{"id":347097,"date":"2025-12-13T21:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347097\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T21:29:09","slug":"matt-dumba-clears-waivers-assigned-to-ahl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347097\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Dumba Clears Waivers, Assigned To AHL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday: The team announced<\/a> that Dumba has passed through waivers unclaimed.\u00a0 As expected, he has been assigned to AHL Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton.\u00a0 It will be his first action at that level since the 2014-15 when he played in 20 games for Iowa.<\/p>\n

Friday: The Penguins announced this morning that they will place defenseman\u00a0Mathew Dumba<\/a> on waivers today at 1:00 pm Central. He\u2019s been placed on the non-roster list until his waiver period ends tomorrow. The move makes room for rearguard Brett Kulak<\/a> to join the active roster after being acquired from the Oilers<\/a> in today\u2019s\u00a0Tristan Jarry<\/a>\/Stuart Skinner<\/a>\u00a0goalie swap.<\/p>\n

Dumba, 31, hadn\u2019t been much of a factor to this point in the season. Acquired from the Stars over the summer<\/a> in a salary dump, he\u2019s been in the press box more than he\u2019s been on the ice.<\/p>\n

When dressed, he\u2019s recorded a 1-2\u20133 scoring line and a -5 rating in 11 appearances. He\u2019s averaging 14:56 of ice time per game, his lowest figure since averaging 12:27 in his first taste of NHL hockey as a 19-year-old with the Wild back in 2013-14. His poor two-way play is reflected in his 46.2 CF% and 47.9 FF% at 5-on-5, both the second-worst among qualified Penguins defenders, ahead only of Caleb Jones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With Kulak in the mix,\u00a0Jack St. Ivany<\/a>\u00a0returning to health, and\u00a0Ryan Graves<\/a>\u00a0flourishing in a bottom-pairing role after starting the season on waivers, Dumba might have played his last game as a Penguin. At a $3.75MM cap hit, he won\u2019t be claimed off waivers, even though he\u2019s on an expiring deal.<\/p>\n

If the righty is dead set on returning to the NHL this season, he could refuse to report to AHL Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton, allowing the Penguins to terminate his contract. He\u2019d be walking away from whatever he\u2019s still owed of his $3.5MM salary but could catch on somewhere else for the back half of the season on a cheaper, prorated one-year deal. If he does clear waivers and opts to report to the minors, the Penguins will still be on the hook for a $2.6MM cap hit.<\/p>\n

While Dumba may have been one of the more offensively dynamic defensemen in the league at his peak, those days are long in the rearview. Drafted No. 7 overall by Minnesota in 2012, he broke out for 50 points and 136 hits in the 2017-18 season, prompting the Wild to sign him to a five-year, $30MM deal the following summer. He racked up 12 goals and 22 points through the first 32 games of 2018-19 before sustaining a season-ending upper-body injury.<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t been the same player since. Dumba was still a minute-muncher for the rest of his tenure in Minnesota, averaging over 22 minutes per game between 2019-20 and 2022-23, but he never sniffed 30 points again \u2013 let alone 50. Still, he turned his reputation into a pair of relatively high-value, short-term free-agent deals. He first signed a one-year, $3.9MM pact with the Coyotes in 2023 and was flipped to the Lightning at the following year\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Tampa didn\u2019t show interest in retaining him, but he still landed a two-year, $7.5MM pact from the Stars. Dumba underwhelmed from the start, though, posting 10 points and a -5 rating in 63 games while averaging 15:18 of ice time per game. He was then a healthy scratch for Dallas\u2019 entire playoff run. His cap hit quickly became untenable for the big-spending Stars, paying a 2028 second-round pick to unload the last year of his contract on the Penguins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday: The team announced that Dumba has passed through waivers unclaimed.\u00a0 As expected, he has been assigned to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[112778,385,1790,99,6182,9818],"class_list":{"0":"post-347097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-matt-dumba","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-transactions","13":"tag-waivers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}