit vanishes. There are no restrictions on the number of players on a roster. That doesn't make it a free-for-all for this last stretch of the regular season, though. And there are some limitations that the Penguins are up against right now.

RECALL LIMITS

From the trade deadline until the end of the regular season -- a period of 40 days -- there are added restrictions on recalls.

The number of emergency recalls a team can use is unlimited. These are used when a team doesn't have a healthy group of 12 forwards, six defensemen or two goaltenders. Players on emergency recalls can only stay up on the roster as long as that emergency situation exists. If an emergency recall is the 12th forward, and one of the injured forwards is cleared to play, the player on emergency recall either has to be sent back to the minors or have his recall converted to a regular recall. Emergency recalls count toward the salary cap just the same as regular recalls.

The NHL imposes a limit during this period on the number of regular recalls. A regular recall would be a player who comes up when they aren't necessarily needed to complete a lineup, but are getting a shot over a healthy player. There is a limit of four regular recalls between the trade deadline and the end of the regular season.

This is where the Penguins run into some trouble. There's three and a half weeks left in the regular season, and they've already used two of their four regular recalls. The first was on Radim Zohorna, who was sent down to Wilkes-Barre then recalled in a paper move on trade deadline day to maintain his AHL eligibility for the remainder of the season. The second regular recall was used on Anthony Angello before they went on the Minnesota-Colorado road trip.

The maximum amount of players we can see come up from Wilkes-Barre who aren't replacing injured or sick players is two until the playoffs start.

Once the playoffs start, of course, there are no recall limits.

THE SALARY CAP

All recalls -- emergency and regular -- count toward the salary cap. And the Penguins don't exactly have much room.

Currently, the Penguins have two players on long-term injured reserve. The first is defenseman Nathan Beaulieu, who was acquired from the Jets on trade deadline day already injured and is expected to remained sidelined until sometime in the postseason. Acquiring Beaulieu did not gain or cost the Penguins any cap space. They took on his $1.25 million cap hit and got $1.25 million in cap relief. The net change is zero.

The other is Brock McGinn, who has already fulfilled the 10-game, 24-day minimum requirement for being on LTIR with his wrist injury. He's eligible to be activated whenever he's healthy, and he must be activated once healthy. Given that he's been skating on his own in full gear, stickhandling with both hands on the stick, it doesn't seem like he'll need another three and a half weeks on injured reserve. When he's healthy, they must have the cap space to activate him.

The Penguins still don't have a definitive timeline on a potential return for Jason Zucker after his apparent lower-body injury in Minnesota. But he too has resumed skating in full gear, and the Penguins are encouraged with how he's responded to those skates, he might be ready to return in the regular season too.

To activate McGinn, assuming nobody else goes on LTIR in the meantime, the Penguins have to re-assign Zohorna and Angello to Wilkes-Barre. Those are their only players now eligible to be re-assigned, and those two players clear the cap space necessary. Both have to be re-assigned, and nothing else.

With McGinn on LTIR and Zohorna and Angello still recalled, the Penguins only have $1.2 million in cap space. That's only enough to bring up one extra player. If they wanted to use all two of their last two regular recalls, they'd have to send one of Zohorna or Angello back down.

There's also no benefit to waiting and leaving that cap space sit, either. Typically, teams accrue unused cap space and can bank that for later in the season. When a team is using LTIR, there is no banking of any cap space. This situation will not change if the Penguins just wait it out.

And of course, there's no salary cap in the postseason, or any roster limits at all. 

O'CONNOR'S BONUSES

The one recall people overwhelmingly want to see the most is O'Connor. Before the trade deadline, one reason he was still in Wilkes-Barre was because the coaching staff wanted him to use that opportunity to work on killing penalties.

"Especially if you're playing in the bottom-six role on our team, to have the ability to participate on one of the special teams gives us the chance to manage minutes better with respect to the rest of the group that we have, so that we can sustain a high level of play and we don't overplay certain guys in certain situations," Sullivan said on March 14. "So I know he's working at (killing penalties) in Wilkes. And I know when he was up here, he worked with Mike Vellucci, spent a lot of time with him on the film, and also just getting reps in practice. He's had a few opportunities in games to help us on the penalty kill, but that's something that I think he could potentially be really good at, because of his mobility, his size, his reach, and his instincts."

Now, with such limited cap space, recalling O'Connor is tricky.

O'Connor's cap hit is $925,000. But his contract also has the potential for an additional $850,000 in performance bonuses, the maximum amount allowed to be written into a contract for "Schedule A" bonuses: Things like hitting a threshold for goals, points, games played, average ice time, etc. The conditions to receive those bonuses aren't made public. That means that O'Connor's cap hit has the potential to become $1.775 million.

Because the Penguins are using LTIR relief, though, it doesn't matter how close O'Connor is to hitting those bonus thresholds.

When a team is using that LTIR relief to fit in a player like O'Connor, the cap relief they have from LTIR must be enough to account for the bonus, even if the player doesn't actually get the bonus. That means that if the Penguins were to recall O'Connor, he'd count as $1.775 million toward their available cap space.

The Penguins only have $1.2 million in cap space as it is.

The Penguins could fit O'Connor in as long as McGinn remains on LTIR, but they would have to send down one of Zohorna or Angello to make it happen. Doing so would leave them with one healthy extra forward, and only one remaining regular recall spot for the rest of the regular season that they wouldn't have the salary cap space to use without additional moves. And again, O'Connor would have to go back down to Wilkes-Barre to activate McGinn.

Hypothetically, what if the Penguins did do that and O'Connor actually did hit whatever thresholds exist to earn those performance bonuses? That bonus money would now carry over and also count against next season's cap hit too. The Penguins are already going to be right up against the cap as it is as they try to re-sign Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Bryan Rust. Not to mention the cap hit of Jack Johnson's buyout rising by $750,000 next year. 

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN? 

For the most part, this will be the Penguins' roster for the rest of the regular season unless another injury dictates otherwise.

There will not be a large influx of youth before playoffs, there will not be any "experimenting" and letting a group of recalled players get games in while more experienced players sit. 

If the Penguins stay healthy, we will see at most two recalls before the playoffs start, and they would have to come before McGinn is healthy. If they want to use both of those recalls, one of Zohorna or Angello would have to go back down. If they want O'Connor to be the player coming up, then there cannot be a second recall as long as O'Connor is on the roster, and one of Zohorna or Angello would still have to go back down.

The reason there isn't a minivan currently on I-80 full of Wilkes-Barre players threatening to take the spots of some of the players on the NHL roster is because a number of limitations teams face during this time of year. No, not because Sullivan hates young players.