Penguins could be significant sellers at Trade Deadline
It’s been a disappointing season for the Pittsburgh Penguins, albeit one that does not come as a total surprise.
The Penguins stunned the league last season when they went from a preseason pick to finish last in the East to a clear-cut playoff team by claiming the second-place spot in the Metropolitan Division.
This year, the veteran-laden team has not been able to match last year’s pace. Their 7-10-2 record gives them the second-worst record in the East by points percentage, and it allows president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas to get a jumpstart gauging the market for his available veterans, with players like Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell and Erik Karlsson standing out as particularly enticing for teams in contention.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by Daily Faceoff Managing Editor Matt Larkin to take stock of where Dubas and the Penguins are at in terms of the selling-off process.
Tyler Yaremchuk: THe Pittsburgh Penguins definitely have the ability to kind of control this deadline, don’t they? They’ve got players kind of scattered through a bunch of your tiers, whether it’s the Rust’s or the Rakell’s. Andrei Kuzmenko would be a rental that I’m sure a team like Buffalo who needs power play help might look at a guy like that, and then on the blue line, you’ve got fancy names like Erik Karlsson… Kyle Dubas, he could do himself pretty well when it coems to restocking the cupboards in Pittsburgh if he decides to sell off.
Matt Larkin: 100%. They could be the belle of the ball, and we’ve already heard, it’s already being reported out there, I think it was Elliotte Friedman, that Dubas is sort of starting to have those conversations with his veterans and exploring what they’re willing to do, just because the Penguins, it’s not looking good, right? A lot of people, even at Daily Faceoff, in our predictions, we didn’t really believe in what happened last season. Even when we spoke to Sidney Crosby at the start of the year, and he was even cautious in his optimism after they made the playoffs. I feel like everybody understood that was a little bit of an anomaly. They did get younger. They re-stocked their pipeline a little bit, and I think that’s more the long term goal. So all in all, I think the veteran group, they understand that maybe that was, not a fluke but maybe a fluke last year, and I think a lot of those guys might be open to moving. Bryan Rust, to me, he averages in the last five seasons 70 points, 33 goals I think per 82 games. He has no trade protection on his contract, so to me he might be the most important asset that Dubas can use at forward. And of course, Erik Karlsson. I think Erik Karlsson is someone that would be amenable to a move because he wants to chase that Stanley Cup, and I have the Ottawa Senators circled as a homecoming.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…
