Kris Letang: Will Team Loyalty Win?
Unrestricted free agent, NHL defenseman Kris Letang isn’t the type to go public with the details of his salary negotiations with the Penguins; and given the Penguins’ salary cap situation this offseason, they’re not about to go public with their side of the negotiations either – because even though you’d think the 35-year-old Letang would be an automatic re-signing/extension, the Penguins’ cap status at this point is such that Letang may need to take a not insignificant discount off his market value in order to remain with the team (as detailed in an earlier article I wrote for this blog).
Sidney Crosby and the Penguins would like to win (at least) one more Stanley Cup during the Crosby era, and Crosby has made it rather clear that he believes he needs both Evegeni Malkin and Kris Letang in order to deliver that prize. But the NHL’s salary cap restrictions apply whether or not Crosby feels he needs both the forward and the defenseman in order to be triumphant in the Cup Finals; and hence the dilemma faced by the Penguins at this time.
As we noted earlier and since the Penguins were eliminated from the 2022 playoffs, the salary cap is unfriendly to teams who actually have the money to spend on expensive free agents but will exceed the cap by doing so. And thus, it comes down to choices.
The team that eliminated the Penguins from the postseason this year is now in the same quandary itself; the NY Rangers are carrying a tighter cap situation this offseason than their number of unrestricted free agents will allow them to sign – and hence, for example, forward Ryan Strome may find himself a casualty of cap restrictions. Does fellow linesman Artemi Panarin want Strome to be cut loose? Definitely not. Would the Rangers have to eliminate someone else (either via trade or lack of re-signing) in order to keep him? No question.
But Letang is in a different situation than Strome, in any event. Besides the obvious – that Letang is a defenseman and Strome a forward – Letang is 35 years old and Strome is 28. (He’ll be 29 by the beginning of next season). As the 2005 62nd overall draftee, Letang was selected by the Penguins and has played his entire career with one team: the Pittsburgh Penguins. Letang has grown his reputation into being one of the toughest defensemen in the NHL; he’s also a three-time Stanley Cup champion with the team and a six-time All Star.
You really don’t want to let players like that go – and most especially, when you think you still have a good shot at a championship within the next three years. Letang’s last contract was an eight-year, $58M contract that came to an AAV of $7.25M per year. Now let’s be realistic: even at age 35, he’s still worth more than that. Evolving Hockey projects his current value at a three-year contract with an annual $8.856M cap hit. And to those of us who aren’t general managers of NHL teams, what’s a $1.6M increase per year between friends?
The challenge is the cap. With all the slots the Penguins need to fill this offseason, even a million dollars one way or the other is going to make an impact. To some extent, therefore, this will come down to how much Letang wants to finish out his NHL career with the team with whom he’s spent the entirety of it till now.
Given that the UFA deadline looms less than a month away on July 13th, both the Penguins and Letang are going to have to make some serious decisions within the next several weeks. My thoughts? My thoughts tell me they’ll come to an agreement. So does my gut. NHL teams tend to let single-team players walk away only in their declining years or during a rebuild. And if the Penguins are serious about trying to win another Stanley Cup while Crosby’s still playing, they’re not going to try an extensive rebuild right now. They just need to figure out how to show some loyalty to their best players – the ones who’ve left it all out on the ice for them, over and over, throughout the years.