Early on the Tuesday morning, news came down that Matt Cooke has re-signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Cooke has a brand new 3-year deal in place, which will have a cap hit of $1.8 million per season. Cooke was set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st, but will now feel safe with the Penguins for at least the next few years.
Cooke just completed his second season with the Penguins in 2010 and has enjoyed some very reasonable success with the team. In 2010, Cooke finished with 15 goals and 15 assists in 79 games with the club, ranking him 280th in pool scoring among all players and 198th among forwards. That actually puts him into a very reasonable depth position, if your draft goes deep enough. I would not expect Cooke to do much more than 30, maybe 35 at the most, points in a season, but he should be a consistent pick, nevertheless.
| Forwards | Defense | Goalies |
| Sidney Crosby | Alex Goligoski | Marc-Andre Fleury |
| Evgeni Malkin | Kris Letang | Brent Johnson |
| Jordan Staal | Brooks Orpik | |
| Pascal Dupuis | ||
| Chris Kunitz | ||
| Matt Cooke | ||
| Tyler Kennedy | ||
| Mike Rupp | ||
| Craig Adams | ||
| Max Talbot | ||
| Eric Godard |
The $1.8 million cap hit that Cooke has now earned shaves away a little bit more from their extra space for the 2011 season. The team listed above of 16 players comes with an approximate annual cap hit of $46.9 million for the coming year, which leaves them with a decent amount of space, with the new salary cap number still to be announced here soon. For all intensive purposes, the Penguins are almost finished filling out their forward line-up at this point in the year and could use some of their youth before it's all said and done, giving them a little extra space to bolster their blueline.
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