The Penguins recalled forward Alex Nylander from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on an emergency basis ahead of Tuesday's game against the Blue Jackets, Ron Hextall announced Tuesday afternoon.
The recall being an emergency recall suggests that a forward is either now injured or sick. Emergency recalls are only permitted when a team doesn't have 12 forwards, six defensemen, or two goaltenders due to injury, illness or suspension. Emergency recalls can't be made to simply recall an extra forward, so Nylander will play Tuesday, The Penguins only had 12 healthy forwards (plus an injured Ryan Poehling) on the roster to begin with.
It's not clear who may be injured or ill among the forwards. Jake Guentzel missed practice on Monday with a maintenance day but Mike Sullivan said after the morning skate Tuesday that he was able to play in Tuesday's game.
This is not an "emergency exemption" recall that doesn't count toward the cap -- for that to be possible, the Penguins would have had to first play a game with a skater short. Regular emergency recalls like this count toward the cap.
Teams are limited to just four standard (non-emergency) recalls after the trade deadline. Since this is an emergency recall, it does not count toward that limit. If Nylander stays on the NHL roster after the Penguins have a forward get healthy and the emergency situation has ended, then his recall would need to be converted to a standard recall and he would then count as one of those four standard recalls.
Nylander won't have to clear waivers to go back down to Wilkes-Barre unless he plays 10 games or spends up to 30 days on the active NHL roster, whatever comes first.
This is the first recall for Nylander, 25, since he was acquired from the Blackhawks in the Sam Lafferty trade last season. He currently leads Wilkes-Barre in goals (25) and points (50) in 54 games. A right-handed shot capable of playing both wings, Nylander has spent the bulk of this season on the right side of Wilkes-Barre's top line. He has been playing the left side as of late after playing on the right earlier in the season.
The Penguins on Tuesday also put Poehling on long-term injured reserve retroactive to Feb. 14. Long-term injured reserve requires a player to be sideline for 10 games and 24 days (whichever is longest), which means that the soonest Poehling can return is this Saturday against the Flyers. Poehling has been in and out of practices with his nagging upper-body injury lately, with Sullivan saying last week in Nashville that Poehling took a "step back" after returning to practice in a full capacity. Poehling skated on Tuesday with the group in a non-contact capacity.
Putting Poehling on long-term injured reserve was necessary to clear the cap space needed for a Nylander recall. Both players have $750,000 cap hits, and the Penguins only had $712,000 in cap space. Per salary cap calculation site PuckPedia, the Penguins were two days away from having banked up enough of their daily unused cap space to have at least $750,000 in space. Now that Poehling is on long-term injured reserve, they are no longer banking any unused cap space each day. That could make things tricky for making recalls later on in the season after Poehling is activated.
