In this bonus edition of Tip of the Ice-Burgh, Nick Belsky recaps a busy weekend for the Pittsburgh Penguins, including trading for center Kevin Hayes from the St. Louis Blues. Tune In!
The top podcast for the most avid Penguins fans! Tune in as Nick Belsky and Nick Horwat bring you all of the Pittsburgh Penguins top news and analysis! New episodes every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Follow us on X: @IceBurghPodcast
Watch segments and full episodes of the show on YouTube at Tip of the Ice-Burgh!!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A milestone moment creates a beautiful memory for years to come. And now is the time to celebrate it with 35% off select pieces at Blue Nile. Blue Nile makes your most valuable moment sparkle with jewelry gifts of the highest quality offered at the best price. You'll also find expert guidance and the level of convenience you'd expect from the world's leading online jeweler. Right now, take advantage of 35% off select pieces at Blue Nile dot com. That's Blue Nile dot com. Blue Nile dot com. Hello everybody and welcome to the tip of the iceberg podcast your home for Pittsburgh Penguins news and analysis. You can find us on YouTube or anywhere you get your podcast from by simply searching tip of the iceberg. The Penguins had themselves a pretty busy weekend to set the table for the opening of free agency in just a few hours from this recording. They handled a lot of business over the weekend as did most NHL franchises with the Stanley Cup final finishing on Monday last week. They had a whole lot of things to go through the NHL draft, the opening and closing of the first buyout period, whether or not they could qualify restricted free agents. All of that business had to be handled over the weekend and the Penguins certainly handled some business of their own. We'll talk about a couple of the things that they were able to do trading for a new third line center drafting six players at the sphere in Las Vegas and allowing one defenseman to walk to the open market and be available for all 32 NHL teams as early as noon today. Let's start with the big one and that is the Pittsburgh Penguins acquiring Kevin Hayes and a 2025 second round pick from the St. Louis Blues in exchange for future considerations. Now, most people already know this, but future considerations basically means they got them for nothing. They're not going to give back very much, if anything, in the future for Kevin Hayes in that 2025 second round pick. It was a cap dump for the St. Louis Blues, a team that brought in Kevin Hayes last summer and were hoping that he was going to be an answer to their depth center. And instead, he ended up being a healthy scratch toward the end of last season, still played upwards of 75 games for the St. Louis Blues last season. But if you look at him now, he's 32 years old, making three and a half million dollars for two more years. Yes, his contract is worth seven million dollars, but the Philadelphia Flyers are retaining 50% for the next two seasons as they were the team that signed under that deal. It does accomplish a few things. I don't want to go to the negatives first. Let's start with the positives here. It accomplishes a few things for the Pittsburgh Penguins. One and the one that we were all talking about why they needed a new third line center is it bumps Lars Eller down the lineup a little bit. Lars Eller was perfectly fine for the Pittsburgh Penguins last year. He was a decent third line center. In fact, he was probably one of the better third line centers they've had in the past five years, but he was still better off as a fourth line center. And that's why the Penguins needed to bring somebody in to bump him down and not only bump him down, but potentially bump a guy like Nolichari over the wing. Again, Nolichari as a fourth line center last year, he was okay. You didn't get the offensive production, but you got really stellar defensive production copious amounts of block shots. He played physically in the bottom six. He was just better served as a wing. So now by making this trade by acquiring Kevin Hayes, you put two other players in better positions to succeed in that aspect. Good move for the Pittsburgh Penguins. It also brings a little bit more of a playmaking upside to your third line. When you look at the Penguins third line this upcoming season, you're expecting there to be young wingers. No matter who the Penguins bring in later today in free agency, you would expect it's a combination of maybe a Drew Connor if they can find somebody to go on the top line on the left side. You get Drew Connor who's still young and still has a lot to learn. You might have a valteri Pustanen who's still young and has a lot to learn. It might be one of the new guys, a Vallecoy Vounen, a facility, Panamarev. If one of those young guys or two of those young guys end up being on the wing on the third line, it's good to have somebody who has a playmaking background. Like Kevin Hayes to set them up in positions where they're able to just do what they do best, fire the puck on net, try to beat the goaltender. That's what I think was part of the issue last year when you look at Valteri Pustanen. Lars Ehler, again, I'm not going to crap on him because I thought he was serviceable as a third line center, but he wasn't great at setting up his wingers when it comes to scoring chances. Kevin Hayes at his best will be able to do that. And also you look at the fact that they add a pick at no cost, a good draft pick too, not a fourth or fifth which could sometimes turn into a good pick, but a second round pick that could end up being in the top half of the draft order. Those are pretty good things if you're Kyle Dubas. Those are good things to add to the organization, especially at no cost. There is downside to this and there's reason that my initial reaction was, "Oh, I can't believe they actually did this. I had to do a double take. I had to make sure that it was actually Frank Zarevali who tweeted it out and it wasn't a spam account." Kevin Hayes has not had much success of late. You look at last season, I said played 75+ games, only 29 points. This is a guy that, yeah, he can probably put in double digit goals every season and that's great, but the one thing that he was great at and the one thing that I already outlined is you're going to need him to be a playmaker. He struggled to become that in his first year in St. Louis. So the Penguins are betting that you bring him back to the Metropolitan Division, a division in which he had some of his best years with the New York Rangers and early on with the Philadelphia Flyers. And you hope he just finds that again. You hope that he can be a solid piece in your bottom six that is consistent similar to what Lars Eller was last year with a higher offensive ceiling. Hayes is decently defensively responsible, but at the same time, you brought him in because you want to score more goals in the bottom six. That's what they're banking on from Kevin Hayes. He didn't show it last season. You saw him kind of start to fall off a little bit the season prior. Hence the reason he was traded by the Philadelphia Flyers. So that's one of the downsides. You need him to revert back to his old self for this to work out. Secondly, he doesn't play special teams, doesn't kill penalties. He was a power play to guy in St. Louis, not a lot of ice time, 119 minutes total on the power play last year. You would assume that he becomes a at best second power play guy in Pittsburgh, but he doesn't play a lot of special teams. So his focus, his impact is going to the majority be at five on five. So you're not bringing in a guy that's going to be a jack of all trades, you're bringing in a guy that's going to be in that one position for most of the season you would expect. And also the big one, he doesn't make the team younger. He certainly doesn't make the team faster. So it goes against the headline of what Kyle Dubas mentioned as trying to turn the Penguins into. Now again, he might try to fix that with who's on the wing. He might try to fix that with the overall team speed around him. But what Kyle Dubas saw was an opportunity to get his third line center in, to put Lars Zeller in a better position, to potentially put Nolichari in a better position and potentially to create more chances for guys like Drew Connor in a bottom six role, to create more chances for a guy like Valteri Poosden, who only had five goals, despite being a sharpshooter last year in his first 52 games at the NHL level. You're hoping that he creates more offense. You're hoping that he creates more scoring chances for those young players so they can start to fill the back of the net, get their confidence up and get up to speed at the NHL level. If it works, it's a shrewd move. But again, when you see something like this happen, the question then becomes, what is the next thing to happen? A milestone moment creates a beautiful memory for years to come. And now is the time to celebrate it, with 35% off select pieces at Blue Nile. Blue Nile makes your most valuable moments sparkle, with jewelry gifts of the highest quality offered at the best price. You'll also find expert guidance and the level of convenience you'd expect from the world's leading online jeweler. Right now, take advantage of 35% off select pieces at Blue Nile dot com. That's Blue Nile dot com. Blue Nile dot com. Right, the penguins, they're struggling to find a dance partner when it comes to trading guys like a Riley Smith. When it comes to trading guys, I know we've talked a lot about Tristan Jari. There's not much of a market out there. According to all reports, especially the ones by Rob Rossi, who basically in his article over the weekend stated that Kyle Dubas has just kind of run into a brick wall. There has been no other teams that have been interested in getting these guys at least in a way, in a fashion that Kyle Dubas wants to get it. So we'll have to keep our eye on what happens later this afternoon, but the big move over the weekend. Penguins acquiring Kevin Hayes, but it was also a draft weekend. The penguins selected six players, no trades made as far as in the draft. They had six picks going in. They took those six selections throughout the day on day two. Four defensemen, one center, one winger, all four defensemen are right handed shot. I understand that based on what the penguins have in the cupboard and the prospect system, it should have been best player available. But when you look at the cupboard, there's one position that was more bare than everything else. And that was right shot defense. And by bare, I mean, Jack St. Ivey and nothing else. You look at the left side. You do have Owen Pickering. You do have Emile Pien and Yemi, who was the second rounder last season. You do have Isaac Belavo, who is a young defender trying to make his way up. Starting in the ECHL last season, we'll see if he can make that jump to the American Hockey League. You even brought in Phillip Crawl, a 24-year-old that went over to Europe, was initially a draft pick by Kyle Dubas in Toronto, and now is coming back over to join the Penguins organization. So you have some names on the left side. Forward wise, we saw what he did over the past year. He added Ponomar, he added Koivun, and he drafted Brayden Yeager, who immediately became the penguins' best prospect out of everybody. Gold tending we've talked about at Nauseum, they have a decent stockpile of gold tenders. They needed right shot defensemen. That was an area that they clearly had identified that they needed. They go out there, and they draft four of them. We'll have obviously deeper thoughts on all six of the picks. Multiple of them are likely coming to Pittsburgh for the rookie camp, so we'll get some eyes on them, and we'll talk more about them as the week progresses. Last thing we'll mention here before we go, because it is going to be a busy day across the NHL, and I'm sure the Penguins will be part of that. The Penguins last night allowed Pio Joseph to hit the open market. They decided not to qualify him before the deadline yesterday. Now that doesn't mean that he's gone. That doesn't mean that he is in the wind and not coming back. All it means is he has an opportunity to negotiate with the 31 other NHL teams. The Penguins are now in the mix, could still bring him back, but at the same time, he now has negotiating power with everybody else in the National Hockey League. It's an interesting situation because the Penguins, they need a left shot defenseman. When you look at their left side, they have Marcus Patterson, one of you remaining on his contract. You have, excuse me, Ryan Graves with a lot of the years left on that contract. Who's the third guy at the NHL level to start the season? You have those young prospects, but none of them, I would predict, would be ready by the beginning of the season. They'll need to bring in a left shot demon, do they end up getting a deal done with Pio Joseph that much remains to be seen, but he does head to the open market. He does wave, not wave. He does not get arbitration rights as he becomes an unrestricted free agent today at 12 o'clock. But it's going to be a busy day. Penguins have about, according to Cap Friendly, $7 million remaining in salary cap space. We'll see what Kyle Dubas decides to do with that. But that's going to do it for this episode of the tip of the iceberg. Remember, you can find us on YouTube or anywhere you get your podcasts from by searching tip of the iceberg. We'll see you guys next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
