Awake from your August slumbers. The Penguins have traded for a 2022 first round prospect. The Winnipeg Jets are moving former #14 overall pick Rutger McGroarty to Pittsburgh in exchange for the Penguins former #14 overall pick, Brayden Yager. Quite the August transaction.
Trading for McGroarty falls in line with the kind of moves Dubas said he wanted to make. One part of the plan is to stockpile a bunch of draft picks, which they have done by taking on less than desirable contracts. The other part of this is trading for young prospects. Rutger McGroarty is the first example of the latter part of the plan.
The curveball here is sending Brayden Yager to the Jets. Obviously, it would have been nice to get McGroarty and keep Yager, but the fact of the matter is you have to give to get and the Penguins don’t have a ton. Basically, the Penguins traded one of their top prospects for one of Winnipeg’s. I assume the belief on the Penguins side of things is that McGroarty is going to be NHL ready sooner, perhaps maybe this year. For Winnipeg they get a slight downgrade, but a player who already signed their ELC.
McGroarty declined to sign his entry level deal with the Jets and communicated that he would not be moving forward. He then said he will be returning to Michigan this year. As a result the Jets acted accordingly to try and salvage the value of a player not signing.
As for McGroarty’s college aspirations, it can change. He could certainly sign his ELC with the Penguins and elect to forgo the 2024-25 season in Michigan. Time will tell on this front.
UPDATE: McGroarty immediately signed his ELC with the Penguins
As for McGroarty as a player, he has some promise
He certainly has the offensive pulse I like to see in a prospect. He is only 20 years old so the Michigan numbers are impressive to me.
Overall, I like the logic of the trade by both teams. I think the Penguins end up with the slightly better prospect and one who is closer to making an impact at the NHL level. An additional bonus to McGroarty is that he is a college player and not subjected to the CHL transfer agreement nonsense.
While it doesn’t move the needle in a huge way it does move it in a positive direction for Pittsburgh. Sometimes it takes baby steps to get where you want to go and this is an example of such. It certainly adds an additional level of intrigue to training camp with McGroarty closer to making the jump to the NHL. We will see how that looks in September.
For a late August Thursday this was a welcomed bit of business.
Thanks for reading!
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