Chirps from Center Ice

Some more signing news as it was announced Tuesday that Thomas Di Pauli re-signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Di Pauli, considered “week to week” since going down with an injury in late December against Bridgeport is the second signing made by Pittsburgh to set up their farm team in 2019-20* in the wake of Joseph Cramarossa signing last week.

Di Pauli has battled injuries for most of his professional career. He was limited to just 29 games last year. He’s a decent penalty killer and always scores against Hershey it seems. His trajectory was pointing upward until his season was derailed from whatever his “week to week” injury was that cost him the final 15 weeks of the season.

The gamble is that the injury issues are behind the Notre Dame product and he’ll shape out to be one of the better players on the AHL roster for next season. It’s a low risk, potential for high reward signing.

* – still no announcement on a lease agreement for 2019-2020 and beyond between the Penguins and the Arena Authority. It is going to be May 1 on Wednesday. The next arena meeting is May 8. Are we going to get more, “we are negotiating” and “the sides are close” or is this really going to drag out yet another month coming into the month of June and the 11th hour when the lease expires on June 30? I am honestly tired of waiting, am about all out of patience and would like some closure on this in some form or fashion as it has been percolating since the season began in October 2018. 

We’ll wait as we have been, non-disclosures be damned, but as Benjamin Franklin once said, “You may delay, but time will not.”