Pittsburgh Penguins Offseason: These are Jim Rutherford’s Penguins
It’s been quite the offseason for the Pittsburgh Penguins, hasn’t it? In fact, it has been quite the tenure for Jim Rutherford in his first calendar year at the helm.
By now you probably have already heard of the trade that brought Nick Bonino, Adam Clendening and a 2016 second round draft pick to Pittsburgh in exchange for Brandon Sutter and a 2016 third round draft pick. On the same day, Eric Fehr signed a 3 year, $6 million contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
But the Pens current roster on paper hasn’t just been about the moves made this offseason. Let’s take a look at some of the transactions that Rutherford has made since becoming the Penguins’ GM on June 6, 2014 that still directly impact the roster today:
| Date | Transaction |
| June 27, 2015 | Traded James Neal for Patric Hornqvist and Nick Spaling |
| November 5, 2014 | Signed Marc-Andre Fleury to a 4 year, $23 million extension |
| January 2, 2015 | Traded 2015 first round draft pick and Rob Klinkhammer for David Perron |
| March 2, 2015 | Traded Robert Bortuzzo and 2016 7th round pick for Ian Cole |
| March 2, 2015 | Traded Simon Despres for Ben Lovejoy |
| July 1, 2015 | Traded Nick Spaling, Scott Harrington, Kasperi Kapanen and conditional 1st and 3rd round draft picks for Phil Kessel, Tyler Biggs, Tim Erixon and a conditional 2nd round pick |
| July 1, 2015 | Signed Sergei Plotnikov to a one year, entry level contract |
| July 15, 2015 | Signed Beau Bennet to one year contract and Dominik Simon to a 3 year entry level contract |
| July 29, 2015 | Traded Brandon Sutter and a 2016 third round pick for Nick Bonino, Adam Clendening and a 2016 second round pick |
| July 29, 2015 | Signed Eric Fehr to a 3 year contract |
That’s a lot of player personnel decisions that have impacted the roster as it is today. It doesn’t include hiring Mike Johnston and his staff, Mike Sullivan in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, adding an analytics consultant, and one year contracts last year that were dished out to Christian Ehrhoff, Blake Comeau, Steve Downie, and Thomas Greiss.
These are Jim Rutherford’s Penguins, from the coach to the players – with the exception of the core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury – Rutherford has rebuilt and fully taken the reins of this franchise. The remaining pieces from the Ray Shero era that aren’t part of the core (and the core players weren’t drafted on Shero’s watch) are Pascal Dupuis, Chris Kunitz, Beau Bennett, Rob Scuderi, Olli Maatta, Derrick Pouliot and Brian Dumoulin.
And really, aside from the three young defensemen and maybe Bennett, who is promising that is left over from Shero’s tenure that can help this team NOW? Sure acquiring Dupuis (a throw in when the Pens acquired Marian Hossa) and Kunitz were good moves and have worked out really well for the Pittsburgh Penguins. But re-signing them and Scuderi to the money and term he did at their age was poor management.
Rutherford has incrementally made moves over the course of the last calendar year to impressively reconstruct this team on the fly to make it drastically better. Where are the Jim Rutherford haters now? Are they still fuming over the Simon Despres–Ben Lovejoy trade?
The Penguins still have some question marks on defense that will have to be monitored and possibly addressed at some point, but the depth Rutherford has created up front is remarkable compared to what he had to work with when he first took over. Consider how this lineup looks now and the options available for Mike Johnston. Simply put, the Pittsburgh Penguins have done a complete 180 from one year ago.
Kudos to you, Jim Rutherford on a job well done. There are only 70 days until the Pittsburgh Penguins open their season in Dallas on October 8th, but who’s counting?
Next: 5 Bold Predictions for the 2015-16 Pens