The Olympics are approaching and there’s a housekeeping note to be aware of starting this afternoon. From PuckPedia:
During the Olympics, there are restrictions on teams making player transactions. The Olympic Roster freeze goes from February 4 at 3pm ET to February 22 at 11:59 ET.
During the freeze:
-No Trades are permitted -Players can be sent down if they are waiver exempt, except for players that played in 16 of the team’s 20 NHL games prior to the freeze, or have been on the NHL roster for 80 league
days prior to Jan 21 -Players can be placed on waivers during the freeze, but if the player was waived after their NHL team’s final game before the freeze, they do not have to report to their new team until February 17.
There are no restrictions on sending players down prior to the freeze.
The biggest bullets for the Penguins are likely the first two listed. Kyle Dubas will be unable to make any trades during this period – and the regular NHL trade deadline will be fast approaching on Friday March 6th soon after the Olympic freeze is lifted.
The second point handles players being moved from the NHL to AHL roster. Currently only Rutger McGroarty and Ryan Graves can be sent by Pittsburgh to Wilkes-Barre without needing waivers. Graves, who was removed from the IR on Monday, is eligible for this since he cleared waivers on 12/31 and has only played two NHL games since that point and has not been on the NHL roster for 30 days since clearing waivers due to his stint on IR. Based on the rules, the Pens can keep both of these players on the NHL roster for tomorrow night’s game against Buffalo and then send them down to the AHL if they wish to keep them playing games over the coming weeks.
Wilkes-Barre also has a game tonight, so the Penguins could also opt to send someone like McGroarty before the freeze today back to the AHL for participation in that game regardless of the freeze being as he didn’t play in last night’s NHL game.
The third bullet could apply to someone like Caleb Jones, who would need to be waived today and clear tomorrow and be assigned prior to Pittsburgh’s final game before the break. He would also have to be healthy enough to be removed from IR, to which the Pens don’t have a spot for him currently, which would require extra machinations there in order to re-assign him fully to the AHL for at least a couple of weeks.
Otherwise, it should be straight-forward for the team at this point going into the break. Besides the four players going to play in Italy for their respective countries (Sidney Crosby, Erik Karlsson, Rickard Rakell and Arturs Silovs) the rest of the team can enjoy their well-earned break without having to worry about getting traded in the next few weeks as the league takes a pause.
