The Syracuse Crunch, AHL affiliate of the Lightning, signed former Penguins prospect Nikita Pavlychev to a one-year AHL contract, Syracuse general manager Stacy Roest announced on Tuesday.
Pavlychev, the Penguins' seventh-round pick in 2015, became an unrestricted free agent on Saturday when he was not signed by the 5 p.m. deadline.
Pavlychev was offered an AHL-level contract with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton but did not accept, as Dave Molinari reported in a Friday Insider.
“We’d like him to stay with us,” a Penguins source said of Pavlychev. “But being that it’s taken this long, he may go a different route.