There will be some intriguing talents available when the NHL's free-agent signing period begins Friday at noon.
Guys with the potential to be true difference-makers, who could help turn a contender into a champion.
The Penguins won't sign any of them.
Won't even try.
Not because they wouldn't like to have, say, Alex Pietrangelo or Taylor Hall on their depth chart, but because they simply don't have the salary-cap space needed to bring in a high-priced player.
"We won't be in on the big free agents," Jim Rutherford said.
CapFriendly.com places the Penguins a bit less than $4 million below the league's cap ceiling of $81.5 million for 2020-21; subtract the amount that will be needed to re-sign forward Anthony Angello, and there might not be enough left to cover the taxes on what some prominent free agents will be paid before the weekend is over.
Especially when the Penguins like to maintain a seven-figure cushion of cap space to accommodate any moves that might be made during the season.
But even though Rutherford has only a modest amount of cap space with which to work, history suggests that he won't just watch as players change teams in coming days.
He has been GM here for six previous free-agent signing periods, which normally begin on July 1. The Penguins have brought in between three and seven players in each of those.
Some, such as Matt Cullen, have an had impact that exceeded expectations. Others, most notably Antti Niemi, have been unmitigated flops. Many, if not most, didn't leave much of a mark on the franchise, for better or worse. Put the likes of Steve Oleksy, Greg McKegg and Kevin Porter in that group.
The bottom line, though, is that Rutherford never has been reluctant to see what kind of help he can find for his team among players who are looking for a contract.
Rutherford has a few personnel holes he'd like to fill -- including a third-line forward (although re-signing Sam Lafferty Thursday might have lessened the urgency), a right-handed defenseman for the third pairing and a third-string goalie -- and he figures to aggressively explore his options for addressing them.
That likely will mean making his moves after the initial wave of big-money signings has finished, when players might temper their salary requirements somewhat after being passed over in the early hours -- or even a day or two -- of free agency.
"We're going to have to see where guys fall," Rutherford said. "We don't have a lot of cap space -- not a lot of teams do -- but we'll have to see where guys fall and where their salaries fall to and all that, to see who we can fit."
The Penguins are prepared to let forward Dominik Simon, who has been a fixture in their lineup for the past few seasons, become an unrestricted free agent because they didn't want to risk having him go to salary arbitration and receive an award that could consume more cap space than they're prepared to allot to him.
Simon does, however, apparently have an offer on the table that he can accept at least until the signing period begins.
If Simon would opt to re-sign before noon Friday, the urgency to bring in a bottom-six forward would be further reduced. If he elects to explore free agency, Simon will join a group of players who, under normal circumstances, likely would have been kept by their 2019-20 club, but are being allowed to become unrestricted because of salary-cap issues.
Among those players are former Penguins forward Dominik Kahun of Buffalo, Ottawa's Anthony Duclair, ex-Penguin Evan Rodrigues of Toronto and Edmonton's Andreas Athanasiou, although the Sabres and Kahun's camp still were negotiating Thursday evening.
The list of available free agents was further swollen by players who had their contracts bought out, including Bobby Ryan (Ottawa), Kyle Turris (Nashville), Alexander Wennberg (Columbus), Michael Grabner (Arizona), Justin Abdelkader (Detroit) and Henrik Lundqvist (New York Rangers).