The Pittsburgh Penguins have signed Detroit Red Wings minor-leaguer Kevin Porter to a one-year, two-way contract worth $575,000 at the NHL level.
Porter, 29, is a 5-foot-11, 194-pound center with a left-handed shot. He spent the 2014-15 season with the Red Wing’s Triple-A affiliate, the Grand Rapids Griffins, where he scored 16 goals and 23 assists in 76 games.
The journeyman has spent time with the Phoenix Coyotes, Colorado Avalanche and Buffalo Sabres over his seven-year professional career. In 206 NHL games, he has 29 goals and 26 assists.
He has been a productive player at the AHL level, scoring 50 goals in 174 games over the last three seasons. In the NHL, his last full season was 2010-11, when he scored 14 goals and had 11 assists in 74 games.
Since then, he’s been used mostly as a fill-in. He played 35 games with Colorado in 2011-12, and recorded only 7 points. In the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, he appeared in 31 games with the Sabres, but only tallied 9 points. In 2013-14, he had just one assist in 12 games before being placed on waivers by Buffalo.
He was originally a fourth-round draft pick of the Coyotes in the 2004 NHL draft and played college hockey at the University of Michigan, where he scored 33 goals in his senior season.
Porter will help build the Penguins center depth in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. The team has already lost center Andrew Ebbett to a Swiss team earlier this offseason.
Photo credit: Detroit Red Wings
