Throughout the spring and early summer, there had been buzz that Erik Karlsson could be traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins as a bold new move by recently hired president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas.
On Sunday, that buzz became reality, as the Pens acquired Karlsson, forwards Rem Pitlick and Dillon Hamaliuk and a 2026 third-round pick, with the San Jose Sharks getting forwards Mikael Granlund and Mike Hoffman, defenseman Jan Rutta and a top-10-protected 2024 first-round pick, and the Montreal Canadiens get defenseman Jeff Petry, goaltender Casey DeSmith, forward Nathan Legare and Pittsburgh’s 2025 second-round selection.
How did the three GMs do in the deal? Here are our grades:
This was almost an A-plus. But it just missed.
The fact that GM Kyle Dubas managed to acquire the 2022-23 Norris Trophy winner in a trade that also saw him unload two disappointing players that had Pittsburgh in a salary cap nightmare (Petry and Granlund) and another underwhelming acquisition by the previous regime (Rutta) is nothing short of hockey miracle working. The conditional first-rounder and the 2025 second-rounder could have been the cost to move those contracts off the Penguins’ roster, absent of anything coming back. And in this case, it’s Erik Karlsson coming back.
Karlsson is 33 years old. He has four seasons left on his contract. Evgeni Malkin has three seasons, while Sidney Crosby has two more. I mention this because the Penguins are trying to win another Stanley Cup with an admittedly aged core that also includes 36-year-old Kris Letang. This is the decision they’ve made. These are the marching orders handed to Dubas, while also encouraging him to keep an eye on what the post-Crosby years in Pittsburgh will look like.
To that end, Karlsson fits this Penguins roster extremely well. One of the essential building blocks for a championship team in today’s NHL is having two defensemen who can anchor pairings and chew up minutes: Alex Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore with Vegas, Victor Hedman and Ryan McDonagh during the Lightning’s back-to-back wins. In Karlsson and Letang, the Penguins have two defensemen who can play 50 minutes per game.
Karlsson is one of the most dominant forces in the NHL on the power play, notching 27 points with the Sharks last season on the man advantage. The Penguins theoretically should have a power play that carries them in the same way teams like the Oilers, Maple Leafs and Avalanche have. The personnel is there. With Karlsson, Pittsburgh should be a lot better than middle of the pack (21.7% conversion rate). If that translates into an extra win or two, that was the margin for making or missing the playoffs last season.
Obviously, Karlsson’s defense has been a point of contention by critics. I had an NHL player who knows him pretty well tell me last season that if Karlsson was compelled to play more defense on a team that was better than the Sharks, he would — but that remains to be seen. The reality is that the Penguins are going to ask Marcus Pettersson or newly acquired Ryan Graves to provide defensive cover while Karlsson plies his trade. Both are capable.
But it’s not an A-plus because Karlsson is still making $10 million against the salary cap. The Sharks were never going to fulfill teams’ dreams of eating a large chunk of that contract without significant compensation. To do the work the Penguins wanted to do on this trade — and acquire the player they coveted — they had to take on more of the contract than they probably wanted to take on, even with the salary cap rising in the four years remaining on Karlsson’s contract.
“Kyle was aggressive but Kyle was willing to make some concessions to make this work,” Sharks GM Mike Grier said.
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Erik Karlsson’s best goals from the 2022-23 NHL season
Take a look back at some of Erik Karlsson’s best goals from last season as he gets traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Grier mentioned that there were two teams still in contention for the services of Karlsson when he made the deal Sunday.
One wonders what the other suitor was offering: Was it better than a previously untradable winger in Hoffman, a $5 million AAV boondoggle in Granlund, a 33-year-old defenseman with two years remaining in Rutta and a first-round pick that’s top-10 protected next season?
(Let’s pause to note the irony in Hoffman moving to San Jose in a Karlsson trade. Hoffman was traded by Ottawa to the Sharks in 2018, who immediately traded him to to the Florida Panthers. The reason for the trade at the time: Allegations surfaced that his fianceé had harassed then-Ottawa captain Erik Karlsson’s wife online.)
Look, the Sharks weren’t in a position of strength here at all. Former GM Doug Wilson handed Karlsson a full no-movement clause on his eight-year, $92 million contract in 2019. Grier was limited in where he could realistically trade the star defenseman, as this return would indicate.
But I don’t understand why the Sharks were so steadfast in not retaining more salary on Karlsson. Was there not an option on the table that would bring back more picks or prospects if San Jose retained, say, 25% of Karlsson’s remaining money — $2.875 million annually for the next four seasons, for a rebuilding team? If that wasn’t on the table, why not? Cap space is king. The Sharks have it. Did they not want to retain more on Karlsson than they did for Brent Burns ($2.72 million), who is on the books for two more seasons?
Grier defended the decision. “Clearing that cap space and having the flexibility to make some moves down the line was a key to this deal,” he said, saying that the Sharks wanted to retain as little as possible on Karlsson.
Again, his options were limited, but Grier just traded the current holder of the Norris Trophy for two bad contracts, a defenseman who might fetch a midround pick in the next two seasons and cap flexibility for a team that’s a country mile away from contention in the foreseeable future.
The Canadiens are reacquiring Petry after trading him and forward Ryan Poehling to the Penguins for defenseman Mike Matheson in 2022. Based on their current depth chart, there’s a non-zero chance that Petry and Matheson could be a tandem next season, which is amusing.
Petry’s stock was never lower than when the Canadiens moved him out, following a season in which his point production cratered. At 35 years old, there evidence he’s in decline; at $4,687,500 against the salary cap for the next two seasons, and filling an organizational need for another right-side defenseman, Montreal can live with that.
The Canadiens also cleared out some players from their forward group, which had to happen before next season. They’re not going to miss Pitlick, whose ice time plummeted to 12:55 per game in 46 games last season. They couldn’t give Hoffman away at the trade deadline last season.
DeSmith joins Jake Allen and Sam Montembeault as goaltending options for next season. He’s a decent tandem goalie who goes unrestricted next summer. The second-round pick is a nice value add as well.
In total, the Canadiens added only around $888,000 to their salary cap. That they didn’t have to retain anything on Hoffman is basically a magic trick from GM Kent Hughes.