Metro Notes: Penguins, Nurmi, Pikkarainen

In a think piece regarding the Pittsburgh Penguins earlier today, Matt Vensel of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette suggests the Penguins could still do more to improve their team this summer. Pittsburgh has nearly $3.5MM available in cap space and could weaponize that in a few ways to improve their playoff chances for the 2024-25 NHL season.

Next year, one of the bigger question marks surrounding the Penguins is who will play next to Sidney Crosby on the team’s top line. Currently, Drew O’Connor is penciled in, but Pittsburgh may be able to snag Max Pacioretty or James van Riemsdyk on the free-agent market. Additionally, Vensel puts forward the idea that the Penguins could go after Trevor Zegras from the Anaheim Ducks or Rutger McGroarty from the Winnipeg Jets organization.

Zegras may be hard to capture at this point in the offseason as the Ducks will look to get higher above the cap floor and will look to capitalize off a better season from Zegras. Although McGroarty has already made public his desire to move away from the Jets organization, Winnipeg is under no time crunch to move him. The Penguins may be best served by scouring the crumbles on the free-agent market this summer and attempting to pursue a bigger fish next offseason.

Other Metro notes:

• Stefen Rosner of The Hockey News reports New York Islanders’ prospect Jesse Nurmi will make his way to North America next season as he will suit up for the OHL’s London Knights. It would be difficult to find a better program for Nurmi as he looks to rebound from an average season in the Finnish Liiga with KooKoo. The former 113th overall pick of the 2023 NHL Draft skated in 19 games for KooKoo last year where he tallied two assists overall. On the U20 international junior level, Nurmi skated in six games for Team Finland while collecting another two helpers.
• Moving west of UBS Arena, the New Jersey Devils will similarly have a prospect coming overseas, this time with the WHL’s Red Deer Rebels (Article Link). Although signing a three-year extension with TPS earlier this offseason, the Devils third-round pick of the 2024 NHL Draft, Kasper Pikkarainen, will join Red Deer for the 2024-25 WHL season. Pikkarainen played well for TPS U20 last year as he scored 12 goals and 28 points in 34 contests.