Jim Rutherford doesn’t have much salary-cap space with which to work.
He doesn’t have many pressing personnel needs, either.
But that doesn’t mean Rutherford, the Penguins’ general manager, is resigned to being nothing more than an interested observer when the NHL’s free-agent signing period starts at noon today.
He doesn’t expect to make a splash — no one is going to set his family up for the next dozen or so generations with a contract Rutherford will offer — but won’t rule out pursuing someone to upgrade his depth chart.
“It’s not going to be for the ‘A’ free agents, but we’re going to be looking for some players,” Rutherford said Thursday. “Whether it’s [today] or sometime in the next couple of weeks, we’ll have to see how it goes.
“There are a lot of good players, and it’s not always [the case] that you make your best deal on July 1. Sometimes, it’s a week into July, or two weeks.
“We’ll just watch the market and see how it’s going and jump in when we think it’s the right time.”
Rutherford said the Penguins’ projections give him about $1 million to work with before hitting the cap ceiling of $73 million, but added that he likes to maintain such a cushion “for a rainy day.”
The Penguins still want to re-sign fourth-line center Matt Cullen, who is expected to receive a significant raise over the $800,000 he was paid in 2015-16.
Cullen’s preference is to return to the Penguins, but he is eligible to sign with any club at midday.
“Nothing’s changed,” Rutherford said. “I would think we’ll work through that here in the relatively near future.”
Defensemen Ben Lovejoy and Justin Schultz, like Cullen, will be unrestricted free agents, and Rutherford expects them to leave.
“I’ve felt that Lovejoy and Schultz would go to July 1, and see what’s out there,” he said. “We’ll certainly keep our eye on it but I would suspect, the way free agency goes, that one or both of those guys gets signed [today] by another team.”
With Lovejoy and Schultz likely to move on, a defenseman who can play the right side will be the Penguins’ top target in free agency.
“We know who our six defensemen are,” Rutherford said. “We’ve got some depth guys. We’ll maybe work on some depth guys in free agency, but adding another top-six guy would be good.
“It may not be a right-shot. It maybe ends up being a left shot who can play the right side.
“That’s our priority, but you never know. If a player’s out there at the right price at another position, we might jump in.”
Although NHL regulations allow teams to exceed the salary-cap ceiling by as much as 10 percent during the offseason, Rutherford was adamant that’s not an option he cares to exercise.
“I don’t have any interest in scrambling, come training camp,’ he said. “I think we have a good enough team the way it is that I don’t think we need to do that.
“If we’re going to do something dramatic, based on circumstances, it would be during the season. It won’t be now.”
If Rutherford ever was tempted to do something radical to clear cap space, he resisted it.
He did not buy out any contracts and continues to hope he can retain goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, whose future here has been called into question because of the emergence of Matt Murray and the NHL’s expansion draft in 2017.
“I don’t expect anything new,” Rutherford said. “[Trading Fleury] is not even something I’ve worked on.”
Dave Molinari: Dmolinari@Post-Gazette.com and Twitter @MolinariPG.
First Published: July 1, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
Updated: July 1, 2016, 4:36 a.m.
