A priori, one might think that hoping to win the Stanley Cup with a club that has just missed the playoffs is utopian. But since this is exactly what the Vegas Golden Knights have just done, we must now keep a reasonable reserve.
By acquiring Erik Karlsson from the San Jose Sharks, Kyle Dubas, president and general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, reinforced his profession of faith. A real faith in his team. But not blind faith.
“We believe in our chances of being contenders and fighting for the championship,” he told members of the media in Pittsburgh on Monday, the day after the monster trade that sent the most recent Norris Trophy winner in the city of steel.
The “flexibility” that Dubas talks about is the leeway he has given himself financially and in terms of his workforce.
When he went to bed on Sunday, he had just gotten his hands on Karlsson as well as Rem Pitlick, a marginal attacker whom he will have the leisure to send to the American League if he wishes. He had also freed himself from the contracts of Jeff Petry (35), Jan Rutta (33), Mikael Granlund (31), and Casey DeSmith (soon to be 32).
Let’s recap: he acquired a 33-year-old defender without aging his club and, through the same operation, cleared more than 3 million of his salary bill for the next season.
We bet he slept well. Better, surely, than in previous weeks. Because Dubas candidly spoke of the long nights he spent staring at the ceiling, wondering if another team would top him over in the race for Karlsson.
Already, last season, he had begun to test the waters, when he was employed by the Toronto Maple Leafs. In early June, he was hired in Pittsburgh. He kept the file alive. On July 1, when free agents opened, the talks escalated. “The first rounds of a championship fight,” he imaged. Fight he won on Sunday by giving his club an offensive electroshock.
In Erik Karlsson, the manager believes he’s acquired one “of the NHL’s finest skaters,” whose “prolific” output speaks for itself. His 101 points last season was the best tally for an NHL defenseman in over 30 years. The Swede will help improve the Penguins’ ability to get the puck out of their territory, he believes.
For obvious reasons, Dubas didn’t address Karlsson’s glaring deficiencies defensively, nor was he asked about it.
As is customary in Pittsburgh, the team’s three big stars, Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kristopher Letang, were put in.
Letang is the one that Karlsson’s arrival will affect most directly, since he is a defender and right-hander like him, and is used to knocking down a considerable workload.
The management therefore submitted its vision to him. “And unsurprisingly, he told us his priority was to win,” a delighted Dubas said.
Moreover, his new acquisition will allow the Penguins to deploy Letang or Karlsson on the ice “50 minutes per game”.
“A little less, hopefully,” nuanced the DG, who won’t want to overload his two stars either.
Six weeks into training camp, Kyle Dubas claims to have assembled a squad ready to face the 2023-2024 season. Will she end it the way he wants? There’s a lot of hockey left to play before you know it. His club, however, is looking much better than the one that collapsed late last spring.
Since the meeting of Crosby, Malkin and Letang in Pittsburgh in 2007, the Penguins have never missed the playoffs. Presumably they will want to make sure that doesn’t happen again. And they just got a big helping hand to get there.
