Locked On Penguins - Daily Podcast On The Pittsburgh Penguins - BREAKING NEWS: Erik Karlsson is a Pittsburgh Penguin!

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

The day has finally come! Erik Karlsson is a freaking member of the Pittsburgh Penguins! Pat and Hunter dive into the trade for this special episode of the Locked On Penguins podcast and give their immediate reactions to it. They look at how Kyle Dubas fleeced both teams in the deal and how the Penguins really didn't have to give up much to get the reigning Norris Trophy winner. They then analyze how much Karlsson will help on the power play, plus how he will take some pressure off Kris Letang at 5v5 so that he doesn't have to be THE guy. After that, they look at how the Penguins will be a lot more fun to watch this upcoming season, even though they may not be a true Stanley Cup Contender like a team like the Avalanche or the Stars. All that, plus much more is in this short emergency episode of Locked On Penguins.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, when you bet on a Super Bowl Winner, you can GET BONUS BETS EVERY TIME THEY WIN IN THE REGULAR SEASON! FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It is finally here. Eric Carlson is officially a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins after the Penguins completed a three-team deal with the San Jose Sharks and Montreal Canadians. Pat and I will have our immediate reactions on the trade right after this. You're Locked-on Penguins. Your daily podcast on the Pittsburgh Penguins. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Your team every day. Hello and welcome back to an emergency episode of the Locked-on Penguins podcast.

I am Hunter Hody, is one of your hosts. That is Patrick Damp, my co-host. And Pat, I have it on the right side of my screen. You have it right behind you. As I teased, the day is here. August 6th, 20203, one day before Cindy Crosby's 36th birthday, they get him a pretty nice birthday gift, and they give the fans a pretty good gift by finally trading for Air,

Carlson, what's your immediate reaction to it? Man, I used to think this was just a Twitter meme and a joke that we all made, but Kyle Dubas quite literally just traded all the Penguins bad players for San Jose's best player. How, how? Like, I'm still, like, kind of in disbelief that this happened and the fact that they were able to make this trade work. Well, maybe not so much to make the trade work, but just the fact that they made it work this way.

Not much of significance was given up by the penguins to either San Jose or Montreal to bring back the reigning Norris winner. So, you know, we're going to have a deeper dive into this later on tomorrow. But immediate reaction winners, Pittsburgh Penguins. I mean, I agree. And you said it. The fact that they didn't give up any of P.O. Joseph, Owen Pickering, Ty Smith. I mean, they're not going to give up Braden Yeager. let's be real. They just picked him in the draft. But those three especially, that's a huge win.

And you get out of some bad contracts that Ron Hextall either signed last offseason, traded for this past season, or traded for last off season in Jeff Petrie, Macaulein, and Jan Ruda, and you get out of Casey to Smith's deal. Sure, you have to give up a first-round pick in next year's draft. But it's lottery protected. That was something that J.D. Young and I discussed when we did our crossover. You didn't really have to give up many big prospects either. This is a massive win for the Penguins. Kyle Dubus just took both Kent Hughes's lunch money and Mike Greer's lunch money with this deal. I mean, it's not a bad, like, you know, obviously, I don't think it's horrible for the sharks. I think they got some serviceable players to help them out now that they're in the

midst of a rebuild, guys that can do pretty well on a team with low expectations, and then you can trade them for more assets this season in order to start refilling your draft stock and your prospect pipeline. As for Montreal, man, I don't know what they're doing on this one. Like, I think they're the big losers on this one. Obviously, you know, I said it last week. I think San Jose overplayed their hand to this point with the Carlson trade, just considering he had trade protection, four years left on a big deal. And there's not a lot of cap space going around the NHL right now. So, you know, I think overall, if I had to rank the trade one through three, it would be Pittsburgh, San Jose, Montreal. And at least from the Sharks perspective, I understand why they would want someone like Grimland.

He's kind of a good fit for them in the way, Pat, that he can play top six minutes. He's still a pretty good passer, and he'll be able to put up maybe some decent points playing with, I don't know, Tomas Hurtle, something like that. I mean, decent on a rebuilding team, at least, heck, maybe you could flip him at the trade deadline. if you want. I mean, I understand why they would want him in that circumstance. Jeff Petrie, he gets his wish gets to go at least a little closer to home and also go back to a team where he had a lot of success with after he was a member of the Oilers to start out his career. Then he moved to Montreal. So excited for him to go back there. And then again, now you look at this defense, Kyle Dubas really made some big changes there. Jan Ruta's also

out who Ron Hextall signed. You look at that defense now. I kind of look, I kind of gave my depth chart on Twitter before we started recording. I think they're going to start the season with Ryan Graves and Crystal Tang, Marcus Pedersen, Eric Carlson, though I would flip-flop Pedersen and Graves. Just that's my personal opinion. And then maybe P.O. Joseph Chabar-R-Reedle, I mean, that is a much better defensive group heading into this season than the one we saw last season. Boy, if you ask me, in my opinion, if you can make it work under the salary cap,

let the kids play on the third pairing. Go P.O. Joseph and Ty Smith. Why not? Like, let's see if the kid can play. And, you know, if there's one thing I will say in regards to this trade, I don't think Petrie and Ruta were exactly horrible as penguins. They just weren't great fits. They were fine enough. You know, I think Petri was a guy who maybe in year two was going to be a little bit better than he was in year one. and Ruta making a little too much to be a third-paring defenseman. You know, he was solid, but he also got that bump because he played with one of the best defensemen in the world in Victor Hedman when he was with Tampa Bay. So, you know, a lot of those numbers were maybe not horribly inflated, but definitely

inflated because you're amongst one of the best in the world. So, and then obviously everybody knows what our thoughts are about McHio Granlin. So you get out from some disappointing pieces and you bring in arguably the best defenseman on the planet right now, simply just by offensive output. Another thing they also did, the penguins, in getting Carlson, even though the sharks barely retained money on it, I believe it was low under 15% pat. The penguins cleared three million of cap space in this deal. That is just how well of a job Kyle Dubus did with this deal. The fact that they cleared cap, even though they brought in a player who they're now going to be paying $10 million to for the next four years, that goes to show how awesome he was in this deal. Yeah, it's understanding where you are in regards to the cap, which I know everyone's going to hear me say that and go like, well, yeah, that's like his whole job.

A lot of general managers out there mismanage the cap. Ron Hextall. Horribly. Whether it be by bringing in pieces they can't afford. Ford, trying to make trades they can't make. So for Kyle Dubus, understanding that there was going to be, had to be a third team involved as well as moving out salary and finding teams that are willing to take on said salary is a really nice piece of business.

And again, say what you will about the three roster players, the three roster skaters that got sent out. They're not awful. Like I know we're all very upset and very unimpressed with Mikhail Granland. it's just the fact that he makes too much money. He's not a terrible player. So he's going to do very okay where he goes, but that was never going to be here.

He was also just, we discussed this on Friday, Pat. He wasn't a good fit for the team. Even if they were going to buy him out, which obviously didn't happen because he was in the trade, he wasn't a good forechecker. He's not a good finisher anymore. And he's not good defensively. So it made all the sense in the world to include him in this deal.

switching back to Carlson for just a second, man, I am just salivating, thinking about the power play this upcoming season. There are going to be so many options for the penguins. I think they're finally going to get rid of that stupid drop pass that they do when Latane carries it up and just drops it back to whoever, whether it's Malkin or whether it's Crosby that carries it up the ice, whoever it is, I think you're finally going to see that get out of here. And Carlson is just going to be like, okay, I'm going to take that puck

and I'm going to be a one-man wrecking crew when it comes to zone entries. They have so many options there. You can do, you know, Gino at the half-fall, sit down low, Jake in front of the net. You can have Letang in the castle spot, Carlson running it. We have so much to dive into when it comes to that. But that's the main thing that I'm thinking about. One of the main things I'm thinking about in this deal as well is how much improved

the power play is going to be this upcoming season. It's going to be night and day. And now you have so much more flexibility. especially with the breakout, like you said, because here's the other thing that I don't think we're talking about enough with regard to the power play now that Carlson is a penguin. Now you have two guys who are probably going to be on your PP1 in Carlson and Latang, who when they want to be are one-man breakouts. They don't have to swoop to a certain area of the ice to look for a certain open man to make the right pass to kickstart the breakout. They can just lug the puck up the ice and get you into the Zep. zone and then set up from there.

So that's going to be a big difference because regardless of how annoying the drop pass was on the power play breakout and offensive zone entry over the last couple of years, it was simply the fact that they didn't have anybody else like Latang who could do that. And now they do. So teams would key on Chris Latang and give him no options. So you would have to go to somebody else. Now there's multiple threats to get them into the zone, which by default, will back off penalty killers.

That's going to be a lot of fun to watch as well, and especially all set five on five. Latang is going to be still the primary player who gets a lot of minutes at five on five, but he's not going to have to play, you know, all of them. Like he's not going to have to be the guy, Pat, I think is what I'm trying to say when it comes to this. Carlson can play, you know, 18, 20 plus minutes for sure a night.

But with Letang, he doesn't have to play 26 to 20, eight minutes a night now, which is huge. Yeah, and let me give a shout out to one of the best hockey Twitter follows out there and Adam Gretz, who tweeted something out today that I think will soothe a lot of fan concern. San Jose Sharks at 5 on 5 last year were outscored by 53 goals. Do you know how many goals the sharks were outscored by when Eric Carlson was on the ice at 5 on 5? Guseg. they broke even.

So for everybody to talk about how he's not great defensively, yeah, he's not. He's not going to be a stay-at-home defensive stalwart, but he's also not going to be a liability. And he was on a devastatingly bad Sharks team last year and managed to do that. And on a team like the Penguins, he might be a net positive at 5V-5. So I know everybody's worried about the defense, but one, you don't have to rely on a guy like Carlson to be a stay-at-home, great defensive defensemen. They already have those. And on the other hand, he's going to have a partner who's defensively accountable. So you are now going to have two pairings of great offensive defensemen who can skate the puck and move it well with very good positionally sound defensemen.

And that's going to be very hard for other teams to match up against. they have Marcus Pedersen who can cover for him in the defensive zone that's what's important you saw him doing at times for Crystal Tang this past season heck Ryan Graves can also do that for you as well I would flip-flop the two I would have Pedersen up with the little tang but I can definitely see them starting Pedersen with Carlson to start the year but it's really it's really six one way half dozen the other yeah I like both work perfectly fine for me

and I think this is the last thing before we probably wrap up this emergency episode. We'll have a lot more to discuss when it comes to this this way. There's going to be content for days, my friends. Last thing, Pat. Say what you want about whether the Penguins or Stanley Cup contenders heading into this season or not. The fact that they have Eric Carlson now, though, this team is going to be legit fun to watch. They're going to be a bit older. Yes, even though they got younger in the seal, if you look at the players that they sent out and the players that they got back overall, and we'll discuss some of the other players that they got back on Monday's edition of the show, they got younger with this deal. But overall, this team is going to be

legit fun. I'm actually excited to watch them this upcoming season. This team, I don't think, has been that fun to watch for the last two, three years now. I think they've been kind of still at times, even though they have the big guns playing still at a very high level. But now you add Carlson in there, who just had 100 points, won a Norris trophy, is a one-man-man wrecking crew in the offensive zone. The fact that they will have Chris LaTang and Eric Carlson on the ice for two-thirds of a game, sign me up for that for 82 games for the next several seasons, please. It's just so stupid.

It's just such an embarrassing. I dreamed of Eric Carlson playing on the Penguins at some point. I was actually going through some film a few days ago looking at Carlson's run with the senators in the 2017 playoffs. and what he did there on just a bum ankle, if he can play even close to that level, it's going to be scary hours here in this city, even though he's a bit older now.

Oh, there's no doubt in my mind if that Ottawa team would have beat the Penguins in game seven of the Eastern Conference final, even if they would have lost in the Stanley Cup finals to San Jose. Or no, that would have been Nashville's year. Nashville, he still might have been the Kahn-Smith winner. He dragged that team through three rounds. But yeah, I mean, I wrote it about the Penguins when the rumors started kicking up that they were interested in getting Carlson a few weeks ago or about a month ago.

I wrote about it for Penguins' perspectives on KDKA. The Pittsburgh Penguins franchise, since they got Mario Lemieux, is based on being a fun hockey team. Yes. They're not going to be the 90s devils. They're not going to shut you down defensively and win a one-nothing to one game. they are going to boast talent up and down their lineup. They are going to have star power. And guess what?

They're going to win games six to five, seven to six, eight to four, whatever. If there's one thing that the Pittsburgh Penguins could always do, and I'm trying to remember who said this on the 50th anniversary documentary, but it's escaping me, if there's one thing the Pittsburgh Penguins have always been able to do, it's score. And now the Pittsburgh Penguins once again are going to be. going to be able to score. And score a lot.

That's for sure. Heck, they've been scoring a lot for the last, what, 30 plus years now, Pat. And it's only going to continue throughout the rest of the course tenure here and especially now,

Eric Carlson. But I think that will wrap up this quick emergency episode of the Locked on Penguins podcast. Unless you have something else to say, we're going to dive into this entire trade on Monday's episode. We'll have a full 25, 30,

35 minute episode and then we'll probably have more on this later on this upcoming week as well. But if you have anything else to say, the floor is yours. It doesn't have the same ring as it did in 2016 when we all said Phil Kessel is a Pittsburgh penguin, but Eric Carlson is a Pittsburgh penguin. All the memes that everyone made of him photoshopped in a penguin's jersey. Well, it's real now. And it's a good day. And again, happy birthday to you, Sidney Crosby.

You got a pretty damn good birthday gift or pre-birthday. gift, I should say, on Sunday. But that will do it again for this quick emergency episode of the show. Pat and I will be back on Monday for a full edition of the show, breaking down all aspects of the trade, including some of the other players that the penguins brought back in the deal. So stick around for that on Monday again. Thank you all so much for listening to watching this emergency episode, and we'll be back on Monday.