This Sharks-Penguins trade proposal sends Erik Karlsson to Pittsburgh

Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported that some “clarity” is expected on the Erik Karlsson trade buzz by this upcoming weekend. It will end two months of heavy trade speculation, and all signs point to Karlsson heading East to join the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In other news from Pittsburgh, even though it is never a positive for a player to get injured, strictly speaking financially, the Penguins will open up $6M in cap space due to forward Jake Guentzel’s ankle surgery, landing him on LTIR to begin the regular season. Once Guentzel is put on LTIR at the beginning of the season, Pittsburgh will have just under $2.8M in salary-cap wiggle room.

Now, with any hypothetical Karlsson trade, a significant hurdle to jump will be how much the San Josh Sharks are willing to retain on his contract. It’s been reported multiple times that the Sharks seem willing to retain 30% of his contract, which would knock Karlsson’s salary down to $8M over the next four seasons. Keeping this in mind, the Penguins would need to send around $5.25M back to the Sharks, if and only if they are not seeking any additional cap space.

The most obvious choice would be to move Jeff Petry’s $6.25M contract back the other way to San Jose, but with a 15-team no-trade list, it would be reasonable to assume the Sharks would be on that list, and the likelihood of Petry accepting a deal to San Jose would be slim. In fact, most of the contracts that the Penguins would want to remove from their roster, have very hefty no-movement clauses, complicating any potential trade in the near future.

However, there is one player who would meet the criteria and was even rumored to be headed toward a buyout in mid-June. That player would be Mikael Granlund, acquired from the Nashville Predators at last year’s trade deadline, and currently sporting a $5M salary for the next two seasons. Throw in defenseman Jan Rutta and his $2.75M, also creating an opening on the right-hand side of their blue line, and all of the salary intangibles are worked out.

In terms of which prospects and draft capital should be expected to head back to San Jose, let’s consider general manager Mike Grier’s first high-profile trade, moving Timo Meier to the New Jersey Devils at last season’s deadline. In that deal, the Sharks acquired a salary filler in Andreas Johnsson, a young NHL-ready talent in Fabian Zetterlund, two prospects in Nikita Okhotyuk and Shakir Mukhamadullin, as well as a first- and second-round pick.

Given this context, it would be reasonable to assume that Karlsson will command a similar package to Meier, and the Penguins should have the necessary parts to make this happen. The salary fillers are already worked out in Granlund and Rutta, and defenseman Ty Smith seems exactly the type of young NHL-ready talent the Sharks would be pursuing in a package like this. Not too long ago, Smith was projected as one of the better prospects in New Jersey’s system, but ever since coming over in a trade to Pittsburgh, the Penguins just have not been able to give him the amount of ice time that is conducive with his growth.

For prospects, it is going to be difficult for San Jose to poach away any of Brayden Yager, Owen Pickering or Joel Blomqvist from the Penguins farm system, but there is another talent that should suffice. Forward Tristan Broz as well as forward Valtteri Puustinen seem like the best choices outside of those top three. Broz is a second-round pick of the Penguins from the 2021 NHL Draft, and he recently wrapped up a 28-point campaign with the University of Denver in the NCAA. Puustinen, on the other hand, is a bit closer to NHL-ready than Broz, scoring 59 points in 72 games in the AHL as a 24-year-old.

Pittsburgh is also in possession of most of its draft picks for the next several seasons, and given the Sharks’ projected draft capital for the foreseeable future, might target top picks during the 2025 or 2026 NHL Draft. In all realism, the Sharks will likely want Pittsburgh’s 2025 first-round pick as well as a conditional second-round pick in 2026, crafting those conditions in a way where the pick could be upgraded to a first.

And there you have it. The hypothetical trade in its entirety would be the Penguins acquiring Karlsson (30% retained), while the Sharks would acquire, Granlund, Rutta, Smith, Broz, Puustinen a first-round pick in 2025, as well as a conditional second-round pick in 2026. In any manner, we should know in a few short days what the Karlsson trade package will look like in its entirety.