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Penguins Notes: Guentzel, Additional Moves, Cap Flexibility

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It appears the Pittsburgh Penguins won’t be getting any long-term injured reserve relief from Jake Guentzel at the beginning of the season after all. Speaking with reporters today in the wake of yesterday’s Erik Karlsson trade, Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas said Guentzel is only expected to miss around the first five games of the season after undergoing ankle surgery last week, which wouldn’t qualify him to start the year on LTIR. LTIR requires players to miss ten games or 24 days with an injury.

After clearing $3.1MM in cap space via yesterday’s massive trade, Pittsburgh wouldn’t have needed Guentzel’s $6MM cap hit on LTIR to start the season to become cap-compliant anyways. It’s good news for Pittsburgh, who now won’t be without their top-line goal-scoring winger as long as previously thought. As they learned the hard way last season, every game will matter for the Penguins to avoid missing the postseason for a second straight campaign.

More from Dubas on the state of the Penguins today:

  • The Penguins are likely done with any major moves, Dubas confirmed, saying, “I think this will be the group,” with training camp six weeks away. It’s been quite an eventful first offseason in Pittsburgh for Dubas, whose forward corps projects to have at least six new faces on opening night – Reilly Smith, Matthew Nieto, Noel Acciari, Lars Eller, Vinnie Hinostroza, and Rem Pitlick, making it a 50% turnover from last season. With virtually no financial flexibility left to exhaust, this isn’t a surprising comment.
  • Dubas also gave some insight into how he’ll manage the salary cap in-season, saying he won’t be afraid to place players on waivers, something he did with frequency during his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He also confirmed Pittsburgh is on track to carry one player short of the maximum 23-man roster and will just have one extra forward and one extra defenseman on the roster for opening night. Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Travis Boyd, Michael Amadio, and Adam Brooks are some notable players Dubas lost on waivers recently with Toronto.

Karlsson Notes: Defense Market, Money Retention, Interested Teams

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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.

Pittsburgh Penguins Acquire Erik Karlsson In Three-Team Deal

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The Erik Karlsson trade saga is finally over. The Pittsburgh Penguins have acquired the 2023 Norris Trophy winner from the San Jose Sharks, according to Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports the Montreal Canadiens are involved in the trade to aid in salary considerations. Pittsburgh later officially announced the massive deal, which includes 12 parts and breaks down as follows:

PIT receives: D Erik Karlsson, F Rem Pitlick, F Dillion Hamaliuk, 2026 third-round pick (SJS)
SJS receives: 2024 first-round pick (PIT, top-ten protected), F Mikael Granlund, D Jan Rutta, F Mike Hoffman
MTL receives: 2025 second-round pick (PIT), D Jeff Petry, G Casey DeSmith, F Nathan Legare

San Jose is retaining $1.5MM of Karlsson’s $11.5MM cap hit through 2026-27. Montreal is retaining no salary on Karlsson in this trade, meaning the Penguins have Karlsson at a massive $10MM cap hit for four more seasons. Pittsburgh also retains $1.5625MM, or 25%, of Petry’s cap hit. Montreal will have him at a cap hit of $4.6875MM through 2025.

Sportsnet’s Eric Engels also believes Montreal is not Petry’s final destination. The Canadiens are likely to flip their former number-one defenseman before next season starts, potentially retaining up to 50 percent on his already reduced cap hit, making him cost just $2.34MM against the cap for his new team.

Pittsburgh has a net cap hit loss of $3.1MM in this trade, per CapFriendly. By doing so, they’ll likely be able to activate Jake Guentzel and his $6MM cap hit from LTIR when he’s ready to return to the ice in November without making any corresponding moves. CapFriendly projected Pittsburgh with $2.75MM in cap space, with Guentzel on LTIR to start the season.

Karlsson, 33, ended an up-and-down five-year stint with the Sharks on a high note. Despite playing on a bottom-five team in the league, Karlsson’s 101 points in 82 games were the most from a defenseman in a single season since Brian Leetch in 1991-92. Once viewed as the best defenseman in the NHL during his time with the Ottawa Senators in the mid-2010s, the Sharks acquired him in a blockbuster deal in 2018 and later extended him on a massive eight-year, $92MM contract, giving him the highest cap hit in the league among defensemen.

However, it was a decision that failed to pan out the way San Jose envisioned, as Karlsson struggled with injuries during most of his time in California. To make matters worse, the team around him also crumbled as the Sharks fell out of yearly playoff contention for the first time this millennium.

Pittsburgh hopes Karlsson’s turnaround last season has given him renewed confidence heading into the latter half of his contract – assuming his recent injury history doesn’t come back to bite him. 2022-23 was the first time Karlsson had played in 70-plus games since 2017-18, his last season with the Senators.

Many will be concerned with Karlsson’s defensive misgivings, but some slightly reduced ice time in Pittsburgh should lessen his negative impact on the team’s goals-against total. Likely to slot in on the team’s second pairing behind Kris Letang, Karlsson should be paired with either Marcus Pettersson or free-agent acquisition Ryan Graves on the left side, both players with strong defensive reputations. Advanced metrics peg Pettersson near the top of the league in terms of his individual even strength defensive impact.

Pitlick could be an under-the-radar add for Pittsburgh in this deal from Montreal. While he’s far from being a long-term fixture, he is on the younger side (in Pittsburgh, at least) at 26 years old and will add some higher-upside depth scoring to a Penguins lineup that needs it, especially with Guentzel on the shelf to start the year. In 2021-22, Pitlick notched 15 goals, 22 assists and 37 points in 66 games split between the Canadiens and Minnesota Wild. He’s struggled to develop an all-around game at the NHL level, though, and he’s more of a finishing and playmaking specialist than anything else. His overall play-driving impacts are poor, and it led to Montreal stashing him in the minors for a fair bit of last season. There, he registered 22 points in 18 games with the AHL’s Laval Rocket.

Hamaliuk, 22, once had a fair bit of upside – after all, San Jose thought he warranted a second-round selection in the 2019 NHL Draft. Injuries and middling performance since turning pro have wiped out nearly all of his stock, though. He played in just six games last season, all in the ECHL with the Wichita Thunder, although he did look good in limited action with seven points. The Penguins will likely watch him closely in the minors with the AHL’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins next season to see if he can recapture some of his former potential.

For the Sharks, trading Karlsson while only retaining $1.5MM is a solid bit of work for general manager Mike Grier. However, the return is rather underwhelming – a likely mid-first-round pick and a trio of depth NHL assets that won’t amount to much value for a rebuilding team. They’ve essentially taken on two bad contracts and a depth defender to rid themselves of long-term financial pain, as despite his elite skill, Karlsson absolutely did not factor into the franchise’s long-term plans post-rebuild.

The trade does provide a fresh start for Granlund, a former top-six fixture who struggled mightily after heading to the Penguins from the Nashville Predators at last year’s trade deadline (just five points in 21 games). He is just one campaign removed from a 64-point season, however, and although his possession metrics are quite poor, he does still carry a fair amount of raw skill that could see him once again elevate into a top-six role on a weak Sharks team, potentially playing alongside Alexander Barabanov and Logan Couture. With two seasons left at a $5MM cap hit, the Sharks could look to flip him at the 2024 trade deadline if he has a strong season, likely with significant salary retention. However, as CapFriendly notes, San Jose has just one of their three salary retention slots remaining for the next two seasons after also retaining salary on Brent Burns when they traded him to the Carolina Hurricanes last summer. In total, the Sharks are left with $7.745MM in dead cap space this year after the two salary retentions, plus the buyouts of goalie Martin Jones and forward Rudolfs Balcers.

Rutta is under contract at $2.75MM for two more seasons, and he’ll likely give the Sharks a fair amount of value. The two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Tampa Bay Lightning could very well step into a top-four role for the Sharks, who will likely roll three pairings by committee this season in the absence of a clear number-one defender. Rutta recorded nine points in 56 games for the Penguins last season, his only season in the Steel City while averaging 17:07 of ice time per game. Pittsburgh signed the 33-year-old to a three-year, $8.25MM contract in free agency last summer.

Clearing Hoffman’s $4.5MM cap hit for this season off the books is a solid bit of business for the Canadiens, who were rumored to be considering waiving Hoffman ahead of next season and assigning him to the AHL’s Laval Rocket. There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to escape the same fate with San Jose, however. The Sharks will undoubtedly prioritize roster spots for younger wingers like William Eklund, Filip Zadina and Fabian Zetterlund, leaving Hoffman without a clear place among the Sharks’ top 12 forwards. Now 33, Hoffman did manage 14 goals and 34 points in 67 games for Montreal last year, but he ranks among the worst play-driving forwards in the league and is solely a power-play specialist at this stage in his career. Some will remember this is technically Hoffman’s second stint as a member of the Sharks organization – San Jose acquired him from Ottawa for a few hours in 2018 before flipping him to the Florida Panthers.

Now, moving on to Montreal, who became an unexpected major player in this deal. Petry may not remain with his former team, as mentioned earlier, and DeSmith may not either. He’s a puzzling addition for a team that already has Sam Montembeault and Jake Allen manning the crease, although Pittsburgh did need to move out a goalie after signing Alex Nedeljkovic in free agency, giving them three NHL goalies on their roster. However, Montreal now faces the same predicament, and DeSmith is unlikely to supersede Allen or Montembeault on the team’s depth chart. If they don’t flip him to another team looking for a backup netminder, DeSmith could be waived to start the season and end up with Laval. He started a career-high 33 games for Pittsburgh last season, and the 31-year-old recorded a 15-16-4 record, .905 save percentage, and no shutouts.

Legare is a depth addition who will suit up for Laval next season. The 22-year-old third-round pick of the Penguins in 2019 is still finding his footing in the minors. Last season, he posted eight goals, 11 assists and 19 points in 68 games with AHL Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Penguins, Sharks Getting Closer To Erik Karlsson Trade

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With the window for the Pittsburgh Penguins to clear cap space via a buyout closing today, rumors around the team closing a deal that would bring all-world defenseman Erik Karlsson to Pennsylvania are continuing to heat up. The team is making a “legit attempt” to get a trade done today, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet says. Friedman expects a third team to be involved in the transaction to help facilitate any salary cap issues.

During a TV appearance on NHL Network earlier this week, Friedman said that “clarity” could come on a Karlsson trade as soon as this weekend. Considering the general reporting on Karlsson has focused significantly on the Penguins over the past few weeks, it’s beginning to seem like an eventuality that a deal will get done, even if the teams involved can’t iron out all the details today. Karlsson acknowledged that the Seattle Kraken and Toronto Maple Leafs were also in trade talks with San Jose last month. At the same time, the Carolina Hurricanes were widely believed to be in discussions to acquire this year’s Norris Trophy winner.

However, there’s still no indication of what the final trade will look like. Undoubtedly, it’ll become quite a complex deal with multiple salary cap-related maneuvers necessary. Even with winger Jake Guentzel projected to start the season on LTIR, CapFriendly projects the Penguins with just over $2.75MM in cap space, making it a tight fit for Pittsburgh even if they buy out Mikael Granlund today or move him to the Sharks in the final trade. San Jose has expressed unwillingness to retain significant salary in the deal, meaning Pittsburgh will likely have to pay an extra draft pick to a third team to retain additional cash, as Friedman alluded to today. The Penguins will also need to find the cap room to activate Guentzel about a month into the season when he’s slated to return.

Acquiring Karlsson would, at the moment, give Pittsburgh one of the most offensively potent right-side defenses in the league with Karlsson, Kris Letang and Jeff Petry. Petry is not expected to be involved in the pending trade, with previous reports indicating the Sharks are on his 15-team no-trade list. It’ll also be one of the most expensive right sides in the league, with Letang and Petry already costing a combined $12.35MM against the cap.

As a reminder, Karlsson is under contract for four more seasons at an $11.5MM cap hit. The Sharks and a third team are expected to retain at least a combined $3.5MM to bring Karlsson’s cap hit in Pittsburgh down to $8MM or less.

Pittsburgh Penguins' Second Buyout Window Closes Today

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  • After settling their final arbitration cases with Drew O’Connor and Troy Terry, the second buyout window this offseason for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Anaheim Ducks closes today, respectively. While the Ducks are extremely unlikely to utilize a buyout at this point in the offseason, Pittsburgh will be a team to watch today. As covered at length this week, the team’s salary cap situation is being kept a close eye on by almost everyone as the team closes in on trying to acquire defenseman Erik Karlsson from the San Jose Sharks. Their most likely buyout candidate is 2023 trade deadline acquisition Mikael Granlund, who’s locked in for this season and next at a $5MM cap hit and had just five points in 21 games with Pittsburgh after arriving from the Nashville Predators. Per CapFriendly, a Granlund buyout would provide the Penguins with over $4.1MM in savings this season.

Pittsburgh Penguins Add Cam Charron To Front Office

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  • The Pittsburgh Penguins have brought in Cam Charron as a hockey research and development analyst, according to the team’s staff listing on their website. It’s yet another add for the Penguins from general manager Kyle Dubas’ former regime in Toronto, where Charron served as an analyst from 2014 to 2022. Based in Vancouver, Charron took his year off last season to enter the media sphere, serving as a contributor for The Athletic.

Poll: Will The Penguins Utilize Their Second Buyout Window?

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As a result of the pre-arbitration settlement with Drew O’Connor earlier this week, the Penguins now have a 48-hour window that began today to buy a player out.  Unlike the regular buyout window, however, there are some additional restrictions on who can be bought out during this stretch.  The player must have a cap hit of at least $4MM and must have been on the roster at the trade deadline.

There is one obvious candidate to go this route in forward Mikael Granlund, who was a speculative buyout option back in June.  The 31-year-old was acquired from Nashville at the trade deadline in somewhat of a surprising move and he struggled with his new team, notching just one goal in 21 games following the swap.  That’s not the type of return they were expecting on someone that has a $5MM cap charge for two more seasons.

It’s not that Granlund is a bad player by any stretch – he’s coming off a 44-point year and had 64 points in 2021-22 but this is not a marketplace for a team to trade a player on an expensive contract and get fair value.  If GM Kyle Dubas doesn’t want to pay future assets to get a team to take on Granlund’s deal and has an eye on completing an Erik Karlsson trade with San Jose, a buyout would be one way to create cap space.

Next season, Granlund’s cap hit would go down to just $833K, yielding more than $4MM in short-term savings.  That amount jumps to $1.833MM for the following three seasons, however.  But if making that move helps acquire Karlsson, it’s an option to consider.

There is also one other speculative candidate for a buyout and that’s Jeff Petry.  The defenseman is widely expected to be traded as part of any potential Karlsson swap but he also holds a 15-team no-trade clause which certainly is a complicating factor.  If none of the teams that aren’t on his no-trade list are interested in picking him up, Pittsburgh might be forced to buy Petry out and then use Granlund as the offsetting salary ballast in a swap.

That route doesn’t yield as much in the way of savings, however, with the veteran having signing bonus money in both remaining years of his deal, one that carries a $6.25MM AAV.  That cap charge would drop to $3MM next season with a buyout before increasing to $4.5MM in 2024-25 so the savings aren’t as significant.  (The Penguins would then carry a $1.25MM charge for 2025-26 and 2026-27.)

It’s worth noting that Pittsburgh will have some short-term flexibility at the start of next season thanks to Jake Guentzel’s ankle surgery that will keep him out for the next three months, making him LTIR-eligible.  But in order to activate him midseason, they’ll need to be cap-compliant.  Accordingly, they can’t really use any of his money to offset Karlsson’s cost, whatever portion of the $11.5MM they’d be taking on.

Dubas has been hesitant to go the buyout route in the past but this is a bit of a different situation now.  The team has 48 hours to make a decision and if going this way helps to facilitate the acquisition of Karlsson, it’s one they’ll strongly have to consider if the trade options either aren’t there or are too punitive in terms of what it would cost to get a team to take on the deal.

What will the Penguins do?  Make your prediction by voting below.

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Crafting A Hypothetical Erik Karlsson Trade To Penguins

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Earlier today, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported that some “clarity” is expected on the Erik Karlsson trade speculation by this upcoming weekend. It will end just over two months of heavy trade speculation, and all signs point to Karlsson heading East to join the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In other news from Pittsburgh this morning, even though it is never a positive for a player to get injured, strictly speaking financially, the Penguins will open up $6MM in cap space due to forward Jake Guentzel’s ankle surgery, landing him on LTIR to begin the regular season. Once Guentzel is put on LTIR at the beginning of the season, Pittsburgh will have just under $2.8MM in salary cap wiggle room.

Now, with any hypothetical Karlsson trade, a significant hurdle to jump will be how much the San Josh Sharks are willing to retain on his contract. It’s been reported multiple times that the Sharks seem willing to retain 30% of his contract, which would knock Karlsson’s salary down to $8MM over the next four seasons. Keeping this in mind, the Penguins would only need to send around $5.25MM back to the Sharks, if and only if they are not seeking any additional cap space.

The most obvious choice would be to move Jeff Petry’s $6.25MM contract back the other way to San Jose, but with a 15-team no-trade list included in his contract, it would be reasonable to assume the Sharks would be on that list, and the likelihood of Petry accepting a deal to San Jose would be slim. In fact, most of the contracts that the Penguins would want to remove from their roster, have very hefty no-movement clauses, complicating any potential trade in the near future.

However, there is one player who would meet the criteria and was even rumored to be headed toward a buyout in mid-June. That player would be Mikael Granlund, acquired from the Nashville Predators at last year’s trade deadline, and currently sporting a $5MM salary for the next two seasons. Throw in defenseman Jan Rutta and his $2.75MM, also creating an opening on the right-hand side of their blue line, and all of the salary intangibles are worked out.

In terms of which prospects and draft capital should be expected to head back to San Jose, let’s consider General Manager Mike Grier’s first high-profile trade, moving Timo Meier to the New Jersey Devils at last season’s trade deadline. In that deal, the Sharks acquired a salary filler in Andreas Johnsson, a young NHL-ready talent in Fabian Zetterlund, two prospects in Nikita Okhotyuk and Shakir Mukhamadullin, as well as a first and second-round pick.

Given this context, it would be reasonable to assume that Karlsson will command a similar package to Meier, and the Penguins should have the necessary parts to make this happen. The salary fillers are already worked out in Granlund and Rutta, and defenseman Ty Smith seems exactly the type of young NHL-ready talent the Sharks would be pursuing in a package like this. Not too long ago, Smith was projected as one of the better prospects in New Jersey’s system, but ever since coming over in a trade to Pittsburgh, the Penguins just have not been able to give him the amount of ice time that is conducive with his growth.

For prospects, it is going to be very difficult for San Jose to poach away any of Brayden Yager, Owen Pickering, or Joel Blomqvist from the Penguins farm system, but there is another talent that should suffice. Forward Tristan Broz as well as forward Valtteri Puustinen seem like the best choices outside of those top three. Broz is a second-round pick of the Penguins from the 2021 NHL Draft, and he recently wrapped up a 28-point campaign with the University of Denver in the NCAA. Puustinen, on the other hand, is a bit closer to NHL-ready than Broz, scoring 59 points in 72 games in the AHL as a 24-year-old.

Pittsburgh is also in possession of most of its draft picks for the next several seasons, and given the Sharks’ projected draft capital for the foreseeable future, might target top picks during the 2025 or 2026 NHL Draft. In all realism, the Sharks will likely want Pittsburgh’s 2025 first-round pick, as well as a conditional second-round pick in 2026, crafting those conditions in a way where the pick could be upgraded to a first.

And there you have it. The hypothetical trade in its entirety would be the Penguins acquiring Karlsson (30% retained), while the Sharks would acquire, Granlund, Rutta, Smith, Broz, Puustinen, a first-round pick in 2025, as well as a conditional second-round pick in 2026. In any manner, we should know in a few short days what the Karlsson trade package will look like in its entirety.

“Clarity” On Erik Karlsson Trade Could Come This Weekend

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The Pittsburgh Penguins could finally be inching closer to landing defenseman Erik Karlsson with a second buyout window opening for the team this weekend. The pursuit of Karlsson by the Penguins, Carolina Hurricanes and others has been a dominant storyline for the past two months, and now there’s a sense that some clarity might be on the horizon, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said on NHL Network yesterday.

Now armed with some additional salary cap flexibility thanks to Jake Guentzel’s ankle injury that should place him on LTIR for the first month of the season, the Penguins have more dice to roll in regard to a Karlsson deal. The team could also free up more space through that second buyout window, using one on someone like Mikael Granlund, who’s locked in at a $5MM AAV for two more seasons. It would be a change in pace for GM Kyle Dubas, though, who’s expressed publically he’s hesitant to go the buyout route. As GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, he offloaded a first-round pick for the Carolina Hurricanes to take and buy out the final season of Patrick Marleau’s contract in 2019.

That being said, there aren’t a whole lot of other options for the Penguins to free up enough space to make a deal unless the Sharks are willing to take on a bad contract or two in return. The latter is unlikely, given they’re undoubtedly going to retain more salary than they’re comfortable with to facilitate a Karlsson trade. With Friedman hearing there’s increased activity this week on the Penguins/Karlsson train, it’s not hard to connect the dots on Dubas’ potential cap-clearing plans.

While the list of teams connected to Karlsson is largely public knowledge at this point, what a potential deal could look like isn’t. It’s been reported multiple times that San Jose will likely have to retain at least $3.5MM of Karlsson’s $11MM cap hit for four more seasons to move him out, but other than that, it’s anyone’s guess as to what amount of roster players, picks, and prospects it’ll take to win a bidding war for last year’s Norris Trophy winner.

Speculatively, one player who could head to San Jose is 23-year-old defenseman Ty Smith. The 2018 17th-overall pick burst onto the scene with 23 points in just 48 games during his rookie season with the New Jersey Devils in 2020-21, but he struggled heavily on the defensive end of things the following season and was traded to Pittsburgh in 2022. He spent most of last season in the minors, only skating nine games with the Penguins, but he’ll need waivers to return there next season if he can’t find a spot in the NHL lineup. On a team with paper-thin defensive depth such as San Jose, he’d likely immediately factor in as a top-four threat.

It’s worth noting that Pittsburgh also has all six of their first- and second-round picks in the next three drafts.

Jake Guentzel Out Three Months After Ankle Surgery

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Pittsburgh Penguins winger Jake Guentzel underwent successful surgery on Wednesday to repair a lingering right ankle issue, general manager Kyle Dubas said in a statement today. The 2017 Stanley Cup champion will be re-evaluated in 12 weeks, meaning he’ll miss around the first month of the 2023-24 season.

Guentzel underwent his surgery in Minnesota, where he’d been playing summer-league hockey up until the procedure. Dubas said as Guentzel was ramping up preparation for training camp, “it was apparent that his ankle injury was not resolving in a way that was satisfactory to [him] or the Penguins.”

Financially, this is quite an important move for Pittsburgh. Guentzel’s timetable for a return means his $6MM cap hit is a candidate for LTIR to start the season, which would give the Penguins some more offseason cap flexibility as they try and position themselves to acquire top-flight defender Erik Karlsson from the San Jose Sharks.

Regardless of any potential ulterior motives at play, Guentzel is a two-time 40-goal scorer whose presence is invaluable for a team likely to be stuck in a tight Eastern Conference playoff race. Pittsburgh surely has no plans of missing the playoffs for a second straight year, and they’ll need Guentzel’s best after he returns from injury to stay ahead. In the meantime, they’ll rely on veteran addition Reilly Smith, a member of last year’s Stanley Cup-winning team with the Vegas Golden Knights, to shoulder some of Guentzel’s load. He’s the most likely candidate to slide up to first-line duties alongside Sidney Crosby and one of Rickard Rakell or Bryan Rust.

Guentzel has become synonymous with first-line duties on the Penguins throughout his seven-year career there, stapled to Crosby’s wing for much of his NHL time. He’s averaged over 20 minutes per game over the past four seasons, routinely producing around a point-per-game clip since breaking out for 40 goals and 76 points in 2018-19.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Guentzel will miss a significant chunk of a season for injury-related reasons. He missed the last 30 games of the 2019-20 campaign thanks to a shoulder injury.

Notably, Guentzel’s injury guarantees them cap compliance to start the season, even if a Karlsson trade doesn’t pan out. The Penguins were more than $3MM over the cap after signing Drew O’Connor earlier this week, even if it was a slightly inflated figure thanks to three goalies currently on their NHL roster. Now, with Guentzel projected to land on LTIR to start the season, CapFriendly projects Pittsburgh to have roughly $2.75MM in space.

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