It’s not very often that the NHL has three-team trades. While the NBA make trades like this as though it were monopoly and assets aren’t real, their hockey counterparts tend to hold fiercely to their draft, prospect, and cap space capital as if it were the rarest gems the world have mined.
But you see, Erik Karlsson is not just any player.
So it makes sense that to acquire him, the Pittsburgh Penguins had to pull of a rare three-team trade. Pittsburgh, lacking the needed cap space and desired player pieces to make a straight trade with the San Jose Sharks work, enlisted the Montreal Canadiens as a sort of trade broker. Here’s how the complicated trade breaks down from each team’s side:
With as many moving parts as there were here, it’s really no wonder that Karlsson wasn’t moved until August. It had been rumored for months that San Jose was looking to trade the blueliner for some time, but with a cap hit of $11.5 million in the COVID-19-flattened-cap era, not just any team could make a trade to fit him in. Even in this trade, some cap hit retention by the teams involved was utilized to make the numbers work — San Jose retained $1.5 million of Karlsson’s contract and the Penguins retained 25 percent of Petry’s cap hit ($1.56 million).
Now that the dust has settled, let’s look at the impact of Karlsson on the Penguins for this year and beyond.
SALARY CAP IMPLICATIONS
With all of the moves Pittsburgh made this offseason, the ever-useful CapFriendly shows the team with 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 2 goaltenders signed for the year with a cap overage of about $80,000. That can easily be made up by daily cap gymnastics in-season, with guys called up and sent down to the AHL during the season on non-game days to help save on the daily cap hit accrual that occurs over the course of the year. (The salary cap isn’t as straight forward as “guys signed for x dollars means y in space when totaled together”…there’s a reason most front offices have an employee dedicated just to the salary cap, as it’s a balancing act every day in the season.)
Though it’s not a fun way to solve the issue off the bat, the team could get a little bit of relief due to Jake Guentzel’s injury. Earlier in August, the team announced that the forward had successful ankle surgery and was expected to miss at least 12 weeks. That puts his return to play likely at the end of October or even early November, with the forward potentially missing up to the first 8-10 regular season games, depending on how his recovery goes.
To get cap compliant without make a single move on the roster, the Penguins could decide to place Guentzel on opening-season long-term injured reserve. They’ll be able to also then call up another forward for injury insurance to the rest of the roster. There’s downside to going that route, though. Starting the season using LTIR means the team won’t start accumulating cap space, so moves made later in the season could be complicated without sending salary out. The other biggest disadvantage to using LTIR to get cap compliant would be that performance bonuses are automatically carried over to the next season’s cap, reducing the ability of the team to make moves next summer to account for those overage carry overs.
The easier thing to do would be to try to get through that first month without having to dip into LTIR, so expect a lot of AHL transactions for fringe roster players through that first month of the season.
BLUELINE DEPTH IMPLICATIONS
Most assume that Karlsson will be the anchor of the second pairing, with Kris Letang firmly established as the number one guy in Pittsburgh already. That’s a solid 1-2 punch for the Penguins now, and also sets them up if Letang has another injury scare like he did last year — he had a stroke for the second time in his career on Nov. 28. With two puck-moving defensemen on the top pairings, the Penguins appear a little deeper and a little more mobile this season. Here’s what the potential depth chart could look like this season:
Ryan Graves — Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson — Erik Karlsson
Pierre-Olivier Joseph — Chad Ruhwedel
Ty Smith
Of course, those pairings could change up depending on how the players mesh during training camp. But regardless of how the pairings ultimately shake out to, this looks like a better overall blueline than last year when the Penguins missed the playoffs by just two points.
THIS SEASON’S OUTLOOK
It seems pretty clear that the Penguins front office is trying to make a last push to be Stanley Cup contenders with the aging core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang. Bringing in someone of Karlsson’s caliber sends the message to the locker room that the front office isn’t afraid to make aggressive moves to give them that chance.
Looking at the teams around them in the Eastern Conference, the addition of Karlsson should absolutely improve the likelihood that the Penguins make the playoffs this year. The New York Islanders haven’t made significant improvements, the Washington Capitals appear to be on the decline, and given how their seasons went last year, it’s hard to envision the Philadelphia Flyers or Columbus Blue Jackets making such huge strides as to challenge for a playoff spot this year.
In the division, it seems likely that the Carolina Hurricanes and New Jersey Devils will duke it out for the top two in the Atlantic Division, and it feels like the addition of Karlsson could catapult the Penguins into a fight for third in the division with the New York Rangers. That seems to be the floor for this season’s expectations.
And the playoffs last year continue to reinforce the idea teams have of “just make the playoffs and anything can happen.” Nobody saw the Florida Panthers’ run to the Stanley Cup Final before the playoffs started.
Maybe Pittsburgh can be a stealthy playoff contender this season, too.