The Penguins have extended qualifying offers to two restricted free agents, most notably Zach Aston-Reese. They will let four others hit the open market.
The team announced prior to Monday’s 5 p.m. deadline to extend qualifying offers to RFAs that they would not be extending one to forwards Mark Jankowski and Sam Miletic, defenseman Jesper Lindgren and goalie Emil Larmi. They will become unrestricted free agents Wednesday and are not expected to return.
The Penguins now have the right to match any offer sheet tendered by another team to the qualified restricted free agents, Aston-Reese and Radim Zohorna.
The Penguins qualifying Aston-Reese was mostly a formality. The winger, who turns 27 in August, had his best NHL season in 2021, after undergoing shoulder surgery to clean up a nagging injury. He had a career-high nine goals and put up 15 points in 45 games while maintaining a high level of defensive play.
That said, his contract negotiation will be an interesting one for the Penguins, who have limited salary cap space. While Aston-Reese has been useful when healthy, he hasn’t always delivered the physicality and tenacity the coaching staff has hoped to see from him. We’ll see if this one goes to arbitration.
Zohorna, the big forward who last season produced a few highlight-reel plays in his first eight career NHL games, was the other RFA the Penguins qualified. They are hopeful Zohorna will settle in as a regular NHL player in 2021-22, which will be his second season since coming over from the Czech Republic.
He is listed at 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds and for such a large human has displayed deft touch and decent skating. The 25-year-old can play center or left wing.
The only mild surprise among the RFAs who were not tendered was Lindgren, a prospect who came over from Toronto in last year’s Kasperi Kapanen trade. The 24-year-old missed all of 2021 with a shoulder injury suffered in his first preseason game with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League.
Jankowski, signed last offseason to potentially be the team’s third-line center, was a healthy scratch in the playoffs. Miletic, originally added as a college free agent in 2017, never cracked the Pittsburgh lineup. Larmi, a Finnish goalie who an intriguing addition two years ago, struggled with the transition to the U.S.
Matt Vensel: mvensel@post-gazette.com and Twitter @mattvensel.
First Published: July 26, 2021, 9:30 p.m.
