Zach Aston-Reese, who signed a two-year contract with the Penguins today, is one of 13 forwards currently on their NHL roster.
He's also one of several versatile enough to slot in at a variety of spots in the lineup this fall.
Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that Aston-Reese will enter training camp in September with no preconceived notions about where he will fit into Mike Sullivan's plans.
"I don't really want to label myself to (filling) one position," Aston-Reese said. "If you look at some of the moves we've made as a team this off-season, kind of filling out the roster and giving our team a lot of depth ... throughout the last two seasons, I've seen minutes on the fourth line and minutes on the first line, and wherever I've been, I've been able to do my job and do what's asked of me.
"I don't really have any expectations about what the lines are going to look like. I just want to go in and bring my game and see what's asked of me."
Aston-Reese, who is 6 feet, 204 pounds, had eight goals and nine assists in 43 regular-season games with the Penguins in 2018-19, and was scoreless in four playoff appearances. He also had six goals and three assists in 11 games with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton last season.
"Zach is a responsible player who plays a solid two-way game," Jim Rutherford said. "He has a heavy style of play that is especially effective on the forecheck and penalty-kill."
Aston-Reese's contract has a salary-cap hit of $1 million. It was reached, he said, as an arbitration hearing in Toronto today at 9 a.m. was about to get underway.
"Right at 9 o'clock, it got done," he said. "Right on time."
Aston-Reese has been training in Toronto with a number of other players -- teammate Dominik Simon and Penguins prospect Sam Miletic among them -- and planned to attend the hearing.
He was, then, understandably pleased that a deal was struck before he sat through a session during which Rutherford, assistant GM Jason Karmanos and Sam Ventura, the Penguins' director of hockey research, would have made a presentation spelling out the flaws in his game, in an effort to hold down the amount of money the arbitrator awarded him.
"It's a crazy process, I guess," Aston-Reese said. "It's a little bit awkward. I was just really happy to get the deal done before that meeting began."
Aston-Reese, 24, was coming off a two-year entry-level contract that had a salary-cap hit of $925,000. He was signed as a free agent out of Northeastern in 2019 and has 12 goals and 11 assists in 59 career games in the NHL, as well as one assist in 13 career playoff games.
With his contract settled, defenseman Marcus Pettersson is the Penguins' only unsigned restricted free agent.
Pettersson, 23, has been working under a deal with an average annual value, including performance bonuses, of $894,167.
Per CapFriendly.com, the Penguins are $157,500 over the NHL's cap ceiling of $81.5 million for the 2019-20 season, with 13 forwards, eight defensemen and two goalies currently on the NHL roster under contract.
Rutherford, however, noted that the Penguins are not compelled to carry more than 20 players. What's more, NHL regulations allow teams to exceed the ceiling by up to 10 percent before the start of the regular season.
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