Friday Poll: Grading the offseason

The most important part of the summer for the NHl has passed

It’s July 5th and by NHL parlance it means most of the summer fun is over. The draft is a memory, the best free agents are off the market and most teams have gobbled up the majority of their cap space.

There’s always the opportunity for late-summer tinkering and roster moves, but by and large most of the heavy lifting and opportunity for changes has come and gone. With that in mind, how are we feeling about what the Penguins did and their current direction?

These are interesting times in Pittsburgh, and certainly a season of change for the Penguins. They are shifting gears and making moves with an eye to the future. A transaction like the move to pick up Kevin Hayes tells a lot about where the team is, and where they are going in the short term. It’s probably going to take a lot of getting used to and adjusting to the new reality of the post-contention part of the franchise’s cycle.

Then again, who knows, last summer everyone was (rightfully) on cloud nine with the offseason. The Pens signed one of the top defenders and goalies on the market, and revamped their bottom six. Then came the coup de grace of trading all their bad contracts and a couple draft picks to San Jose for the Norris winner. It was a Cleveland Browns-ian level of winning the offseason and amounted to absolutely nothing of meaning when the games started. That can also be important to remember — though fun and flashy, the big summer signings and moves don’t always translate they way they might appear to suggest in the long run.