Penguins sign Sebastian Aho (the defenseman)

All the depth!

The Pittsburgh Penguins added a familiar name, but the second most well-known one of his kind when they signed Sebastian Aho. No, not the Carolina Hurricanes superstar forward from Finland but rather the Swedish defender of the same name and formerly of the Islanders.

From the team:

The Pittsburgh Penguins have signed defenseman Sebastian Aho to a two-year contract, it was announced today by President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Kyle Dubas.

The contract runs through the 2025-26 campaign and carries an average annual value of $775,000.

Aho, 28, has played parts of five seasons in the NHL, all with the New York Islanders. He’s suited up for 190 regular-season games and recorded 11 goals, 39 assists and 50 points. His best season came in 2022-23 when he set career highs in games played (71), goals (5), assists (18), points (23) and plus/minus (+9).

Prior to coming to North America, the 5-foot-10, 180-pound defenseman has spent four seasons in the SHL, Sweden’s top professional league, with Skelleftea AIK. The Umea, Sweden native also represented his home country at the 2015 World Junior Championship.

Aho was originally drafted by the Islanders in the fifth round (139^th overall) of the 2017 NHL Draft.

This move is reminiscent of the old days when the Penguins always seemed to end up with the wrong brother. “We got a Primeau!...Oh, it’s Wayne not Keith.” Or “Hey look a Pronger...Whoops, not Chris”. To say nothing of the time the Pens dangled Sergei Zubov in a trade and wanted “Hatcher” back. Dallas couldn’t believe it was Kevin, not Derian, that was the preference.

Anyways, “the other” Sebastian Aho adds some depth for Pittsburgh to compete for a depth job (he hasn’t played in the AHL since 2019-20, though he hadn’t been a full time player for the Islanders in the last few seasons either). Given how it goes, Aho is likely bound to see some NHL games for Pittsburgh at some point once the injury bug strikes.

Adding Aho and Matt Grzelcyk through free agency beefs up the left side of the team’s depth chart, presumably leaving no more room at the inn for Pierre-Olivier Joseph, since John Ludvig, Marcus Pettersson and Ryan Graves are around as well.

The Aho signing puts Pittsburgh up to 47 of their 50 NHL contracts for the 2024-25 season, and if they look to sign Brayden Yager that will eat up another until it slides for him going back to juniors. Teams like to keep a little wiggle room for future transactions, so the depth moves have to be coming to an end at some point.