With the Penguins in the midst of their offseason, the Tribune-Review is looking at all 48 players currently under NHL contracts to the organization in alphabetical order, from mid-level prospect Niclas Almari to top-six winger Jason Zucker.
Sam Miletic
Position: Left winger
Shoots: Left
Age: 24
Height: 6-foot
Weight: 197 pounds
2020-21 AHL statistics: 21 games, five points (two goals, three assists)
Contract: One-year, two-way contract with a salary cap hit of $710,000. Pending restricted free agent this offseason
Acquired: Undrafted free agent signing, Sept. 25, 2017
2020-21 season: In one sense, Sam Miletic was ahead of everyone else in 2020-21.
A virus forced him out of the lineup before he even played any games.
An attendee to the Penguins’ NHL training camp, Miletic was sidelined by Jan. 10 after coming down with mononucleosis. That misfortune prompted him to be placed on injured reserve once the season opened on Jan. 13.
By Feb. 5, Miletic was assigned to the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the American Hockey League but did not make his season debut with that team until Feb. 27, almost a year after his last game of the 2019-20 campaign.
In some ways, that was Miletic’s high point of the season as he had a short-handed goal and an assist in a 5-4 overtime road win against the Lehigh Valley Phantoms that same night.
After that, he was only able to produce three points in his final 20 games of the season, including another short-handed goal and an assist during a 4-3 home overtime loss to the Hershey Bears on May 1.
During the latter parts of the regular season, Miletic, an AHL All-Star in 2019-20, was a healthy scratch for a handful of games in favor of players on AHL contracts.
During the course of the season, Miletic was recalled to the taxi squad and re-assigned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on two separate occasions in transactions geared toward the Penguins’ day-to-day management of the salary cap.
The future: There are probably few players in the organization who could benefit from a true offseason free of restrictions related to the pandemic than Miletic.
His entire 2020-21 season could be labeled as a lost year as he struggled to regain his strength and conditioning after his bout with mononucleosis that led to him being sidelined for nearly two months. A handful of months in the weight room or on a bike could benefit him greatly.
Were he not ill this past season, he could have very well earned a true recall to the NHL roster given how often the Penguins’ forward ranks were pockmarked by injury woes. His progression through his first two professional seasons — 2018-19 and 2019-20 — had put him on a trajectory toward reaching the NHL before things were derailed by his illness in 2020-21.
As a pending restricted free agent, Miletic should be in line for another one-year two-way contract should the Penguins choose to re-sign him.
If healthy and in the right condition, Miletic can be a candidate to earn some playing time at the NHL level next season as a recall, particularly given the organization’s limited options among its prospect pool.
An intelligent player who gets by more on guile than any physical attribute, Miletic is a legit top-six winger at the AHL level and a bottom-six candidate should he ever graduate to the NHL.
