With the Pittsburgh Penguins entering the offseason for a third consecutive year without a playoff appearance, TribLive will offer Penguins A to Z, a player-by-player look at all 56 individuals signed to an NHL contract — including those whose deals do not begin until future seasons — with the organization.

Starting with Noel Acciari and going on through to Philip Tomasino (regrettably, there is no Z on the payroll), every player will be profiled in alphabetical order.

This series is scheduled to be published Mondays through Saturdays leading up until June 24, four days before the start of the NHL Draft. In the event of a transaction, that schedule will be altered as necessary.

(Note: All contract information courtesy of Puckpedia.)

Matt Grzelcyk

Position: Defenseman

Shoots: Left

Age: 31

Height: 5-foot-10

Weight: 180 pounds

2024-25 NHL statistics: 82 games, 40 points (one goal, 39 assists), 20:37 of average ice time per contest

Contract: Signed to a one-year contract with a salary cap hit of $2.75 million. Pending unrestricted free agent this upcoming offseason.

Acquired: Unrestricted free agent signing, July 1, 2024

This season: The Pittsburgh Penguins’ free agent crop during the 2024 offseason wasn’t exactly one that was meant to be all that invigorating.

President of hockey operations Kyle Dubas primarily sought low-risk signings on small contracts to patch up holes in a flawed roster.

Of that motley crew, Matt Grzelcyk was the greatest success. Heck, Grzelcyk might have been the biggest individual triumph for a team that largely accomplished nothing in 2024-25.

Grzelcyk arrived with the Penguins at a low point in his career following a difficult 2023-24 season with his hometown Boston Bruins in which he missed several games due to injuries as well as healthy scratches.

Penguins coaches — most notably assistant David Quinn who coached Grzelcyk at the NCAA level with Boston University — sought to rebuild Grzelcyk’s confidence and immediately put him in a prominent role on the team’s top pairing next to Kris Letang.

Like the team as a whole, Grzelcyk didn’t get off to a smooth start in the early stages of the season as he tried to adjust to new surroundings.

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By late October, the Penguins began to experiment with Grzelcyk on the top power-play unit, placing him at the center point while Erik Karlsson manned the left flank.

Eventually, Grzelcyk became the only defenseman on the top power-play unit while Karlsson and Letang, each potential enshrinees in the Hockey Hall of Fame, were relegated to the second squad.

A steady presence in either the first or second defensive pairing as well as the top power-play unit, Grzelcyk broke his previous career high for points (26 in 2022-23) by Jan. 29 by displaying a smooth ability to distribute the puck to the team’s top goal producers.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Penguins held onto Grzelcyk by the time the trade deadline rolled by March 7 and he finished the season as one of two players to appear in all 82 of the team’s games (Karlsson, being the other).

The future: Grzelcyk has repeatedly expressed gratitude over the opportunity the Penguins afforded him and indicated a desire to remain with the team past this season.

But this is a business and, admittedly by default, Grzelcyk is the Penguins’ most prominent pending unrestricted free agent this upcoming offseason.

Considering he had a career year in 2024-25, it was already logical to suggest — once the Penguins season was over — that Grzelcyk could simply cash in this summer and get a lengthy and lucrative contract for the last time in his career.

But given last week’s abrupt departure of head coach Mike Sullivan, a prominent supporter of Grzelcyk, the odds of Grzelcyk also leaving the Penguins are only amplified, especially if Quinn isn’t retained by a new head coach.

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Further to that, the Penguins’ defensive corps is in dire need of a substantial remodeling project after a messy 2024-25 season. Grzelcyk was hardly a reason for the problems on the blue line, but a 31-year-old doesn’t figure to be part of the solution moving forward, at least in a long-term sense.

Even if it doesn’t last past a single season, the Penguins made a small investment in Grzelcyk and it paid off.