{"id":116507,"date":"2021-08-05T15:22:39","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T19:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=116507"},"modified":"2021-08-05T15:22:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T19:22:39","slug":"penguins-sign-aston-reese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/08\/05\/penguins-sign-aston-reese\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Penguins Sign Zach Aston-Reese"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/08\/01\/nhl-salary-arbitration\/\" target=\"_self\">avoided arbitration<\/a> with <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/a\/astonza01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Zach Aston-Reese<\/a><\/strong> today when he signed a one-year deal worth $1.725 million. The hearing was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tsn.ca\/nhlpa-releases-2021-arbitration-dates-1.1678125\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">scheduled<\/a> for August 23rd but is obviously no longer necessary. Most teams and players manage to avoid arbitration, though hearings aren&#8217;t as dramatic as they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thescore.com\/nhl\/news\/547156\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">used to be<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Hearing <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/pens?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#pens<\/a> will avoid arbitration with Zach Aston-Reese: 1 year x $1.725 million. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DailyFaceoff?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@DailyFaceoff<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/frank_seravalli\/status\/1423329742086938629?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 5, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Zach Aston-Reese for One More Year<\/h2>\n<p>Aston-Reese gets a considerable raise from his previous two-year deal that had him at an even $1 million. He had a solid playoff run, forming the Penguins&#8217; most reliable line with <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/b\/bluegte01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Teddy Blueger<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/t\/tanevbr01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brandon Tanev<\/a><\/strong>. Clearly, that impression stuck in these negotiations. The three were linemates for much of the regular season as well, and Aston-Reese provided solid tertiary scoring for his ice time with nine goals and 15 points in 45 games.<\/p>\n<p>Those don&#8217;t look like exceptional numbers at first glance but given his predominantly defensive use? Perfectly acceptable. Most of the scoring is taken up by the superstars in the top-six, after all. And while <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/crosbsi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sidney Crosby<\/a><\/strong> or Evgeni Malkin panic opposing defences, Aston-Reese takes care of his end. While his Corsi was just 48.8%, it&#8217;s worth remembering that two-thirds of his starts were in his own end. Opponents may have gotten their shots, those shots weren&#8217;t particularly dangerous. His line had an expected goals of 56.8% with no goals scored against them in 140 minutes together. When we&#8217;re talking about goals against, &#8220;zero&#8221; is about as good as it gets.<\/p>\n<h3>Going Forward<\/h3>\n<p>Aston-Reese is one of the defensive anchors for Pittsburgh, and it&#8217;s no surprise to see him rewarded for it. At 26 years old, soon to be 27, it&#8217;s unlikely he&#8217;ll suddenly find a new scoring touch. He seems okay with that &#8211; as do the Penguins. He is a scorer at the AHL level but changed to suit the team in the NHL. The undrafted Ashton-Reese has built a role for himself and frankly excels at it. No doubt he and the team would have liked a longer deal, and they&#8217;ve bought themselves another 360 days to work on it.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"EL1HSdGoR3JyKZZsG4jpvA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1232807598\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'EL1HSdGoR3JyKZZsG4jpvA',sig:'kJl8McP6-p4Bm8dDxA8tCME_7dlT1WBOGzniNaDo830=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1232807598',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins avoided arbitration with Zach Aston-Reese today when he signed a one-year deal worth $1.725 million. The hearing was scheduled for August 23rd but is obviously no longer necessary. Most teams and players manage to avoid arbitration, though hearings aren&#8217;t as dramatic as they used to be. Hearing #pens will avoid arbitration with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3171,"featured_media":116513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4547,34,4548],"tags":[1071,955,2434,1333],"class_list":["post-116507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-penguins","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","tag-brandon-tanev","tag-nhl-news","tag-teddy-blueger","tag-zach-aston-reese"],"modified_by":"Dan Mount, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}