PensBurgh · Jul 27, 2021
A second wave of free agents that could help the Penguins
Staff Photo By Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald One of the biggest recent changes to the NHL landscape has been teams walking away from fairly useful restricted free agents. The flat salary cap can make teams very anxious about using qualifying offers to keep young players, even if they have played pretty well or were large parts of their team.
Last summer, Ottawa didn’t qualify Anthony Duclair and he went to Florida and scored 32 points in 43 games (which, think Jared McCann production, those two had identical points and games played). Similarly, Edmonton didn’t qualify Andreas Athanasiou and he was a pretty valuable player as well for LA.