There’s one thing the Penguins’ soon-to-be general manager won’t be able to do as they navigate their first season at the helm, and that would be addressing Jeff Carter’s presence on the roster.
If the information has somehow eluded you to this point, the Penguins are stuck with Carter’s $3.125 million cap hit in the final season of his deal, almost no matter what. In all of his wisdom, Ron Hextall frontloaded Carter’s two-year extension, making it a true 35+ contract. That means the cap hit cannot be minimized by a single penny.
It wouldn’t matter much, anyway, because Carter has a no-movement clause. He can’t be traded (without consent, which seems highly unlikely) and he can’t be re-assigned to the minors (without consent). Even if he retires (which also seems highly unlikely with $3 million in real money owed to him next season), his cap hit will remain. Even if the Penguins buy him out to clear a roster spot, his cap hit will remain. The new general manager isn’t going to willingly take that much dead money into the season.
The only grounded-in-reality scenario that gets the Penguins out from under his cap hit would be if he does decide to retire and throws the team a bone by letting them know ahead of time that he’ll waive his no-movement clause for a trade to an out-of-contention team with plenty of cap space, like the Coyotes. But again, there’s $3 million sitting there and all he has to do is show up for it. I know what I’d do.
Assuming he stick things out and plays in 2023-24, it'll be with the Penguins. Is there anything left to be squeezed out of him?
Carter was exactly what the Penguins needed when Hextall acquired him at the trade deadline in 2021. He didn't just fill the void as their third-line center, he made a tremendous impact by filling the net at will. Through his first 14 regular-season games with the team, he scored nine goals and added two assists. That postseason, he scored another four goals in six games for a total of 13 in just 20 games. He was never going to continue scoring at such a torrent clip, but he was providing value beyond the goals by driving play.
It wasn't to the same degree, but during the 2021 postseason, you wanted the puck on Carter's stick during crunch time kind of like you wanted the puck to be on Phil Kessel's stick in the 2016 postseason. He was that good.
The hands and legs can go quick, though. It's been a completely different story ever since.
Carter's performance after being brought over from the Kings was so strong that the Penguins felt comfortable going into the 2021-22 season with him as their first-line center in the absence of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. In hindsight, the additional minutes and responsibilities seemed to accelerate his fall from grace.
In the 155 regular-season games that followed, Carter scored 32 times (four empty-netters), a 16-goal pace over a full season. That's acceptable for the role he settled into, as well as what he counted against the salary cap, but faceoff ability notwithstanding, everything else for him has been a mess.
With Carter on the ice at 5-on-5 since the start of 2021-22, the Penguins have been outscored by a whopping 28 goals (90-62). There have been 578 skaters to play at least 1,000 full-strength minutes during that time. His 40.8% share of on-ice goals ranks 532nd. Even taking finishing and goaltending out of the equation, his 49.4% share of on-ice expected goals is the worst mark of any regular Penguins skater not named Brock McGinn, who obviously isn't on the team anymore.
There are contextual factors like teammates, competition and zone starts influencing those raw on-ice results, but accounting for each of those items doesn't paint any prettier of a picture. According to the WAR (wins above replacement) model of JFresh Hockey, Carter has graded out as a replacement-level skater in each of the past two seasons, ranking in the 20th and 14th percentile, respectively, of NHL forwards.
This past season was more troubling than the previous. His full-strength goal-scoring rate dropped to 0.5 per hour (second lowest of career) while his production dropped to 1.08 points per hour (second lowest of career). After a mid-March loss to the Rangers in which Carter's defensive work was at the forefront of several debilitating goals against, Dejan Kovacevic asked Mike Sullivan why he continued to see the ice.
Sullivan's never been one to throw his players under the bus, and that didn't waver. He noted the tough situations that Carter and Brian Dumoulin were routinely put in, on top of the fact Carter was sixth in the entire NHL in faceoff percentage at the time. He went on to finish the season fifth in the league.
While Carter's ability at the dot isn't to be ignored, it's also not to be ignored that the number of faceoffs he takes per game doesn't come anywhere close to washing away his other shortcomings. Contrary to public perception, Sullivan already knew this.
By that point, Sullivan had moved Carter down to the fourth line. The night Sullivan was questioned marked the third game in a row that Carter played fewer than 10 minutes, which was noteworthy considering he'd played at least 10 minutes in every game of the season, except for a visit with the Kraken that he left early due to injury. For the most part, he'd been hovering between 13-15 minutes per game.
Here's a look at Carter's all-situations ice-time over the course of the year, presented as a 10-game rolling average. The aforementioned loss to the Rangers was his 66th game of the season:
DANNY SHIREY / DKPS
That is quite the hefty drop-off in the last leg of the season, which happened to coincide with the Penguins fighting for their postseason lives. It wasn't a coincidence.
Carter also saw his average 5-on-5 ice-time dip below 7.5 minutes per game after he'd spent the entirety of the season averaging more than 10 minutes at full-strength:
DANNY SHIREY / DKPS
Whether it was a Hextall mandate or simply respecting a veteran's successful career, Carter didn't come out of the lineup as a healthy scratch once. But Sullivan didn't play him much at all when it mattered most. The Penguins were in do-or-die mode and he wasn't trusted.
I can't imagine Carter will suddenly find himself in the press box next season, so Sullivan's late-season usage of him might be a glimpse of what's coming. Limited minutes on the fourth line and spot faceoff duty is really the only way that the Penguins will be able to shelter him. Anything more than that is destined to go south in a hurry.
Carter's never been the best skater or most skilled with the puck. He made a name for himself as a volume shooter and someone who was strong around the net-front. With his hands and skating having deteriorated so much, I'd slot him in on the right wing, but continue utilizing him on draws.
The amount of skating and defensive responsibilities required of a center are too much for him to handle now, even in a fourth-line role. Ideally, the center of his line would be someone with a strong defensive conscience, some wheels, and the ability to transition the puck (perhaps Ryan Poehling).
My mind keeps running to Corey Perry as an example for Carter to emulate. He's several months younger than Carter, though the Lightning have continued to get value out of him by embracing his skill set as a grinder in extremely limited minutes on the fourth line. Perry had only 12 goals himself this past season, but he played far less and had significantly better offensive and defensive impacts.
Perry achieved those impacts by getting his nose dirty on the forecheck, battling for -- and winning -- possession of the puck, and generally being tough and annoying to play against. Carter has a nearly identical build as Perry, I'm just not sure he's got the physical attributes to make the same mark.
The problem is that, even if Carter hasn't lost much strength, his edge control is so poor these days that it's incredibly difficult for him to make plays in open ice, battle for positioning, or protect the puck.
Here are a couple examples of what I'm referring to, starting with David Perron easily rubbing him out along the boards to take the puck away:
It's pretty apparent in that clip that Carter was trying to rely on his upper-body strength to fend off Perron, which clearly didn't matter because of how upright his skating stance was. That ultimately limited his ability to dig his edges into the ice to maintain a strong base for puck protection.
In the next clip, Carter had his lane to the slot taken away by a diving Alex Iafallo. It was a good defensive play, but it also illustrated Carter's lack of shiftiness and hesitance to challenge defenders as a result of poor edge control:
There's not a whole lot to spin in a positive outlook here. If he manages to just get back to his 2021-22 level, he still wouldn't be living up to his cap hit. Is that even a fair expectation? How many players have bucked the age curve this late into their career? Not many.
It's possible Carter will show up for camp in immaculate shape, ready to prove everyone wrong. For the Penguins to get any juice that might be left, I'd encourage him to try and bring some snarl, muck things up, and fire the puck on target every single chance he gets.
Either way, the Penguins appear to be facing an immovable several million in negative value. Hextall's gone, but his fingerprints are still all over the place.
