The cost for the Penguins to pull off an Erik Karlsson trade may be too much
Dan Rosen of NHL.com: (mailbag) Don’t see Erik Karlsson ending up with the Pittsburgh Penguins. There are too many factors to go in to making the money work for them. The Penguins are already capped out.
The Penguins could have some salary to move, but why would rebuilding Sharks want to take on those salaries for a few more years. The Sharks want good assets in return and the Penguins don’t really have them.
The Penguins could look to get a third team involved, may be someone to take Jeff Petry‘s two years at $6.25 million, but the Penguins would need to attach a sweetener.
Yes, it’s possible, but all the extra assets and salary work to do it, they likely shouldn’t do it.
The Penguins now have a second buyout window option
Rob Rossi of The Athletic: With Drew O’Connor filing for salary arbitration, it opened up a second buyout window for the Pittsburgh Penguins and could play in an important role of them being able to shed some salary to be able to acquire San Jose Sharks defenseman Erik Karlsson.
It’s not know exactly how much the Sharks would be willing to retain of Karlsson’s $11.5 million cap hit. The Penguins have little cap space.
Mikael Granlund and Jeff Petry would be two buyout candidates. A Petry buyout would save them $3.25 million, then $1.75 million, and the extra cap hits of $1.25 million in years three and four. A Granlund buyout would save them $4,166,667 and then $3,166,667 followed by two years of $1,833,333 cap hits.
Dubas still intrigued about adding Karlsson and another team would need to be involved
Josh Yohe of The Athletic: If the Pittsburgh Penguins were able to acquire Erik Karlsson, the Penguins would have to move Jeff Petry’s contract somehow. Karlsson would improve their power play and would bring the some much needed electricity. Karlsson’s dynamic play would help bring people to the arena, filling some of those empty seats.
Knocks on acquiring him are that he’s 33-years-old and is not good defensively. Well he would be almost three years younger than Petry, who he’d be replacing. Pairing him with a defensive minded defenseman like Marcus Pettersson or Adam Graves would ‘help’ the defensive side.
Sources say that ‘GM’ Kyle Dubas remains intrigued by the idea but it’s not an easy one to pull off. has been told that three teams would need to be involved if the Penguins were to acquire him. Dubas came close on July 1st to making it happen and should keep trying.