Luke Evangelista isn’t spending much time thinking about a new deal with the New Jersey Devils, even if the timing could make things interesting down the line.
The Devils got the 24-year-old winger from the Nashville Predators last week in a deal that sent back a first-round pick, the Avs’ pick, and a second-rounder. Evangelista is entering the final season of his contract with a $3 million cap hit, and he’s fresh off a career year that included 44 assists and 56 points.
There’s a case for New Jersey to get ahead of things before September 15th, especially after the contract back-and-forth Evangelista and his agent Judd Moldaver went through with Nashville before last season’s two-year agreement. But for now, Evangelista sounds perfectly content to let the hockey take care of itself.
“The idea of playing in Jersey with the squad and all that contract stuff, that’s the one thing I learned is it’s kind of out of your control a little bit. So my job is just to go play, and when that comes around, we’ll deal with it when we get there. But I’m not too concerned about it right now.”
The Sidney Crosby speculation, meanwhile, is starting to feel a lot less like a hot topic and a lot more like a door that’s quietly swinging shut.
On The Sheet with Jeff Marek, Greg Wyshynski said it may be time to stop imagining the Pittsburgh Penguins captain in Montreal, Colorado, or anywhere else. The longtime Crosby-to-somewhere-else chatter has always had a life of its own, especially with the Montreal Canadiens connection that comes with hockey history baked in.
Wyshynski pointed to the fantasy version of it all: Crosby as the late-career megastar, maybe joining a team where two of his closest friends might not even be there after this season, maybe serving as the final piece for Montreal, maybe scoring the kind of big goal that turns a season. He even floated the image of an overtime winner, noting, “Perhaps even an overtime goal, which I believe he did in the Olympics once.”
Marek pushed back a bit, asking, “I don’t know about that one. What do you think?”
Wyshynski’s answer was the telling part. After years of entertaining the possibility, he said the longer Crosby stays in Pittsburgh, the more it looks like he’ll finish where he started.
“I’ve been in the Sid’s gonna play somewhere else business for too long. I may have to, I may, I may, I may have to close up the shop.
Because the more, the more he’s in Pittsburgh, the more it feels like he’s going to stay in Pittsburgh. The more it feels like he’s going to be a one team, a one team guy.
And that kills me because we’d all love to see him with (Nathan) MacKinnon. And we’d all love to see him and you know be the elder statesman, the Obi Wan Kenobi, leading the young Skywalkers in, in Montreal. But I just think maybe I have to close up the Sid, the Sid playing elsewhere shop.”
Elsewhere in the roundtable, a separate question came up about whether Connor Hellebuyck even makes sense for the Buffalo Sabres.
In Other News...
Penguins Scoring Race Feels Wide Open For One Big Reason
The Penguins finished third in the NHL in goals scored last season, which says plenty about how dangerous their attack can be when its healthy and clicking. Anthony Mantha led the club with 33 goals, while Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust were right behind him with 29 apiece despite both missing significant time because of injuries. Add in Egor Chinakhovs midseason arrival and his 18 goals in 41 games, and the picture starts to look less like a team with one clear finisher and more like a group with several players capable of leading the way.
Chinakhovs pace after joining the lineup is what makes the scoring race feel especially open heading into the new season. If he can keep producing at anywhere near that level, he becomes a real threat to challenge the usual names at the top of the board, and that only deepens a forward group that already showed last season it can pile up goals in a hurry. For the Penguins, the interesting part may not be who finishes first so much as how many legitimate candidates they have in the race. [Read more 🡒]
Former Sabres Forward Closes The Book On A Journeyman Career
Jean-Sbastien Dea has called it a career, closing out a long pro hockey run that stretched across the AHL, brief NHL stops and a stint overseas. For fans in Pittsburgh, his name still carries a familiar ring from the journeyman path he carved through the organization and beyond, a path that eventually took him from North American minor-league rinks to Europe.
Dea finished with the DEL's Eisbren Berlin after spending most of his pro life grinding in the AHL, where he piled up 153 goals and 341 points in 517 games. He also logged 5 goals and 7 points in 37 NHL games, a reminder of how close he stayed to the top level even as his career became defined by persistence, movement and the steady reality of life as a veteran depth forward. [Read more 🡒]
Penguins Offer Pittsburgh Families A First Hockey Experience This Preseason
The Penguins are once again using the preseason to widen the games reach in Pittsburgh, teaming up with Pittsburgh Public Schools to give every student two free tickets to upcoming exhibition games. The fourth-year partnership also includes vouchers for complimentary food and drink, with the idea of turning a night at the rink into a first real hockey experience for kids who might not otherwise get one.
Schools have already sent home flyers and emailed students and guardians with the details on how to redeem the tickets, keeping the effort simple and accessible for families. It is the kind of outreach that does more than fill seats in September, because the next step is seeing how many students actually take the Penguins up on the invitation and make their first trip to a game. [Read more 🡒]