Liked this part of the Gazette story.
Penguins officials spoke with representatives of several impending free agents while they were in south Florida for the NHL draft late last week. Although Rutherford declined to identify those players, Washington winger Joel Ward was one of them.
Those conversations apparently stemmed from agents reaching out to the Penguins who, at mid-week, hadn’t intended to conduct any such discussions.
“We initially hadn’t planned to speak with anybody,†he said. “But it ended up that we got a couple of calls and did speak to a couple of guys.â€