Cody Glass trade highlights Penguins’ summer of “something for nothing”

The Pens are pulling in a lot of free assets, but where will they fit them all?

For a Tuesday in August, it turned out to be a busy day for the Penguins. They helped put Edmonton in a bind and then opted to help Nashville out of one by taking Cody Glass and his $2.5 million cap hit. The Pens aren’t running a charity, of course, so the Predators had to throw in a couple of draft picks for the trouble and make it worth their while.

Using some of the cap space on Glass is the latest move by Penguin GM Kyle Dubas to cast an eye to the future, while in theory adding to the team now.

But the real question is, where will Glass be next season? The Pens have piled on a lot of new assets and virtually free players, but now it all has to fit somewhere. Glass played 23 games at center last season and 18 on the right wing, but Pittsburgh is absolutely loaded with options at those two positions.

In some ways, this could be framed as a competitive thing. Let Glass fight it out to see if he can add an element that others can’t.

But the numbers are adding up, and there’s only so much room on the roster. Let’s assume Drew O’Connor joins the established five forwards on the team in the top-six (Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell and Michael Bunting), which is as safe as anything else.

That leaves the lower line shuffle to be between: the returning Lars Eller, Valterri Puustinen, Noel Acciari, Jesse Puljujarvi and Emil Bemstrom to mix in with the newcomers in Glass, Kevin Hayes, Blake Lizotte and Anthony Beauvillier. To say nothing of Sam Poulin, Vasily Ponomarev and Jonathan Gruden for players who ended up in the AHL last year but are close. Oh yeah, Matt Nieto is lurking on IR for a mid-season return.

That’s a lot of names and a limited amount of spaces. The Pens could thin the herd via a trade at any point — but there’s a reason that Pittsburgh is getting Glass and draft picks for nothing. And that reason remains that many teams have little to no cap space. As of today, according to Puck Pedia only 13 teams have $3+ million in cap space for 2024-25. And that’s misleadingly high since some teams still have work to do on restricted free agents that will zap today’s cap space levels (like Carolina and Seth Jarvis pr Boston and Jeremy Swayman). What does that mean? Well, the opportunity to trade a $2 million-ish player like Lars Eller or Noel Acciari for nothing are few and far between during the off-season. Which means it’s time to start considering that adding players like Glass and Hayes isn’t about the Pens’ roster today, it’s about remembering that it’s fitting in NHL options now in order to get to the draft picks.

For all we know, the roster outlook of a day or two ago could still be today and the addition of Glass doesn’t have to mean anything for the NHL club out the gates. Pittsburgh could waive Glass if he doesn’t impress and partially bury his contract in the minors. They’ll get $1.15 million in cap space back to send him down which would double their current amount of cap space with Glass attached to the NHL roster.

However, if Glass steps up in training camp and shows he has something to offer the NHL team and is worth keeping around — great! There’s always a spot to be had. But is Glass truly going to offer something more than a veteran like Eller or Acciari who are penciled into the fourth line now? That’s going to be a tall task bordering on an impossible one considering those players’ roles for defensive and PK work isn’t an area Glass is going to step into.

Could Glass still stay and bump a Puljujarvi or Puustinen from the NHL roster? Possibly. Does he have to? Absolutely not. The open-ended questions could lead to any direction, but stand to highlight all the options that Pittsburgh has going into camp with an over-abundance of fringe NHL talent.

In continuing with how Dubas is re-shaping and re-working the Penguins from contender to compiler (of draft picks), we also have to re-shape how acquisitions are thought of moving forward. It could be that all Glass truly is to the Penguins is a slight salary cap burden they have to hold for one season in order to get their reward with a third and sixth round pick, not that they need to be invested in his NHL output. Of course, the door is open for a positive surprise to pop out — and stranger things have happened in the NHL than to have a cast off unexpectedly step up and make the most of the opportunity.

But most last chances go by the wayside and fade out without the fanfare. If that’s the case, it’s important to frame and remember the Glass trade for what it is: a chance for Pittsburgh to use their cap space to bring in future assets. They’ve done a lot of that this off-season.

Since it’s becoming difficult to keep track, here’s the current outlook of draft picks coming up for the Penguins. With several more impending free agents in 2025, this list could expand even further.

The Pens have a lot more draft picks, and as of now anyways are going to have a crowded field of players to pick between to round out their NHL roster. That can be a good thing, but there’s no indication to expect (or even be able to see) them turning around at this point and dealing an NHL player for cap space before camp to ease the crowding. That will have to be done through sorting out which players they got for free who might not be in long-term plans, or if those players can push others off the roster through their own performance. Either way, it’s a new approach and vastly different operating procedure from how the Penguins operated as a top NHL team for the majority of the Sidney Crosby era.