Penguins waive Imama, Aho but regular season roster remains foggy

Looking at Pittsburgh’s possibilities for the salary cap and opening night roster and why some paper moves to the AHL might happen tomorrow

Today was the last day to place a player on waivers before the regular season opening rosters are due to the NHL at 5:00pm tomorrow. The Pittsburgh Penguins elected to only waive forward Boko Imama and, surprisingly, defenseman Sebastian Aho.

Tomorrow at 2:00pm we’ll find out if they clear waivers, at which point the option is on the table to send them to the AHL.

We know this does mean that bubble players in forward Valtteri Puustinen and defenseman Ryan Shea will be on the NHL opening roster. Those two would have had to be included on waivers to not go down. Same goes for Jesse Puljujarvi, even though that’s way less of a surprise at this point.

What this does not bring into focus is what the Penguins will decide to do with others on the fringes. They can safely pass Rutger McGroarty and Jack St. Ivany to the AHL tomorrow if they so choose. It’s the same situation outlined all the way back in 2014 by Mike Colligan about the advantages a team can gain by starting the opening day under the salary cap’s upper limit, and moving their injured players (Matt Nieto for certain and possibly Alex Nedeljkovic) to the long term injured reserve on the following to manipulate and massage the cap situation moving forward and then reverse the paper move by bringing St. Ivany and/or McGroarty back.

The Pens will also have a decision to declare about Harrison Brunicke, who still has not been assigned to juniors as of publish time. There’s been no public declaration that the youngster will start the regular season in the NHL, but read into what you will that it’s Sunday afternoon and news hasn’t come out that he’s going down after Friday’s preseason finale and Saturday’s practice.

It could be seen as a minor surprise Aho was placed on waivers, which marks the second training camp in a row that Ryan Shea has managed to quickly carve out a place on the NHL roster. Is Shea the new Chad Ruhwedel as a depth NHL defender for the Pens with an uncanny amount of staying power? The case could be made at this point after Pittsburgh waived John Ludvig and now Shea, while electing to keep Shea.

As of now the Pens’ roster looks as follows. We’re removing the IR players (**) from the counts.

Forwards (14)
Noel Acciari, Anthony Beauviller, Michael Bunting, Sidney Crosby, Lars Eller, Cody Glass, Kevin Hayes, Blake Lizotte**, Evgeni Malkin, Rutger McGroarty, Matt Nieto**, Drew O’Connor, Vasily Ponomarev**, Jesse Puljujarvi, Valtteri Puustinen, Rickard Rakell, Bryan Rust

Defense (8)
Harrison Brunicke, Ryan Graves, Matt Grzelcyk, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang, Marcus Pettersson, Ryan Shea, Jack St. Ivany

Goalies (2)
Joel Blomqvist, Tristan Jarry, Alex Nedeljkovic**

This is still 24 healthy players (omitting the ** ones who will start the year on some form of IR), which is one too many. It’s also significantly over the salary cap, so we know more roster moves are going to be made before the team submits its opening day roster to the NHL tomorrow afternoon.

So from here, Pittsburgh will need to do one of the following:

• The simple route — Send Brunicke back to junior to achieve 23-player maximum, then use LTIR to become cap compliant from Day 1
• The complex-as-they-want-to-be route — Send AHL eligible players (McGroarty, St. Ivany) down on Monday to get under 23 limit and become cap compliant on Day 1. Then use LTIR where needed on injured players on Tuesday and recall Monday’s AHL-bound players on Tuesday or Wednesday in time for the first game

Today’s moves don’t tip the hand of what direction the Pens are going to go. It makes sense that they will more than likely make some paper moves and send those to the AHL that they can tomorrow, gain compliance, and then use LTIR on Tuesday. As always with the complicated puzzle of the NHL salary cap and rosters, there is always more than one way to get to that destination.