Penguins Sign G Curry; Other News and Notes

On Saturday, the Penguins signed restricted free agent netminer John Curry to a two year, 2-way contract that will pay him 500K in the NHL, and significantly less while at Wilkes-Barre.

Curry will compete with veteran Brent Johnson -- signed about 2 weeks ago -- for the backup position behind incumbent starter Marc-Andre Fleury.

It was mostly a foregone conclusion that Curry would re-sign with Pittsburgh. While he was strong at the AHL level last year with the baby Penguins, going 33-15-1 with a 2.36 GAA and .918 SV%, and went 2-1 with the big club, he doesn't have enough recognition league-wide to be a threat to sign elsewhere.

There won't be many training camp battles to watch starting in mid-September. The one Johnson and Curry will wage is one of them.

Expect Johnson to beat out the young guy and keep him manning the #1 job in Wilkes Barre this coming season.

In other Penguins news, the club also signed minor league forwards Wade Brookbank and Wyatt Smith to one-year, two-way contracts. Both are expected to be in Wilkes Barre most of the season.

Brookbank is a 6' 4" physical winger who scored once in 27 games with Carolina last year. He has 127 NHL games under his belt, and was a part of the Baby Penguins back in 2006-07.

Smith had 47 points in 71 AHL games in San Antoino last season. A 5' 11" center, Smith has 211 quiet NHL games on his resume.

Meanwhile, from the rumor mill, I've heard reports that the Penguins are talking with the agent for still-unsigned LW Alex Tanguay, formerly of the Montreal Canadiens.

Put another way, the agent for Tanguay has initiated dialogue with Pittsburgh about his client.

Tanguay had 19 goals and 51 points last year in limited action and, after missing the main boat of contract signings once free agency began on August 1, is still looking for a club to call home for the coming year.

While he's not known as a gritty player, Tanguay is somewhat intriguing as a scoring winger for Pittsburgh. The problem is that the Penguins' salary cap situation makes it hard for them to have an overwhelming interest in Tanguay.

On the other hand, I've heard reports that Tanguay's best offer to-date may not be much more than 1 million, and if that's the case, Tanguay certainly could do a lot worse than signing for similar money to play in Pittsburgh on a one-year deal with Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin and get a lot more interest in his services league-wide next season.

Time will tell if this goes anywhere, but I don't have high expectations.

Finally, I can't help but address the comments made about the Penguins late last week from Flyers Vice-President Bobby Clarke.

Clarke, wining in the press again for gosh knows what reason this time, complained about how the Flyers have always tried to win and not gotten rewarded for it, and contrasted his club with the local team from Pittsburgh, who he said lost "seven years in a row so they could get good" and "did it twice, in fact"."

Clarke went on to call it "embarassing" that 3 of last season's final 4 teams -- Pittsburgh, Washington and Chicago -- have "missed the playoffs for six or seven years in a row."

First of all, Clarke is obviously bitter because the Penguins have 3 Stanley Cups in the last 18 seasons while his sad-sack franchise has gone without a championship going on a whopping 35 years.

Beyond that, the man can't add. The Penguins only missed the playoffs 4 seasons in a row this decade, rather than 7.

Moreover, back when the Penguins won their first 2 titles, a majority of their teams at the time were not the result of being so bad for so long. Sure, Mario Lemieux was drafted 1st overall because Pittsburgh was the laughingstock of the National Hockey League in 1993, and Jaromir Jagr was also picked high in the 1990 draft, but it's worth pointing out that Jagr was selected one choice AFTER the Flyers' genius braintrust decided to choose character player Mike Ricci instead of the guy that ended up being one of the greatest scorers in the game's history.

Beyond that, if you look at almost every other key contributor from those championship teams, those players were acquired by trade -- Tom Barasso, Ron Francis, Paul Coffey, Joe Mullen, etc. Even Kevin Stevens and Mark Recchi, other key contributors of the team who actually were drafted by the Penguins, were not picked highly.

It's a shame Clarke is so wrong about the Penguins. If he weren't, he might have an excuse for not being able to help build his own team into a winner all these years. As it is, he continues to be a part of the leadership brass in that organization that believes it can win championships with subpar goaltending.

If I were a Flyer fan, and I'd witnessed the likes of Roman Cechmanek, Brian Boucher, Sean Burke, Robert Esche, Martin Brion, Antero Nittymaki, and now Ray Emery man the pipes the last decade, I would have disowned the team.

(Actually, if I were a Flyer fan, I'd kill myself, but .....)

In all honesty, Clarke is probably the only executive league-wide who feels it is "embarassing" that probably the 3 most exciting and offensively-gifted teams in the game led the charge for the NHL in this last year's post-season. That's why the NHL got some of the best TV ratings in decades during the playoffs. But no --- that's bad for the game.

Clarke needs to stop knocking the draft system the league has in place, stop whining and moaning about the Penguins' success, and stop doing such a bad job at getting his own house in order in Philadelphia.

He's pathetic.

Just one man's opinion.