{"id":277679,"date":"2025-10-04T17:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T17:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/277679\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T17:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T17:48:09","slug":"penguins-to-waive-ryan-graves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/277679\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins To Waive Ryan Graves"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Penguins announced (Twitter link<\/a>) a significant list of cuts today as they work towards getting their season-opening roster in place.\u00a0 Among those are five waiver placements, headed up by veteran defenseman Ryan Graves<\/a><\/strong> who will officially hit the wire at 1 PM CT today.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t that long ago that the 30-year-old was viewed as a key shutdown defender.\u00a0 Over his two seasons with New Jersey, he went from being a role player (going back to his Colorado days) to a consistent top-four player.\u00a0 That helped earn him a six-year, $27MM contract with Pittsburgh back in 2023 as they were hoping that he could be a defensive anchor for them for a long time.<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t happened.\u00a0 In the first season of the deal, his offensive numbers dipped to just three goals and 11 assists after two straight years of at least 26 points.\u00a0 On top of that, he struggled in Pittsburgh\u2019s defensive system and started to see his ice time cut later in the year.<\/p>\n

That proved to be a sign of things to come for last season.\u00a0 Instead of showing improvement in his second year with the team, things continued to go in the wrong direction.\u00a0 As a result, Graves only got into 61 games (managing just four points) while averaging less than 15 minutes per night as he was deployed as a number-six defender when he was in the lineup.<\/p>\n

That led to some speculative talk about a buyout this summer which clearly didn\u2019t come to fruition.\u00a0 However, with the acquisitions of Connor Clifton<\/a><\/strong> and Mathew Dumba<\/a><\/strong> in trades over the offseason plus a strong training camp from prospect Harrison Brunicke<\/a><\/strong>, there simply isn\u2019t a spot for Graves on their opening roster.<\/p>\n

Given his recent struggles and the fact that he has four years left on his contract, it\u2019s safe to say that Graves will pass through unclaimed on Sunday and be assigned to AHL Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton.\u00a0 From there, he can try to rebuild some confidence and try to work his way back to Pittsburgh.\u00a0 But few would have seen this coming just two years ago when he was given one of the bigger deals in free agency.<\/p>\n

Joining Graves on the waiver wire from today\u2019s moves are defenseman Alexander Alexeyev<\/a><\/strong> along with forwards Rafael Harvey-Pinard<\/a><\/strong>, Bokondji Imama<\/a><\/strong>, and Samuel Poulin<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins announced (Twitter link) a significant list of cuts today as they work towards getting their season-opening…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":277680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,1334,143563,62,67,132,68,46705],"class_list":{"0":"post-277679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","10":"tag-ryan-graves","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-waivers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115317159062431716","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}