The Penguins signed their first-round pick Owen Pickering to his three-year, entry-level contract, Ron Hextall announced on Saturday.
The contract will begin once Pickering turns pro.
At 18 years old, Pickering isn't yet eligible to play in the minor leagues. Because of the NHL-CHL transfer agreement, his options are either to go straight to the NHL or return to his junior team until he's 20 years old.
Pickering, a 6-foot-4, 180-pound defenseman, will return to the Swift Current Broncos in the WHL, where he'll likely play two more seasons before turning pro.
The benefit to Pickering signing his entry-level contract now is that it will lower his cap hit at the NHL level once he does turn pro.
The technical term when junior-age players sign contracts that do not begin yet is that the contracts "slide." Signing bonuses that are written into the contract do not slide, though. As explained in my bonuses primer, despite the term "signing bonus," the bonuses aren't always paid out just when the player signs. They can be written into each year of his contract, as they typically are in entry-level contracts.
Even if the contract slides, the signing bonuses are still paid out in the years after a deal is signed. If a contract has signing bonuses in each year of a three-year deal, the player gets the signing bonuses in the three years that follow, regardless of where they are playing or if the contract has actually kicked in.
That means that if Pickering does spend these next two seasons in juniors as expected, he would get his signing bonus for each of those years, which ultimately lowers his cap when he does go pro.
An example of this is 2019 first-round pick Sam Poulin, who also signed his entry-level contract shortly after he was drafted. Had he turned pro that season, his cap hit would have been $925,000 at the NHL level. But because he returned to the QMJHL for two more years and received a $92,500 signing bonus in each of the two years his contract slid, that bonus money no longer counts toward his average annual value and his cap hit at the NHL level is now just $863,333 for the duration of his entry-level contract.
Pickering, who was selected with pick No. 21 in this month's draft in Montreal, attended the Penguins' five-day development camp that concluded with Thursday's scrimmage at the Lemieux Complex.
"It was a great experience, for sure," he said afterward of the camp. "Obviously I came straight from the draft, so went pretty fast. It's definitely been a whirlwind. There's a lot of takeaways. First of all, I'd say this facility and the people in the organization are top notch, I'm super excited to be a part of the Penguins. I can't wait to come back for camp in September."
Pickering said that there's still parts of his game that he'd like to work on before he does turn pro. First and foremost is putting on weight, still filling out his body after his growth spurt that took him from 5-foot-7 to 6-foot-4 in a matter of three years.
"You're never perfect," he said. "The best players in the world are still trying to get better every day. For me, I think the focus is getting stronger and filling out. Every single day, there's things that you're working. You're never too good at something."
