Penguins To Try Their Hand at Hamhuis

			2009-2010 NHL Statistics				2011 Cap Info
To Pittsburgh	Position	Age	GP	G	A	P	Years	Cap Hit
Dan Hamhuis	Defense	27	78	5	19	24	0	UFA
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To Philadelphia	Position	Age	GP	G	A	P	Years	Cap Hit
2011 3rd Round Pick

As it turns out, the original deal that saw the Flyers pick up the exclusive rights to try and sign Dan Hamhuis have fallen to the wayside, likely do to a lack of salary cap space going forward. As I had laid out in the salary cap section of the post, the Flyers did not have a great deal of room to work with, especially with the expected contract demands of Hamhuis and his agent.  Really, the Flyers getting those rights was somewhat of a flawed plan, unless they were going to dump salary elsewhere.

The Penguins, on the other hand, could be considered doing a little bit better, in terms of their cap figures, but not by too much.  At the time of this deal, the Penguins have 16 players signed on to their roster for $46.9 million, leaving less than $13 million for seven players, which is actually pretty good, now that I look at it a little closer.  The Penguins have been trying to get Sergei Gonchar to re-sign with the team on their own terms, but that doesn't seem to be flying very well with the Gonchar camp, who want a longer-term contract than what the Penguins are willing to give him. 

I think most people would agree that Gonchar would be a better option than Hamhuis if you had to only choose one, but Hamhuis, especially for a good number of teams, would provide a very good back-up option if they needed one.  I would expect that if the Penguins manage to re-sign Gonchar, they leveraged Hamhuis' rights against him to get the deal done, but otherwise, the Penguins would then settle on Hamhuis in the next five days.