Pens sign Scuderi, re-sign Adams

The Penguins didn't wait long yesterday after the Free Agency Klaxon started. They made their first move of free agency in signing 34 year old Rob Scuderi. Scuderi, formerly of the LA Kings last season has won the Stanley Cup two times most recently with LA last year. The time before that? With the Penguins. He brings with him a wealth of experience that can hopefully be passed on to the younger defensive players in the organization so that they can learn and step up in the coming years. Scuderi is known for being a stay at home, physical defenceman and whilst his age has seen his speed fall he is still an effective player. The only problem with the deal that I envisage is the term. By the time the deal is over he will be 38 years old. A two year deal I feel would've been more appropriate.

Of course signing Scuderi does create a problem on the back-end as it means we have an extra body and that means someone needs to be moved. Simon Despres and Robert Bortuzzo aren't being sent down to the AHL and should likely play some good minutes. Kris Letang and Paul Martin are top four pairing defenceman so they won't be moved. This leaves three people. Deryk Engelland, Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik. Deryk Engelland carries a very small cap hit in relation to the others at around $750k. So moving him wouldn't give us much room and he is actually a very astute player to have on the bottom pairing. Comparatively Niskanen is on $2.3m and Orpik is on $3.75m. I believe this makes them both likely trade targets. I feel that Niskanen is more likely to be traded as he is more expendable and his position can be filled by Bortuzzo. Orpik can potentially be replaced by Scuderi if he was traded as well and if they were both traded purely for picks then it'd give us $5.3m in cap space.

The Penguins also re-signed Craig Adams, the 36 year old fourth liner. He signed a two year deal at $700k per year. I'm not enamoured with this deal if I'm honest. Whilst he is an effective player and works well on the PK I get the feeling that there are potentially better players available on the free agency market for a smaller cap hit. I also think that we could with someone younger and faster as he will be 38 when the deal is up and I fear that his game could drop off in the coming seasons. This isn't a deal that will cripple the team but I think it's one that we could've done without.  In all though, it wasn't a terrible day for us as we could've done much worse and signed someone like Clarkson to a $5m+ contract, but it also wasn't a day that made me think the team was looking to fix it's weaknesses.