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By STEVE SEMBRAT [email protected]
Tuesday, July 02, 2002 Page: 1E
The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins on Monday said goodbye to forwards
Robert Dome, Alexandre Mathieu and Darcy Verot and defensemen John Jakopin and
Peter Ratchuk.
Defenseman Bert Robertsson and forward Martin Sonnenberg also were allowed
to become unrestricted free agents, but the door was left open for their
return to the organization.
Pittsburgh retained the rights to one of nine restricted free agents who
finished this past season with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. The team made a
qualifying offer (which in most cases is a 10 percent raise) to forward Tom
Kostopoulos, an alternate captain and the team’s most valuable player this
past season.
Pittsburgh had previously traded Steve Parsons to Nashville, and didn’t
make qualifying offers to Dome, Jakopin, Mathieu, Ratchuk, Robertsson,
Sonnenberg or Verot by the deadline, which passed at midnight on Sunday.
Of those decisions, the one to let Sonnenberg become an unrestricted free
agent was unexpected, including to Sonnenberg, who thought he would receive a
qualifying offer.
“Obviously, their plans have changed,” Sonnenberg said. “We’ll go on
from here.
“I felt that I had a good season. Different teams look at things different
ways. It’s what the business is all about.”
A 24-year-old native of Westaskiwin, Alberta, Sonnenberg finished as
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s second-leading scorer in 2001-02. He had a plus-minus
rating of minus-4 on a team that allowed 73 more goals than it scored, and
finished 20-44-13-3.
During Sonnenberg’s four years in the organization, he played 52 games in
Pittsburgh, and his desire to return to the National Hockey League figured
into the decision to allow him to become an unrestricted free agent.
“We decided to let him do that,” Wilkes-Barre/Scranton coach Glenn
Patrick said. “We’ll wait until later in the summer to see if he signs and
then just play it by ear.”
The chances of Sonnenberg re-signing with Pittsburgh, however, aren’t
promising.
“Obviously, they have no plans for me,” Sonnenberg said. “I have no
plans to negotiate with them because they see no need for me. It’s time to go
somewhere else.”
The prospects of retaining Robertsson, a late-season acquisition who played
13 games with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, are better. He had a one-way contract
that paid him an NHL salary whether he was there or in the minors. Pittsburgh
wants to work out a two-way deal with him, paying him less for time spent with
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
“I’d like to come back,” Robertsson, a native of Sodertalje, Sweden, said
in a telephone interview. “The Penguins said that they liked my style of
hockey. It’s up to them to make me an offer that would make me want to come
back there to play hockey.”
The next-best option for Robertsson, who turned 28 on Sunday, would be to
play in Europe.
“That is something I will look into if things do not work out with the
Penguins,” Robertsson said. “If I played in Europe, I’d be closer to home,
and that definitely is attractive.”
The biggest loss from a fan’s standpoint is the departure of Verot, who was
one of the most popular of the local Penguins, a fact Patrick said the team
understood.
“Personally, we like him a lot,” Patrick said. “He’s such a good guy for
the team and in the dressing room. It’s a decision that wasn’t easy. He was
just not part of the plans.”
The move follows an off-season trend, as Pittsburgh has not retained
players who piled up a lot of penalty minutes last season. Parsons and NHL
tough guy Krzystzof Oliwa, both restricted free agents, were traded away.
Verot was second in the AHL with 387 penalty minutes last season.
“First of all, I have to thank the organization for giving me my
opportunity at this level,” said Verot, who was signed by
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton during its 1999-2000 inaugural season and made his AHL
debut later in that campaign. “I was in the (East Coast Hockey League) and
they gave me an opportunity to do something. The people in the front office
have treated me great. The fans have been fantastic. There will be nothing but
good memories for me.”
Mathieu, who is running a hockey school at the Ice Box in Jenkins Township
that will wrap up tomorrow, said he could sign a new deal by the end of the
week. The 23-year-old native of Repitigny, Quebec missed the latter part of
this past season after undergoing wrist surgery.
“It was a very hard decision because he is such a good person,” Patrick
said of Mathieu. “He wasn’t in the plans to make the NHL, so it is time for
him to move on.”
The decision to let Jakopin become an unrestricted free agent wasn’t a
surprise, as he previously said he hoped the club would do that so he could
explore all options and return to the NHL. Pittsburgh claimed Jakopin, a
27-year-old native of Toronto, off waivers from Florida in October.
Ratchuk, an alternate captain for the local Penguins last season, finished
with an AHL-low plus-minus rating of minus-32. The 34-year-old Buffalo, N.Y.
native was signed as a free agent last summer, and Patrick said that in the
coming weeks the organization will look to sign a veteran free-agent
defenseman to play in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Dome, Pittsburgh’s first-round pick in the 1997 NHL entry draft, will look
for a fresh start after a disappointing season.
Pittsburgh made qualifying offers to 10 restricted free agents who finished
the season with the NHL team: forwards Shean Donovan, Dan LaCouture, Aleksey
Morozov, Ville Nieminen and Randy Robitaille; and defensemen Rick Berry,
Andrew Ference, Josef Melichar, Jamie Pushor and Michael Rozsival. The team
allowed forward Jeff Toms to become an unrestricted free agent.
“It’s very hard,” Patrick said of the task of making decisions on
players’ futures. “That’s the part of the job that you don’t like.”