Up next? A Finnish winger

According to the Post-Gazette the Pens are close to signing a deal with a Finnish free-agent winger named Janne Pesonen, who was the 2007-08 scoring champion in Finland's top league. He also has several other honors under his belt. We don't have a whole lot to say on this because we know nothing about this guy. His honors and stats look good but we can't say we've ever watched him play, but we trust that Ray Shero knows what he's doing. You can also go over to Empty Netters at the PG and Seth has some videos of Pesonen highlights you can watch. The article from the PG is here. Along with PG's NHL notebook.

Also included in the notebook is the fact that Jagr is going to Russia. The deal is believed to be around $7 million U.S. tax-free, per season. Probably a good decision on his part since he's getting older and this is a good chunk of change. And obviously he won't be with the Pens next year. Also probably for the best.

On the Trib there is an article by Rob Rossi called Pens get bargains on top players that you can read here. Also an article by Joe Starkey called Pens will still rule the east that you can read here.

The Insider on Pittsburgh Sports reported at 10:51 am July 4th that the Penguins have in fact signed Janne Pesonen. Obviously we always take what's on that site with a grain of salt because the stuff posted isn't always fact. We couldn't find anywhere on the web where that had been reported other than there, but we decided to pass it on to you.

And for the random YouTube of the day, it's Janne Pesonen scoring some goals. There's some stuff in Finnish, at least we assume it's Finnish, and the song is in Finnish too, we assume. That music is wicked awesome, enjoy.