Asham Signs in Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Penguins have added even more grit to their line-up by signing unrestricted free agent forward Arron Asham to a new deal on Friday afternoon.  Asham signed a 1-year deal worth $700,000, which will insert him into the roster table (seen below) and should provide some pretty good, hard-nosed depth at a very reasonable price.

In 2010, Asham played with the cross-state rivals, Philadelphia Flyers, getting into 72 games with the black and orange, scoring 10 goals and adding 14 assists, which was good enough for 239th among forwards.  Asham is near the bottom of the pickable rankings and has a chance of falling off with all the new talent coming in, but he is also moving to a team that has plenty of offense and a coach that likes to rotate some of those grinding wingers with their talented centres.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Sidney Crosby	Alex Goligoski	Marc-Andre Fleury
Evgeni Malkin	Kris Letang	Brent Johnson
Jordan Staal	Brooks Orpik
Pascal Dupuis	Zbynek Michalek
Chris Kunitz	Paul Martin
Matt Cooke
Tyler Kennedy
Arron Asham
Mike Rupp
Craig Adams
Max Talbot
Eric Godard

The Penguins have spent a lot of money and cap space on their core group of forwards, so it is going to be these depth signings that really make or break a team's season. With this Asham signing, the Penguins now have 19 players on their team table at an annual cap hit of $56.7 million, which only leaves $2.7 million open for what looks to be two defensemen to settle their roster.

The Penguins have their goalies set and 12 forwards, but their defensive chemistry is still questionable.  It will be interesting to see how the Penguins use their $2.7 million on two or three more blueliners.  I'm expecting more youth to take these spots, keeping some cap flexibility for the rest of the year.

The Penguins are not the only team that is dealing with signing only depth players, but they have plenty of scoring talent that people are going to look to at the draft. The Penguins currently have a spot in their top six up for grabs, as their top five on the table looks like two formidable units, but Matt Cooke, Tyler Kennedy and Arron Asham all have a shot to populate the sixth spot and open up for some good points.  I like Kennedy to get the first look, but even a third line of Cooke-Staal-Asham should have some great checking games and surprise a few teams with their touch around the net after a good forecheck.  The Penguins training camp will be very interesting.