Gonchar Contract Talks; Other Penguins' News And Notes

The Penguins have started getting more actively involved in contract talks with star defenseman Sergei Gonchar and his agent, J.P. Barry.

Both Barry and Pens' GM Ray Shero kicked off negoitations in greater earnest while Pittsburgh was in Calgary to face the Flames earlier this week.

While it is believed that contract term and exact numbers have not been discussed, the parameters of any deal would seem to be in the 2-4 year range, with numbers over the course of the deal floating anywhere from $9 to $20 million dollars.

Gonchar is going to be 36 in April and largely because of that, it seems that Pittsburgh appears to want a shorter deal -- ideally 3 years.

The salary they are looking for hovers around $4 million per season, give or take.

If the deal is even shorter, Shero might be willing to increase the salary to $4.5 million per.

Gonchar's camp, meanwhile, would like to land a 4 year contract, and are hoping to keep his new salary as close as possible to the current one, which is $5 million.

Both sides appear to be willing to actively engage in further discussions to try and get this done and, from the perspective of both sides, why not?

Gonchar has been a Penguin for five seasons and his children are established in the community.

For the Penguins, Gonchar has proven to be pretty much indispensable on the backline, and given the continued inconsistency shown by young defenseman Alex Goligoski and Kris Letang, it would be hard to argue that the Pens' "D" wouldn't suffer greatly without Sarge.

Speaking of Letang, he's also a contract priority for Shero, although unlike #55 who will be an unrestricted free agent on July 1, Letang will be restricted this summer, coming off his 3-year entry level contract that currently pays him $825K per season.

By all accounts, Shero hasn't negotiated a great deal with Letang's camp thusfar, and it seems as if the Penguins are focusing on Gonchar first.

Depending on how the Gonchar talks continue to go, Letang could be left to hang out to dry a little bit, and that could lead to increased speculation leading up to the March 3 trade deadline that the Penguins would rather deal Letang than lose him to a team who tries to poach him with a contract in the summer that the Pens can't match because they will be pretty close to the salary cap.

In other team matters, I thought it was interesting that LW Luca Caputi was a healthy scratch again last night against the Oilers.

Caputi had a good first two games after his call-up from Wilkes-Barre Scranton about 10 days ago, but admittedly struggled in the games which followed.

However, the guy who basically took his lineup spot -- RW Eric Godard -- is hardly getting any ice time while being counted among the 12 dressing forwards.

Sure, that could be exactly why head coach Dan Bylsma doesn't want to dress Caputi in that position. In other words, why dress him if he's only going to play a few minutes?

That could be true, but if that's the case, just send Caputi back to Wilkes-Barre and get him playing big minutes again.

What surprises me a great deal about Godard is that he was in the lineup again last night, in a back-to-back situation against an Edmonton team without a known tough guy, and after playing only a few minutes the night before thanks to another bad penalty.

That's been the rub with Godard. It was the second straight game he took a bad penalty that put his team in a poor situation.

It seems that Blysma wants to give the "newly-formed" second unit of Evgeni Malkin with Ruslan Fedotenko and Max Talbot some time to see if they recapture their chemistry from last season's playoff run, but again -- you can't keep scratching Caputi. That's not doing him any good.

Meanwhile, on the backend, defenseman Ben Lovejoy has looked pretty solid in the last three games. He surprisingly got into the lineup on Monday against the Minnesota Wild as a late call-up and at the expense of veteran Martin Skoula.

Brooks Orpik isn't expected back until next week at the very earliest as he recovers from an undisclosed lower body injury, and it doesn't look like we're going to see Lovejoy taken out of the lineup until then, at least.

Jay McKee also had a much better game last night than he has been lately. Getting back to blocking shots will be a key for the him -- and the Penguins -- down the stretch.

In a few other notes, goaltender Brent Johnson was placed on injured reserve with his groin problem, retroactive to last Saturday. He's eligible to come off IR this Saturday, but there's no word yet on whether that will happen or whether Baby Penguin netminder John Curry will continue to stay with the club. Regardless, after having a day off, I would expect Fleury to start Saturday night against his expected Team Canada goaltending counterpart for the Vancover Canucks, Roberto Luongo.

Also, NBC has picked up Penguin games to nationally televise on two consecutive Sundays.

First, they will televise Pittsburgh's 1-24 game against the Flyers in Philadelphia beginning at 12:30 PM.

They also announced last night they will televise the Pens' Stanley Cup Final rematch against the Detroit Red Wings at Mellon Arena on Sunday, 1-31.

As far as I know, a time change has not yet been announced for that game, however. Usually, NBC's "Game of the Week" is a 12:30 PM contest. The Pens'/Red Wings game is currently set for 3:00 PM.

It's also likely the network will pick up the Penguins for a third week in a row when they match up against Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals on Sunday, February 7.

If they do, Pittsburgh can only appear one more time on NBC during the regular season, as each team is allowed 4 maximum appearances on the network.

More over the weekend.