Kyle Dubas is back from Italy and he is not wasting time fine tuning his roster for the stretch run. We have a trade to discuss. The Pittsburgh Penguins have moved on from Brett Kulak and have acquired Sam Girard from the Colorado Avalanche AND a 2nd round pick
Well now, there’s a lot to like about this trade even if I thought Brett Kulak was doing a nice job with the Penguins. Let’s start with the fact that Kyle Dubas was able to spin Tristan Jarry into two 2nd round picks, Sam Girard, and Stuart Skinner. That is a real good piece of business from the Penguins top decision maker.
Brett Kulak had an expiring contract that has a 2.8M AAV and probably wasn’t a part of Pittsburgh’s long term plans. Sam Girard has this year and next on a deal that pays him 5M. The Penguins are swimming in cap space so adding Girard’s cap hit is a complete non-issue. For the Avalanche, this seems like a cap dump while trying to recover something to place in their win now lineup. The second round pick was the cost of getting out from under the 5M Girard cap hit.
I see this as nothing but a good move for the Penguins. They are getting very good value.
Differing styles
Another potential reason for this trade is that both teams were looking for a different style to fill out their defensive group. Brett Kulak is a simplistic safe player whose strength is in defending and on the PK.
With Parker Wotherspoon they already have the better version of Kulak to fill that exact role. With Ryan Shea they have a guy who does a little bit of everything well. In Sam Girard they now have an option on the left side that trends more towards the offensive side of things. Something they haven’t had on the left side of the defense for quite some time. Mike Matheson is the last example I can think of that would be considered an offensive defenseman on the left side for Pittsburgh. Before that? Perhaps Trevor Daley. Point being, the Penguins haven’t had a player in the mold of Girard on the left side often in recent memory.
I like targeting a more offensive minded defenseman. This Penguins team has a decent forward grouping when completely healthy. Getting another player on the back end who can help fuel the Penguins forwards attack up the ice is a good thing.
Sam Girard has multiple 30 points seasons to his resume and I think Pittsburgh will be a good fit for his skillset
Building up more draft capital
The Pittsburgh Penguins have hit the gas on a roster retool due to Kyle Dubas’ shrewd moves over the past year. Adding players like Ben Kindel, Egor Chinakhov, Anthony Mantha, Justin Brazeau, Tommy Novak, Ryan Shea, and Parker Wotherspoon among others have helped re-energize the Penguins roster and make them a playoff contender.
As a result the Penguins aren’t the sellers they were perceived to be in the summer. They are likely going to look to add more impactful pieces. These won’t be rentals or aging players. They will be trades like Egor Chinakhov who are younger and promising. The way to acquire those players is to use draft capital. Well, Kyle Dubas has done it again. He has weaponized the Penguins cap space and acquired yet another quality asset in the form of a 2nd round draft pick. The Penguins have a great number of draft picks to play with.
The Penguins are building up quite a bit of draft capital and they will not be using all of those picks to select players at the actual draft. I anticipate that Dubas is prepping to take some big swings before Sidney Crosby stops being a highly effective player. One example of these big swings could be a player like Jason Robertson, for example.
Today’s trade is just the latest example of Kyle Dubas nailing the roster reconstruction. He’s been on fire the past year. It is remarkable how much improvement this roster has seen over that time. This has been close to a best case scenario from where the Penguins were not so long ago. The Penguins fun and interesting year continues.
