By Jonanthan Bombulie
July 19, 2018
Derek Grant #38 of the Anaheim Ducks skates to the puck during the third period of a game against the New York Islanders at Honda Center on October 11, 2017 in Anaheim, California.
(Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images North America)
Last season, the Penguins opened training camp with only two players under contract – Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin – who had proven they were capable of playing center in the NHL on an everyday basis.
When they open camp this season, they’ll have bona fide NHL centers coming out their ears.
The latest addition to the bumper crop in the middle is Derek Grant, a 28-year-old free agent signed to a one-year, $650,000 contract on Thursday.
Of the 15 forwards who could conceivably be on the team’s opening night roster, six – Crosby, Malkin, Grant, Derick Brassard, Riley Sheahan and Matt Cullen – list center as their primary position.
Grant is coming off a breakthrough year in Anaheim, establishing himself as an NHL regular after spending portions of his previous six pro seasons in the AHL. He had 12 goals and 12 assists in 66 games, playing mostly on the fourth line but bumping up into the top nine when injuries struck.
The 6-foot-3, 215-pound Michigan State product won 53.1 percent of his faceoffs while playing about 11 minutes per game, seeing shifts on both the power play and penalty kill.
“He’s coming off a good year, 12 goals as a fourth-line player,” general manager Jim Rutherford said. “He can play center. He can play the wing. Kills penalties. Good number on faceoffs. He can play in all situations. It just adds to what we talked about, having more balance and more depth and all that.”
While it’s easy to see why Rutherford would want to add a player with Grant’s abilities, especially at NHL minimum salary, it’s also fair to wonder what the Penguins are going to do with all these centers.
The easy answer is that some of them will shift to the wing. It’s generally considered a pretty easy transition for an NHL center to make that move.
“Grant, Cullen and Sheahan can and have played the wing,” Rutherford said. “It just gives the coach more options.”
The sexy answer is that one of them could be traded.
“I think that’s a fair assumption, but that’s not why I did it,” Rutherford said. “I don’t presently have something in the works. Certainly, as we get into camp and into the season, it does give us more options.”
There’s also an answer that’s a combination of the two.
Outside of the team’s untouchables, Brassard is the center who could fetch the greatest return in a trade. Perhaps he could be leveraged into more scoring depth on the left wing, which is one of the weaker points of the team’s attack.
Or perhaps Brassard himself will fill that perceived hole. He could switch to the left side of one of the team’s top two lines. It’s an idea that coach Mike Sullivan has thought about investigating, Rutherford said.
“It’s not my decision,” Rutherford said. “It’s just one of the things Sully had talked about a couple of times at meetings when we talk about different things. It may or may not be an experiment at any time, but it’s something he brought up. Brassard has never played the wing before in his career, but he’s a skilled player and a guy that could possibly do it. I don’t even know if Sully will experiment with it.”
After the addition of Grant, the Penguins are a little more than $700,000 under the $74.5 million salary cap with 14 forwards, seven defensemen and three goalies on the roster.
Their last piece of regular offseason business is signing goalie Tristan Jarry, a restricted free agent, to a new contract. Rutherford said there have been no unusual snags in those talks.
“Nope. Just going through the negotiation now,” he said. “It’ll run its course here pretty soon.”
Jonathan Bombulie is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jonathan at jbombulie@tribweb.com or via Twitter @BombulieTrib.
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