DALLAS -- A phone at his ear, Jason Karmanos nodded to Jim Rutherford, who flashed a wry smile. Then, the Penguins general manager made his way over from the team's draft table to shake hands with George McPhee.
After being seen several times this weekend chatting up his Vegas counterpart it seemed, at last -- with only a few picks remaining in the seventh and final round of the NHL Draft -- that Rutherford had consummated a trade. And he did.
That's right, the Penguins sent their seventh-round pick, selection No. 208, to the Golden Knights in exchange for Vegas' seventh-rounder in 2019 ... and that was that. Cue the tumbleweed blowing across the Texas landscape, eh?
If the Penguins had been conspicuously quiet during Friday night's first round, then their silence was deafening on Saturday.
The Penguins made no moves of substance, at least nothing at the NHL level. In addition to the Vegas trade, they dealt one of their two fifth-round picks (No. 146) to Colorado to move up in the second round from No. 64 to 58 to take Filip Hallander. But, hey, the Swede told me he plays like Patric Hornqvist:
That left the Penguins with just four picks in this year's draft, their fewest since 2015. Needless to say, the organization is still very much in win-now mode.
But given Rutherford's penchant for draft day trades -- he'd made three deals of note during his previous four drafts with the Penguins -- and given his desire to tweak the roster after a failed bid to threepeat as Stanley Cup champions, it was a bit of a surprise.
The latter could still happen, but it will have to happen at the start of free agency on July 1.
Surely some progress was made toward that end this weekend in Dallas but, if so, Rutherford wasn't saying. He declined to speak to the media on Saturday but will do so when he returns to Pittsburgh. The Penguins will hold their annual prospects development camp Wednesday through Friday at the Lemieux Sports Complex.
Rutherford has several things he'd like to accomplish, namely bolstering his team's forward depth and perhaps acquiring a bottom-pair defenseman. But he doesn't have a lot of cap space to do either. Despite the rise of the cap to $79.5 million for next season, Rutherford said earlier that he expects to be right up against it after he re-signs his restricted free agents, including Bryan Rust, Jamie Oleksiak, Riley Sheahan and Tom Kuhnhackl.
To free up cap space, Rutherford could try to shed the big-ticket contracts of Phil Kessel ($6.8 million), Carl Hagelin ($4 million) or Conor Sheary ($3 million). It just didn't happen this weekend in Dallas. And in Kessel's case, it might never happen. Stay tuned.
• The Penguins were not alone in being unable to find a trade suitor. There was only one big trade and that came Saturday when Carolina sent Noah Hanifin and Elias Lindholm to Calgary for Dougie Hamilton, Micheal Ferland and prospect Adam Fox. Flames coach Bill Peters left the Hurricanes at season's end after four years on the job.
The day’s biggest move came prior to the second round when the Kings announced they signed Ilya Kovalchuk to a three-year deal with an AAV of $6.25 million.
• While many sons of former NHLers were drafted, the only one with a Pittsburgh connection was Mattias Samuelsson, who went 32nd overall to Buffalo on Saturday. He is the son of former Penguins defenseman Kjell Samuelsson, a member of the 1992 Stanley Cup championship team.
• Mattias Samuelsson plays for the U.S. NTDP, so he doesn't count as one of the 28 Swedes taken in the draft. That matches Sweden's record set in 2011.
• Canada had the most players selected with 71 followed by the U.S with 55. Sweden was third.
• The OHL had the most players selected with 35 and was followed by the USHL with 24, which beat out the QMJHL (23) and WHL (20).