Discussions about the fringe players of the roster are an official past time of those who follow sports teams closely. They are piped into the individuals involved, watch the majority of the games, and care about the product. Sometimes the passion behind the arguments might not line up with the big picture impact of things, but you can’t deny it is the conversations about these players that is a strong fabric of being a die hard fan.

The latest Penguins version of this is centered around Jesse Puljujarvi. Personally, I think he is one of the Penguins 12 best forwards and shouldn’t be a healthy scratch as frequently as he has been. I think there are worse players being given unearned opportunities with the most obvious example being Matt Nieto. Given where the Penguins are as a team I think it matters a lot less than it did than let’s say... 2013-14 when it was looking like the Crosby/Malkin era was going to be a one and done championship era.

Even if it isn’t quite as important I do like to see the team try to get things right more than they get it wrong. I think from a logic standpoint the Puljujarvi signing was pretty good. They were patient with his rehab from a pretty major surgery. The player put the work in, had a great preseason, and then had some strong NHL performances, then... kinda nothing. If nothing else this season should have been about pumping up the value of players to trade. Puljujarvi was showing to have the guts of such a trade. Unfortunately, the Penguins hit the brakes on this and now the player was sent through waivers unclaimed.

What we might have learned is it was a player driven move in response to being healthy scratched for so long

Did Jesse Puljujarvi ask Kyle Dubas and the Pens for an opportunity to play elsewhere?

The big winger had some interesting things to say today about that, the path forward and staying positive in an uncertain situation ⬇️ https://t.co/sKhAzAO7W4

— Matt Vensel (@mattvensel) January 1, 2025

“I want to play, because it’s been a long process for me getting to this point, being healthy. And I’m healthy now and I’d like to play,” Puljujarvi said Wednesday after practicing here in Detroit. “That’s the goal. And I will keep going to get that goal.”

Puljujarvi hinted that he may have asked Dubas to be moved elsewhere so he could play. The Penguins put him on waivers Monday but he went unclaimed Tuesday.

And so, there he was Wednesday, again an odd man out during their line rushes.

“It’s a hard business and you have to live with that,” Puljujarvi said about the path forward now. “I’d like to play and hopefully at some point I get a new opportunity.”

In a season where the only job really was to manage assets for the big picture I find this to be a missed opportunity for the team to try and get better along the margins. I also think it is lame to have a player work back from the kind of surgery Puljujarvi went through, get healthy, play well for a bottom six player, then get froze out for lesser players. Mike Sullivan is infatuated with defending to a fault at times and his team is the fifth worst xGA/60 team in the league at 5v5 (2.74). While Puljujarvi’s strength is not defending his overall xGF% is 52.23. His overall needle is in the positive. Nieto’s xGA/60 is very good relative to his teammates at 2.21. Unfortunately, he is such a bad offensive player his overall xGF% is 36.01, a team worst mark. Sometimes you have to ditch your stylistic preferences when the results aren’t matching the kind of team you want.

On a team level, you have to get the most out of what you have, not what you want to have. On an organizational level it is up to Dubas to eke out every last drop of player value during this rebuild/retool or whatever you want to call it. While small on the big picture scale (talking about bottom six forwards) I believe the Puljujarvi/Nieto situation is a sign of missing the mark on both accounts. With a franchise with no margin for error you can’t flush away value with misevaluations like this. This situation fails the smell test both big and small picture. Instead of rewarding the player for rehabbing back successfully which in turn would reward the team with trade value, they killed it voluntarily. The opposite of what this season should have been about.

Thanks for reading!

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