Who stays? Who gets traded? That matters more than the games this week.
On the ice the Pittsburgh Penguins have three games this week. They will probably not go well. Not only because of the way the Penguins are playing, having won just seven of their past 24 games since the start of the new calendar year, but also because they are going on a three-game road trip against three really good Western Conference playoff teams (Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights, Minnesota Wild).
They will probably not win many of them. Or any of them. If they get more than two points it would be a surprise.
Those results, however, are of secondary importance to the upcoming trade deadline and which players will stay and which players will go.
Even if the Penguins are not screaming the word from the top of PPG Paints Arena, they are very much in a rebuild.
It started when they traded Jake Guentzel a year ago, continued this offseason when they put a priority on acquiring future draft picks and signing one-year stop-gaps, and has continued this season with the trades of pending free agents Lars Eller, Drew O’Connor and Marcus Pettersson.
It will almost certainly continue before Friday’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline.
It is just a question of how much it continues.
The easy answers are forward Anthony Beauvillier and defenseman Matt Grzlecyk. Those two seem like they were signed with the intention of flipping them at the deadline for some sort of mid-round pick, and I imagine there is some value for them.
Gustav Nyquist, who makes more money than Beauvillier and is having a comparable season offensively, just went for a second-round draft pick over the weekend. I don’t know if I’d expect that much here (Beauvillier himself was traded for a fifth-round pick at last year’s deadline) but there should be at least some sort of value.
The bigger questions for the Penguins are going to be players like Erik Karlsson and Rickard Rakell.
Given that both players are under contract for multiple seasons there is no immediate rush or pressure to trade them.
Those contracts also help complicate a potential trade. Especially as it relates to Karlsson and his $10 million salary cap number.
That contract is going to be extremely difficult to move in-season, especially if the Penguins are not really open to the idea of retaining salary on his deal. But as we just saw this weekend with the Seth Jones trade, it’s not an unmovable contract. At least it shouldn’t be.
Jones has been a better player defensively and is a couple of years younger, but his contract — even with $2.5 million retained — runs for three extra years than Karlsson’s and is a huge risk/investment. Even with that, Chicago still managed to get a solid return in Spencer Knight and a first-round pick. That’s more than I would have anticipated Jones going for a year or two ago. Or even at the start of the season.
Karlsson said on Sunday he has not been approached by the Penguins about waiving his no-movement clause, but that he would take a stand if that happens (I am guessing by stand he means dictate where he goes).
Unless the Penguins were willing to eat a significant amount of salary cap space (which they should not do unless they are getting a significantly jazzed up return in terms of draft picks or prospects) there would be a limited number of suitors.
The contenders/playoff teams that have the salary cap space to add him right now would include the Rangers (but they might be sellers), Columbus, Detroit, and Winnipeg.
Florida would have been a logical landing spot until it traded for Jones.
Could Vegas be a spot if it puts Shea Theodore on LTIR?
It seems likely that by the time Karlsson’s contract ends he is playing for another team, it just seems like that might be more of an offseason move than a trade deadline move.
Then there is Rakell.
He is having a career year and is signed for three more years at a reasonable salary cap number ($5 million) if he keeps performing at this level. But that is the big wild card with him. His value might never be higher than it is right now and there is an argument to be made that it might be the time to aggressively shop him to try and land a big return.
But that production and contract also makes him attractive for the Penguins to maybe want to keep. You still have to put a team on the ice, and if you have any dreams of contending for the playoffs while Sidney Crosby is still playing hockey he is going to need people to play alongside him. We know Rakell can.
Of the two big-money players, Rakell seems like the easiest and most likely to move this week, but it would have to take a heck of an offer to get it to happen.
Whatever they decide to do, the roster moves are going to take precedence this week over the play on the ice. Those moves will continue to shape the ongoing rebuild and are far more important than three relatively meaningless regular season games that Penguins fans might actually be hoping they lose anyway for draft lottery odds position.