Penguins reportedly not likely to extend qualifying offer to Dominik Simon before Wednesday deadline

While the Penguins handled their offseason business with Tristan Jarry on Saturday, it appears that they are not going to be handling any offseason business with Dominik Simon.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Penguins will not be extending a qualifying offer to Simon before Wednesday’s deadline, which would make Simon an unrestricted free agent, able to sign with any team beginning on Friday.

“Dominik would be the one that would be tough to qualify because he has arbitration rights,” Rutherford told the Post-Gazette. “We don’t know where that number goes. We can’t risk getting put over the cap.”

Simon, drafted by the Penguins in the 5th round in 2015, has been the focus of much discussion among fans, as his results haven’t always lined up with the ‘process,’ where he was seemingly always near the top of the board when it came to advanced statistical metrics.

Simon underwent shoulder surgery in late April and was expected to be sidelined for 6 to 7 months.

Simon had worked well with Sidney Crosby, but with the Penguins adding Kasperi Kapanen and Jason Zucker in the past few months, there’s no space for Simon in a scoring role any longer.

The bottom of the Penguins’ forward group has been bolstered with the addition of Colton Sceviour who came over in the Patric Hornqvist trade. Add him in with Brandon Tanev, Teddy Blueger, Jared McCann, Zach Aston-Reese and probably Sam Lafferty and the Pens have a large collection of players there that renders Simon’s status as superfluous.

An over-age pick by Pittsburgh in fifth round of 2015, Simon played 173 regular season games for the Penguins over five seasons from 2015-2020. He was a “black ace” that practice but didn’t play in the 2016 and 2017 playoff runs. Simon will end up with 19 goals and 45 assists as a Penguin.