As a guest on the Cook and Poni show, GM Jim Rutherford gave an interview that was both unequivocally honest while also pleasantly direct in his future plans with the Penguins. Rutherford has a knack for being one of the most open general managers in the league when it comes to his decision-making process, and this 20-minute clip of him talking about the team was no different.

Off the bat, Rutherford was prompted with typical questions regarding his overall opinion of his team and how Pittsburgh has finally turned things around for itself since the midway point of the season. He described that his team has taken their game to a whole new level with a new energy, listing reasons like an easier travel schedule, the bye week, Christmas and All-Star breaks, having a lot more rest in between games, and the top players finally playing like top players.

They tossed up some softballs and gave him the green light to swing. But after easing him into the show, the questions everyone wants answers to finally emerged, and Rutherford wasn’t shy about his answers. Queries about the potential shaking up of the team back whenever it was grossly underperforming came up, in which Rutherford said that he’s a lot happier with where the team is now.

“I feel better about where we’re at,” he said. “I think one of the things is our lines are more balanced now. (Sullivan) fooled around with a little different combinations, and then we weren’t totally healthy. Now we’re at the point where the scoring is more spread out throughout all the lines, which makes it better for us.”

“We’re always trying to make the team better, and I’ll continue to do that right up to the (trade) deadline,” Rutherford said.

Naturally, discussions about Pittsburgh’s current dollar figure for its salary cap hit came up when the popular third-line center acquisition question was asked, Rutherford was, again, very open about the money situation, stating that in a full roster of 23 men, he’s got about $800,000 to spend.

“But you’ve got to get creative when you get to this situations and probably have to move some money out,” he said. “It gets a little bit tricky, certainly with the cap, but there’s ways to do it.”

He also mentioned that he’s come extremely close to bringing a 3C on board, and that at one point, he was right at the finish line in signing a certain player, but couldn’t get over for reasons such as the other team changing its mind and wanting to keep its guy. He then said something pretty telling:

“I’m actually surprised that we haven’t added somebody at this point.”

In regard to what it would take for him to move his first-round pick this year in order to acquire a huge high-caliber guy, Rutherford chuckled and stated that it’d need to be one heck of a player to get him to even consider trading away that pick. He also is adamant in keeping all of his current goaltenders, including re-signing the Swedish prospect Filip Gustavsson.

Rutherford was also asked what type of contract he’d prefer to deal with when shopping for a 3C, whether it be a long-term or rental sort of situation.

“Just somebody who can help us win,” he said. “I talked about a third-line center for a long time, but the way the lines are balanced out now, I’m not sure that it necessarily has to be a third-line center — just another center to upgrade our depth. With the way the scoring is spread out now, we may be able to do this a different way.”

Matt Cullen talks also came up, and when asked if he’s considering a reunion with him in Pittsburgh given that he’d be a solid center addition, Rutherford stated that he can’t comment on his interest level, but that Cullen is one of the most respected and closest guys to the him and the team as a whole.

If you’d like to listen to the entire interview in full, you can find it here.