Penguins reportedly have ‘few untouchables’ ahead of NHL trade deadline

Some thoughts on the latest Pittsburgh Penguins trade speculation.

Even though the Pittsburgh Penguins are still on the fringes of playoff contention it still seems to be a foregone conclusion on what they are going to do in advance of the March 7 NHL trade deadline.

They are going to sell.

It is just a matter of how much they are going to sell and how aggressive they are going to be.

Marcus Pettersson figures to be gone.

As does Drew O’Connor.

Anthony Beauvillier and Matt Grzelcyk have no real need to be on the roster on March 8. If there is a taker for them, the Penguins should happily drive them to the airport. They will have accomplished their duty and role here.

But will the sell-off go beyond that?

NHL Insider Chris Johnston gave some updates on what he is hearing about the Penguins during this week’s Insider Trading segment on TSN, and it sounds like this could be a pretty active deadline for the Penguins. But not necessarily a total teardown.

A few of the points Johnston made:

• There are very few untouchables on the Penguins roster. Obviously the legacy players, specifically Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, would fit into that “untouchable” category.
• The Penguins are not looking to retain salary on any trades. They only have one salary retention slot available at the moment, and in Johnston’s words they will want to be careful in how they use that. The first two salary retention slots are currently being used on Reilly Smith and Jeff Petry. Both of which will open back up after this season.
• The other key point, and the one that I thought was most interesting, was that the Penguins are looking to acquire young NHL players, perhaps even more than draft picks or prospects.

A few thoughts on all of that.

• If the Penguins are unwilling to retain salary at the deadline that would seem to make an Erik Karlsson trade unlikely, unless they were able to get a third team involved that could funnel money through. The same might even be true for players like Rickard Rakell or Kris Letang (unless he is considered in the legacy player category with Crosby and Malkin). A Karlsson trade still seems like more of an offseason possibility than an in-season move.
• If the Penguins are seeking younger NHL players that might suggest they are very open to trading players with term remaining on their contracts (Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell, Michael Bunting) because I can not envision a scenario in which a team sends a young NHL player out the door for any of the Penguins rentals. At least not a player that is worth acquiring from a Penguins perspective. Pettersson is the only rental with a high value, and while he is a defenseman — and a very good one — I don’t know that he would have the same rental value as, say, Jake Guentzel.
• The Penguins already have 28 draft picks over the next three seasons (a net add of seven over what they would have started with if they had traded zero picks over the years) including 14 in the first three rounds (and seven in the first two rounds). Even though they are reportedly looking for younger players, I still imagine they will add to that draft pick pool to some degree. I also wonder if they plan to use at least some of those picks to flip for other players. They already did that to some degree when they took a flier on Philip Tomasino.
• Basically there are two ways to hit a home run in the draft: Have a top pick and get a franchise-altering player at the top of the draft, or give yourself as many swings as possible in the hopes that one of them connects. The first requires a lot of luck. The second requires just having a lot of assets. The Penguins currently have a lot of draft assets and are in a position to add more. They could probably spare a couple to add some more young players.

Even though it seemed like the Penguins were headed toward selling at the 2024 deadline there was still some uncertainty as to what direction they would actually take. There seems to be no uncertainty this season. It is the first time in probably two decades where, at the mid-season point, we are anticipating being sellers at trade season. It is just a matter of how much they sell and what they can get back for it.