The Penguins on Thursday announced the signing of forward Danton Heinen to a one-year contract.
The contact is a one-way contract worth $1.1 million.
Heinen, 26, can play left wing, right wing and center and is a left-handed shot. He's 6 foot 1 and 187 pounds, and plays a two-way game.
Heinen spent last season in Anaheim, where he scored seven goals and seven assists in 43 games. He most frequently played on the third line with Jakob Silfverberg and Adam Henrique at five-on-five, but did spend some time in the Ducks' top-six as well. He kills penalties and saw limited power play time with the Ducks.
This graphic from JFresh Hockey shows that Heinen was in the 80th percentile in the league for quality of competition over the last three years, and only in the 33rd percentile for quality of teammates, meaning he was given tough matchups with not much help. He was also in the 86th percentile in the league for play on the penalty kill:
Heinen was set to be a restricted free agent this offseason, but was not given a qualifying offer by the Ducks, which would have been $2.775 million based on his previous contract.
Heinen was originally a fourth-round pick of the Bruins in 2014 and spent the first three and a half years of his professional career in the Bruins' organization. His most successful season offensively came in 2017-18, when he scored 47 points (16 goals, 31 assists) in 77 games. He appeared in 33 postseason games with Boston, including all seven games of the Stanley Cup Final in 2019.
After the Heinen signing, CapFriendly projects the Penguins as having $2,596,795 in salary cap space for next season, a figure that assumes recent signings Dominik Simon, Michael Chaput and Taylor Fedun start in the AHL.