Penguins re-sign Jack St. Ivany, Jonathan Gruden to multi-year contracts

The Pens take care of keeping a couple of young free agents, announce new contracts for Gruden and St. Ivany

The Penguins continued to click off some items on their off-season check list today with the announcement that both forward Jonathan Gruden and defenseman Jack St. Ivany were re-signed today to multi-year deals. Gruden gets his contract extended for two years, St. Ivany for three seasons — and both are at the NHL minimum value of $775,000 annually.

From the team:

The Pittsburgh Penguins have re-signed forward Jonathan Gruden to a two-year contract, it was announced today by President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Kyle Dubas.

The contract runs through the 2025-26 season and carries an average annual value of $775,000 at the NHL level.

Gruden, 24, split the 2023-24 season between the Penguins and the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the American Hockey League. The forward skated in 13 games with Pittsburgh, scoring his first NHL goal on March 2 against the Calgary Flames. As an alternate captain with the WBS Penguins, Gruden tallied 13 goals, 11 assists and 24 points in 47 games.

The 6-foot, 172-pound forward has skated in four professional seasons in the Penguins organization between 2020-24. In 208 career AHL games, Gruden has compiled 45 goals, 51 assists and 96 points and added three points (1G-2A) in seven playoff games. He has appeared in 16 career NHL games with Pittsburgh over the past two seasons.

Prior to making his professional debut, Gruden played one season in the Ontario Hockey League with the London Knights in 2019-20, totaling 30 goals, 36 assists and 66 points in 59 games. He ranked second on his team in goals (30) and fourth in points (66). Gruden also played one year of collegiate hockey at Miami University in 2018-19, registering 15 points (3G-12A) in 38 NCAA games.

From the team:

The Pittsburgh Penguins have re-signed defenseman Jack St. Ivany to a three-year contract, it was announced today by President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Kyle Dubas.

The contract runs through the 2026-27 season and carries an average annual value of $775,000 at the NHL level.

St. Ivany, 24, played the majority of the 2023-24 season with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the American Hockey League, totaling 15 points (4G-11A) in 54 games. He made his NHL debut with Pittsburgh against Dallas on March 22 and appeared in 14 games with the Penguins, recording one assist.

The 6-foot-3, 198-pound defenseman has appeared in 117 career AHL games with the WBS Penguins over two professional seasons, totaling 23 points (4G-19A). St. Ivany also appeared in two playoff games with WBS this season.

The Manhattan Beach, California native played four seasons of collegiate hockey in the NCAA, split between Yale University (2018-20) and Boston College (2020-22). In 115 career college games, St. Ivany recorded 12 goals, 48 assists and 60 points. The defenseman had his best season in 2021-22 with Boston College, establishing career highs in games played (35), assists (20) and points (24), and was named to the Hockey East Third All-Star Team.

Prior to his collegiate career, St. Ivany played in 106 games with the Sioux Falls Stampede (2016-18) of the United States Hockey League, where he notched 46 points (7G-39A).

The defenseman represented his home country at the 2019 World Junior Championship, helping Team USA to a silver medal.

St. Ivany could be the more intriguing of the two, considering his plays defense and was in the team’s NHL lineup for the final 14 games of the season. It was an encouraging debut that showed some flashes of promise and physicality (just nevermind that 41.2% goal share result and not-much-better 42.3% expected goal share and 39% Corsi of what happened in his small sample size of the season).

Still, St. Ivany offers the promise of what could be after further opportunities to play. If nothing else, he’ll cost nothing to bury in the minor leagues for the next three seasons and not haunt the team’s payroll picture. At best, he could represent a nice value of a player who can grow into being an NHL regular and playing for the smallest share of the cap picture possible. Adding a third year to his contract could also serve to dissuade teams from picking him up on waivers, lest they consider the possibility of committing real world dollars to a fringe level players (should it come to that and St. Ivany hit the waiver wire).

Gruden is likely to fly more under the radar, but as a specialist type of energy winger with center and winger capability, don’t sleep on his presence at the NHL level. Gruden is not without his believers in the organization for his defensive ability in that role moving up.

While we won’t know how that future career paths of these two will go, they represent more examples of how the Pens have used a similar strategy on Valtterri Puustinen and Sam Poulin this spring. Both of those players were impending free agents that were extended through 2026 at team-friendly rates. Now you can include Gruden in that fold and St. Ivany one year beyond that for what’s been a concerted effort to lock up young players for multiple years and see what might come out of their future developmental abilities.