A short time after the news broke of Erik Karlsson officially joining the Pittsburgh Penguins, news surfaced that defenseman Mathew Dumba and the Arizona Coyotes were expected to reach a one-year agreement. Cory Lavalette of the North State Journal thinks that with the Karlsson trade drama wrapped up, this might have unfrozen the slow-moving defenseman market this summer (Tweet Link). Lavalette surmised that the Carolina Hurricanes may now have a better market to move out one of their defensemen.
This view should be taken with a grain of salt, as Lavalette’s initial thought was in response to Elliotte Friedman announcing that the Coyotes and Dumba had come to an agreement. It may very well be true that the trade for Karlsson will lead to more defensemen being traded in the next couple of weeks, but given the vast differences in playstyle, and the unlikelihood that the Coyotes were one of the teams trying to acquire Karlsson, it would be difficult to draw any sort of correlation between these two moves.
However, in defense of Lavalette’s view, the Hurricanes do have a plethora of right-handed shooting defensemen, and with rumors earlier in the offseason indicating the team might be interested in moving on from defenseman Brett Pesce, the other team’s interested in Karlsson could consider Pesce a solid consolation prize. Even though their play styles are not similar, Pesce would largely be an improvement to any team’s right-hand side of their defensive core.
Other notes:
- One of the more surprising aspects of the Karlsson trade this morning was the money retained by the San Jose Sharks in the deal. Most recent reporting indicated that the Sharks and a potential third team would have to retain at least $3.5MM (30.4%) of Karlsson’s contract in total to make the deal financially work for the Penguins. Instead, even though the Montreal Canadiens were involved in the deal as well, the only retention came from the Sharks at $1.5MM (13%) of Karlsson’s $11.5MM salary. A Sharks beat writer, Curtis Pashelka reported that a lot of retention scenarios were on the table, and Mike Grier made a point to get it as low as possible. This reasonably impacted the return for San Jose, but it was a solid part of the deal for the Sharks, nonetheless.
- Also speaking to Grier about the Karlsson trade, Greg Wyshynski of ESPN reports there were actually two other teams down to the wire in the trade negotiations. For weeks now, all signs had pointed to Pittsburgh as the eventual landing spot for Karlsson, with the Hurricanes, Seattle Kraken, and Toronto Maple Leafs having noted interest as well. Grier would not indicate which teams specifically, but it is an interesting factoid at the very least.
We didn’t need as much of Karlsson’s salary retained as expected because we somehow shipped out (except for NMC protected Jeff Carter) ALL of our bad contracts today.
No one expected to be able to shed Granlund AND Petry AND Rutta AND DeSmith. A few of them, sure, but never all of them. Really nice work.
Getting rid of those deals alone was worth the picks. Adding the REIGNING Norris winner is just icing, pretty sweet.
And I see people minimizing the Karlsson acquisition, but…how many teams added a 100 point scorer this off season?
Off the top of my head, I can name one.
Lol yesterday you were saying he is washed up, injury prone, causes more goals than he scores and would be a liability by 2025.
While I agree with your take today (and disagreed yesterday), it’s funny observing how rose tinted your glasses are.
@66TheNumberOfTheBest – PIT added a guy who went off for 101 points last year, but his career average was only 50.77 points per season before that. Last season was such an aberration, that he is far more likely to regress to 50-75 points (maybe at best). Now, that could still be great for the Pens, or semi-meaningless, depending on the contributions from the rest of the roster. It won’t be impossible for him to achieve that again, but the odds are against that repeat performance. I can tell you this, if his D is not up to snuff, though, there is a certain color analyst in the radio broadcast booth that will call him out for it. Ruzy, Heddy and Drew had to do that more than they liked in San Jose, which probably pained them a bit. Karlsson’s a really likeable guy, but he’ll need to play his ass off to earn his keep.
Last yr he had a great offensive season on a team that once Nov came around they were already done.
He played in about Zero meaningful tight games.
101 pts, with only 27 on the PP, was a -26 for the yr, so this means he was also on the ice for 100 goals against!!!!
That’s just horrible D!
Or he didn’t care about D? Both are horrible and his whole career his D game has basically been non existent
@bruin4ever – The one thing we can never tell about a guy who has been stuck on a bad team for a while is how it has affected his mental game. Constant losing can really wear on a player, but his attitude last year seemed to be “Damn the torpedoes, full cookies ahead!” Not many guys today can play the Paul Coffey-esque speed defense game and be a true “+” player. I hope for the Pens’ sake he can have that renaissance, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
Either learn to read or find and quote the post you are talking about because it does not exist.
I’ll wait.
@66TheNumberOfTheBest – Were you aiming this at @DevilShark, or somebody else?
Yep. I’ve been posting near daily about how the Pens should make this deal for almost two months now despite EVIDENTLY “saying he is washed up, injury prone, causes more goals than he scores and would be a liability by 2025.”
How about that.
I’m just happy to see Petry, Granlund, and DeSmith gone.
I don’t expect Karlsson to have a repeat of last year scoring wise but rolling out your top 2 d pairings with Karlsson and Letang then it should be both fun and annoying
All of them gone without a buyout is amazing to me
It’s absolutely dumbfounding. If you are going to waste a retention slot for the next four years you might as well put it to good use and eat more of the contract. especially since cap might be up 10 mil by the end of it.
For this price coyotes should have grabbed him