Winners and Losers of the Erik Karlsson Trade to the Pittsburgh Penguins

Wake up everyone, there's a blockbuster NHL trade in August!

After months of rumors and speculation, Erik Karlsson is on the move once again. The 2023 Norris Trophy winner is headed to the Pittsburgh Penguins from the San Jose Sharks with a little bit of assistance from the Montréal Canadiens.

The three-way ro-sham-bo has the Penguins adding Karlsson, forward Rem Pitlick from Montréal and minor leaguer Dillon Hamaliuk and a 2026 third-round pick from San Jose. The Sharks receive forward Mike Hoffman from the Canadiens and forward Mikael Granlund, defenseman Jan Rutta and a 2024 first-round pick from the Penguins. The Canadiens get a 2025 second-round pick, goalie Casey DeSmith, forward Nathan Legare and bring back defenseman Jeff Petry all from the Penguins.

The trade also has the Sharks retaining $1.5 million worth of Karlsson's salary and the Penguins taking on 25 percent of Petry's contract. It's a whopper of a trade and we've all been starving for action.

Every trade has winners and losers and this one is teeming over with plenty of both of them. Who won? Who lost? Let's get to it.

When Kyle Dubas joined the Penguins, he had a tall order to fulfill.

He had to make an aging team get back into Stanley Cup contention. His free-agent signings were underwhelming even though they improved their bottom-six forward group (which was absolutely necessary) and he re-signed Tristan Jarry to a potentially regrettable long-term contract.

The Penguins needed more of a lift and they needed a way to better impact their offense in general. Adding Erik Karlsson to his very veteran group is a big way to do just that. Players like Karlsson are rare and even though he's 33, he can clearly still get it done and be the best in the league at producing points.

Dubas was able to get the Sharks to eat some of the money on Karlsson's contract while also eating part of Jeff Petry's to send him back to Montréal. He's got Karlsson for the next four years and Petry has two years left on his. That's a net win.

Giving up a 2024 first-round pick hurts, but that's the cost of adding an elite player and you give that up every time, especially when you consider yourself a contender. He also cleared up the backup goalie situation by sending Casey DeSmith to the Canadiens which presses Alex Nedeljkovic into the No. 2 spot behind Jarry.

Results there are to be determined, but that's one of the lesser aspects of this deal for Pittsburgh. The key part is they got the best player in the entire trade and one of the best in the league, period, and got the Sharks to pay for some of his salary.

You have to feel for Sharks GM Mike Grier. He took on the job knowing he had a team in transition from the past that needed to work towards the future while also keeping their veteran talent happy. Trading Erik Karlsson means almost automatically losing the deal.

Most teams that move the best player don't usually come out of it feeling good and the best part of the deal for the Sharks is acquiring Pittsburgh's 2024 first-round pick. They also brought back veteran players in Mike Hoffman, Mikael Granlund and Jan Rutta, as they functioned as necessary makeweights to the deal. That's even more reason to come out of it with a first, but for a team that's leaning harder for the future than the present, I'd want a little bit more to help down the road as opposed to icing a team with more NHL talent than young players who may not be ready.

We don't want to wish away the season before it's even training camp, but when it comes time for the trade deadline, the Sharks should be able to help add futures if they move Hoffman, Anthony Duclair, or Kevin Labanc by then.

The immediate future is tough for San Jose, but this is part of what it's like when a team is torn between a full rebuild and trying to tread water.

The Penguins were in a pickle.

They missed the playoffs for the first time since 2006 last season and they've committed to veteran superstars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang for likely the rest of their careers. That also means they have to win and, ideally, bring at least one more Stanley Cup to the Steel City.

Missing the playoffs last year cast a pall over the possibility of doing just that and they had to do something to address this. They couldn't start a rebuild with three future Hall of Famers on the roster and they didn't even have the prospects or picks to get that started anyway, so they're pot committed to getting help. Adding Erik Karlsson to make it four future Hall of Famers playing together is a heck of a way to do it.

All four of them are still great players. Crosby had 93 points last season and Malkin had 83. Despite their age, both future Hall of Famers played all 82 games last season. Letang had 41 points in 64 games while overcoming a stroke midway through the season. Those are outstanding performances particularly when you consider Crosby is 35, Malkin is 37 and Letang is 36. At 33, Karlsson is the youngest of them and he's coming off a 101-point season and a Norris Trophy. It's a dynamic and incredible group of star players, age be darned.

Even with Jake Guentzel missing the first part of the season after ankle surgery, it sets up the Penguins' power play to be a circus of talent and even more so when Guentzel returns. Adding Karlsson to this group will make the Penguins' offense pop off even more and that's fun for everyone.

There's the notion that as a defenseman, Erik Karlsson doesn't play very much defense, and this is also why people fight online about statistics.

In raw numbers, Karlsson had 101 points but was a minus-26 for the lowly Sharks. Sounds bad, right? Sounds like a guy that can't defend, right?

But Karlsson will help Pittsburgh's defense, mostly because when he's on the ice he has the puck more often than opponents will (he had a 53.6 percent of shots attempted for San Jose at 5-on-5 last season) and he's going to create chances for as opposed to against. It's great defense, just in a different light.

By the way, San Jose scored as many goals as they gave up at 5-on-5 with Karlsson on the ice (96). Remember: The Sharks stunk out loud and had a minus-82 goal differential.

He's not going to punish foes physically; he'll help do it on the scoreboard instead.

Tristan Jarry was already going to have an immense amount of pressure on his back this season after he signed a five-year, $26.875 million contract to be the Penguins' No. 1 goalie. He dealt with injuries last season which prevented him from being consistent with his play. He can be very good, but he has to stay healthy and that's more imperative after the Karlsson trade.

Adding Karlsson to play with Crosby, Malkin and Letang means the time to win is right freakin' now. If he can thrive with that kind of pressure, the Pens will be much better off for it.

It's great to be Erik Karlsson, isn't it?

He's coming off an all-time season in which he won the Norris Trophy and was the first defenseman to put up 100 or more points since Brian Leetch had 102 in 1991-1992. That was three work stoppages ago, so it's basically ancient history.

He's one of the modern all-time great scorers on defense and his shooting and passing abilities are still top-notch.

When he was traded from Ottawa to San Jose years ago, it was a needed change of address after things took a bit of a sour turn there. Those Senators teams did well with Karlsson there (and a few others who wound up elsewhere, ahem, Mark Stone) but when he got to the Sharks, things didn't go great, and they only went to the playoffs with Karlsson once in 2018-19 where they lost to St. Louis in the Western Conference Final.

Team Karlsson up with other future Hall of Famers is going to be a lot of fun and it's exciting to think about whether or not he'll be able to score even more alongside Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang. Mix in Reilly Smith fresh over from Vegas and Jake Guentzel once he returns from ankle surgery in November or so, and things get a lot more interesting.

He's a brilliant talent and he was a bit forgotten about in San Jose. That won't be the case in Pittsburgh and seeing him out there with the Pens' opening night against Connor Bedard and Chicago has all of us counting down until October.

The Metropolitan Division didn't need to have more teams improve, but Pittsburgh's acquisition of Erik Karlsson brings the Penguins back into the fight.

Carolina, New Jersey, the Rangers and Islanders duked it out in a four-way street fight last season with the Hurricanes ultimately finishing atop the division. As it was, Pittsburgh finished just two points back of the Islanders and with the Capitals being healthy and maybe making another move in the future, if you're not playing Philadelphia or Columbus within the division, you're probably not going to have a good time.

The race in the division was so tight, particularly once the Rangers started to claw back into the battle between Carolina and New Jersey for the top spot, but the Penguins adding Karlsson immediately forces them into the discussion again, a year after they appeared slated to start sliding back into semi-obscurity.

A team that rolls out a top four of Crosby, Malkin, Letang and Karlsson who can all produce a bucket load of points has to be taken seriously. Whether they're actually Stanley Cup contenders is a matter of debate, but they're threats within the division to alter the landscape once again. That kind of scoring talent cannot be ignored and while they do have other questions surrounding their team, almost every team does and besides, it's a very long season and anything can shake things up.

The Eastern Conference is going to be a brutal competition all season long with teams on the rise and other teams that were once on the top maybe coming back to the pack. It's going to be great.