Who is most to least likely to be traded from the Penguins?
The Penguins are a team in transition, and everyone knows it. The national news is picking up heavily the reports that Pittsburgh is willing to trade players and reset the deck. The process has already started when the Pens dealt Lars Eller for a couple of draft picks last week.
Chris Johnston held an episode of his podcast, fittingly named “Pittsburgh fire sale?”
The Penguins are looking into the situation with clear eyes. I think that Kyle Dubas isn’t kidding himself here about where his team sits…They’ve been getting their butts kicked. I’ll point you to what we saw last year from this team when they were 10 points out of the playoffs with a couple weeks before the deadline, they went out and traded Jake Guentzel.
That being said, I also don’t think they’re gonna start in the next week just trading anything that isn’t nailed to the ground, the truth is that it’s somewhere in the middle. The Penguins have five players with full no movement clauses; (Sidney) Crosby, [Kris] Letang, [Erik] Karlsson, [Evgeni] Malkin and Bryan Rust.
But in the here and now the Penguins do have a number of sort of depth pieces that are on expiring deals, you know someone like Marcus Pettersson on their blue line will be pretty heavily featured on the trade board that comes out.
With that in mind, let’s set up the primer for who could be going soon and why.
Not happening, contractual clauses
Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang, Bryan Rust
As mentioned above, all of these players have full no movement clauses. Pittsburgh has one salary retention spot left, but the chances to thread a very fine needle of trading a player with a ton of time left on his contract, a big cap hit and the player’s own say in the matter is very limited. These types of trades, much like the one that brought Karlsson to Pittsburgh in 2023, are better left for the off-season. They’re too complex with too many moving parts to make a deal while the season is in progress.
Is it possible one or more of these names might not be back for 2025-26? Sure, nothing can be off the table at this point. But none of these players have to go anywhere, and Malkin has recently left no doubts of his desire to stay in Pittsburgh. The ink on Crosby’s contract extension is barely dry. Rust has talked in the past about wanting to keep roots for his young family in the ‘Burgh (though his full no movement expires this July 1).
Not happening, bad contracts
Ryan Graves, Tristan Jarry, Noel Acciari, Kevin Hayes
Granted, there’s a natural caveat that in the NHL technically any contract **can** be tradeable if a team is willing to retain enough money on it, and/or accept an equal or even worse contract in return. But these veterans are not playing that well AND have years left to go, they’re probably not going anywhere anytime soon via a trade . Graves is a replacement level player with a bloated contract, Jarry is going through some serious career turmoil; these players are both signed through 2028 and radioactive to any other NHL team for reasons that should be obvious to anyone that’s watched them play lately.
Acciari might not be in quite the same boat since his contract isn’t as bad as the others (through 2026 at a $2.0 million cap hit) — but remember that the Pens were trying to trade Eller since March and could only now do it. Eller is a far more effective player than Acciari, it might take 12 months or more to shed Acciari until the contract nears its end. Trades can take a long time to facilitate, surely the Pens would move on from Acciari quickly if they could but as the Eller case showed, sometimes that takes a while.
The last two teams who have employed Hayes have paid assets in cap space and/or draft picks to get rid of him. He’s been fine on the ice as a lower-end player for Pittsburgh but he’s not a tradeable entity at this stage of his career and with 1.75 seasons to go with a nearly $3.6 million cap hit.
Unlikely due to contract
Rickard Rakell, Michael Bunting
Rakell has played better this season but his production (6 goals, 11 points in 20 games) is nothing special considering he’s 31 years old and signed through 2028 on a $5 million cap hit. Not many, if any teams are going to be lining up to take on that commitment, there is still a long time to go for a player who is already older than most.
Bunting has started the year out poorly (3 goals, 6 points in 19 games), and other than a hot streak post-trade last spring has been on a downward trend for a while now with a bad turn in Carolina last season after an unimpressive finish in 2022-23 with Toronto. Bunting is still signed for 2025-26 which is restrictive enough to tamp down immediate interest but at least provides more of a “light at the end of the tunnel” than other mid-age players who still have a lot of term to go (Rust, Rakell, Graves, Jarry).
Unlikely due to play
Matt Grzelcyk, Cody Glass, Valtteri Puustinen, Blake Lizotte, Ryan Shea, Matt Nieto
There isn’t a rule that says every veteran on an expiring contract has to be picked up for depth by playoff teams. Grzelcyk played his way out of Boston’s lineup last year and has nothing in Pittsburgh to reverse course to make any good NHL team think he could contribute anything positive to them.
The rest of the list is just kinda meh or been too injured to show much that would inspire another team to trade for them in the near future.
Maybe, sure, why not
Jesse Puljujarvi, Alex Nedeljkovic, Jack St. Ivany
Don’t really see why a contender would be interested in these players, but it could be possible. Puljujarvi (2 goals, 7 points in 17 games) is the most likely graduate down to the next tier if he continues to play well and add more consistency to his game. Nedeljkovic is signed through 2026, has a semi-relevant $2.5 million cap hit and unimpressive (to objectively poor) stats.
But these are the types of player similar to the category above where they might not be playing poorly but simply aren’t going to pop off the screen by other teams where they generate a great deal of trade interest from around the league.
Trade candidates
Marcus Pettersson, Drew O’Connor, Anthony Beauvillier
Every year bottom feeders usually flip about 3-4 pieces at the deadline, and this is the group that will draw the most interest from around the league.
Pettersson has been an analytics darling for years with his rock steady defensive play that needs to be studied for a long period of time to be appreciated for the subtle nuances and aspects he adds to a team. It’s debatable on how much Pittsburgh can get for him in a trade, being as perceived value for defensive defenseman are all over the map, but it should be something decent enough to bring in a few young assets for the future.
O’Connor’s $900k salary on an expiring deal will be very attractive to a playoff team. It would be nice if he picked it up this season (3 goals, 6 points in 20 games) to boost his value. But he’s a player that can be used on many different lines with positional flexibility and great size and speed.
It’s looking like a good move for the Pens to have grabbed Beauvillier (6 goals, 9 points in 20 games) off the scrap heap. He’s on an expiring contract and his $1.25 million cap hit can be absorbed easily enough by the time March rolls around. He’s still young (27) but has NHL playoff experience (55 games) and good enough speed to be a lineup player for most clubs.