Before going to bed Saturday night, I set an earlier-than-usual alarm on my iPad for the next morning. Instead of the go-to wakeup song, “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones, I opted for “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” a song Kris Kristofferson sold to Johnny Cash, who turned it into a No. 1 hit on the Billboard charts in the 1960s.
This is no humble brag to suggest I knew something everybody didn’t. Instead, I was playing a somewhat-informed hunch.
Then the Pittsburgh Penguins finally landed Erik Karlsson, as general manager Kyle Dubas had wanted to for well over a month — long-awaited music to most everybody’s ears.
The three-way trade among the Penguins, San Jose Sharks and Montreal Canadiens ended up every bit as complicated as The Athletic heard it would be way back at the NHL Draft in Nashville. However, at the risk of oversimplifying, the view from here is that Dubas added a reigning (and three-time) Norris Trophy defenseman, Karlsson, and moved on from Jeff Petry, Jan Rutta, Mikael Granlund and Casey DeSmith — four players from previous regimes, all of whom contributed (by not contributing at anywhere near reasonable expectations) to the worst of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin’s 17 seasons together in Pittsburgh.
Add a future Hall-of-Fame defenseman who is a near-ideal fit with coach Mike Sullivan’s system. Subtract two defensemen and a forward who weren’t, and a backup goalie who became expendable because of a free-agency replacement.
Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Penguins, is not three full months from a major commitment to Dubas — $5 million each of seven years, including the use of a private jet for family travel — and already all of it is money well spent.
Dubas didn’t need to use a buyout. He didn’t need to wipe out a weak prospect pool. He did give up a first-round pick (2024), but it’s top-10 protected.
Kristofferson is said to have sold “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” to Cash for only $50. It’s not a perfect analogy, but Dubas has paid a similar paltry sum for a potentially massive hit.
Technically, this was his first move as GM. He was hired in June as president of hockey operations and served as interim GM before taking on the job without the interim tag only a few days before finalizing this three-way deal.
Dubas came to Pittsburgh with reputable talent.
Turns out he’s a tad theatrical, too. Maybe that’s why he likes professional wrestling — the theater of it all?
The Penguins’ interest in Karlsson was no open secret. Dubas publicly affirmed his interest midway through the opening day of free agency in July. Since, though, he was quite successful in preventing leaks about details of discussions with the Sharks and/or other teams, and particulars weren’t reported — first by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman — until mere minutes before the Penguins announced the full deal on social media.
Oh, there was a build to the main event. Mostly, it was organic, as fans of the Penguins, Sharks, Carolina Hurricanes, Toronto Maple Leafs and Seattle Kraken took turns devouring all the speculative machinations of a potential deal and even whether their team adding Karlsson was worthwhile. This lasted for a full month without on-the-record comments much beyond Dubas saying on July 1, essentially, the Penguins were and would continue to be interested in Karlsson.
Aside from his confirmation and Karlsson speaking to a Swedish reporter and offering he A) wouldn’t play for the Sharks, and B) had spoken with the Penguins, Hurricanes, Maple Leafs and Kraken (“and a few other teams”), interest in the so-called Karlsson Watch was driven largely by people not involved talking about it.
In fact, a cursory check of social media sites hinted that even those people were growing tired of the whole thing. Fans of at least the Penguins and Sharks posted something along the lines of “hope this ends, sick of it” for at least the past week.
Then the week that began, for the Penguins, with hockey ops assignments, including an arbitration settlement, and ended with the out-of-nowhere development that was Jake Guentzel’s ankle surgery. The same week gave way to a weekend that didn’t feature a buy-out of Granlund’s troublesome contract and instead, the spectacle that is this three-way trade for Karlsson.
Like the deal itself, the days leading up to it were … a lot.
Actually, it might take a songwriter as gifted as Kristoffersson to craft all of what happened into a coherent narrative. He’d be doing so without full details; the how and why figure to emerge in days ahead. Still, he would know the what and when — and, really, aren’t most hit songs built upon those aspects, anyway?
Enough with the (admittedly dated) pop-culture references. It’s time to talk hockey.
Karlsson, despite his historic 2022-23 season, isn’t the best defenseman in hockey. That honor belongs to Cale Makar, and there is no shortage of other defensemen another GM might prefer over Karlsson. Not without reason, either:
- At its best, Karlsson’s own-zone defending is passable.
- At his worst, Karlsson is a liability with regard to defending.
- By NHL standards, his cap hit — which, for the Penguins, is $10 million because the Sharks retained $1.5 million in the trade — is way high for a 33-year-old player with injury history.
- He’s spent well over a decade as a No. 1 defenseman, playing top minutes and running the top power play; when he didn’t, when the Sharks had him and Brent Burns, Karlsson wasn’t, well, Karlsson-esque.
Dubas surely studied the good, bad and ugly of Karlsson joining the Penguins. He clearly was comfortable enough with all the possible pratfalls of doing the deal before making it.
He presumably ran by Kris Letang his vision for Karlsson on the Penguins, and if he didn’t, he should have. Letang has earned such special treatment; not because he is the Penguins’ longtime No. 1 defenseman, but also because of the respect Letang commands with teammates, throughout the organization and — no use in sugarcoating it — large swaths of the hockey landscape. Last season was hell for Letang, whose career arc is basically begging for a “30 for 30” documentary from ESPN.
Some in the media have speculated Letang won’t be on board with Karlsson playing for the Penguins. They’ve opined he won’t welcome another all-time defenseman or he will scoff if Karlsson quarterbacks the power play, among other laughable predictions.
I’ve covered Letang since he first attended a prospects camp in 2005. He barely spoke English at the time. However many years later, he’s proven himself time and again as a family-above-all, team-first, loyalist to the Penguins.
While offering no prediction on what will and won’t happen to the Penguins now that Karlsson is theirs, I am overwhelmingly confident he’ll be welcomed by Letang. It’s not just that Letang has grown into perhaps the most relatable of the Big Three for all Penguins players, but also that Letang’s only concern — and it’s been this way for at least a decade — is winning.
During the cap era, winning for the Penguins has meant only one thing: the Stanley Cup.
The Penguins have won it three times over the past 18 seasons. They’ve also not won a playoff series since 2018, and their 16-year run as a postseason participant ended this past spring.
All of their most important people — FSG’s John Henry and Tom Werner, business president Kevin Acklin, and Dubas — are driven by, if not desperate to, maximize the opportunities remaining for a special foursome (Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Sullivan). There aren’t many, and more than a few smart hockey folks don’t think there are any.
We’ll see.
Still, it’s hard to see how Karlsson doesn’t move them closer to that goal. He’s the NHL’s greatest offensive-defenseman since Paul Coffey, which is saying something, especially in Pittsburgh. He’s a threat to create scoring chances every second he’s on the ice. There is nobody better at running a power play — and Letang knows it, so don’t be surprised when he accepts a different role, perhaps in Phil Kessel’s old spot on the opposite side of where Crosby and Malkin roam.
A potential second defense pairing of Karlsson and Marcus Pettersson, whom Dubas never was keen to trade, would make it so that Karlsson’s a regular on the ice with Malkin. That matters a lot more with Malkin likely to temporarily lose another Dubas trade acquisition, Reilly Smith, to Crosby’s top line that will go on without Guentzel for at least the opening month (and probably longer). Plus, if there is any injury to Letang, the Penguins have another top defenseman to hold down the fort.
Last, but not least: Karlsson goes a long way toward making up for the likely lost offensive production that comes from Guentzel’s absence. Indeed, he’s that type of prodigious scorer from the backend, a defenseman who — as Coffey did in the late 1980s and early 1990s for the Penguins — turns carrying the puck out of the defensive zone into a scoring chance by keeping it himself, dishing it, and/or both. He’s an elite point producer and an upper-end goal-scorer among those at his position.
It would be folly to argue any defenseman can help offset the loss of one of the top left wingers in the NHL. Unless that defenseman is Karlsson. He is That Guy.
And Dubas finally hooked him from the Sharks, thus starting up the Penguins on a Sunday morning when this trade finally came down.
(Photo: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)
