The big NHL news on Sunday was a significant trade. Frankly, an enormous one — and it will have a direct impact on the start of the Blackhawks’ regular season. The Pittsburgh Penguins finally figured out a way to make a three-team deal happen to land reigning Norris Trophy winner Erik Karlsson from the San Jose Sharks. Here’s the full details:
Per the Penguins, here is the trade. SJ retains $1.5M of Karlsson’s salary…Pittsburgh retains 25 per cent of Petry’s. — Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC)
A few thoughts on the trade:
The first regular-season game in which Karlsson will appear with his new teammates will be Connor Bedard’s regular-season debut. So we’ve got that going for us, which is… something.
This is a big, pushing-in of the chips move by Pittsburgh. Their roster is old already, and Karlsson is 33. The Pens now have $20.6 million AAV tied up in Karlsson, Kris Letang and Ryan Graves — half of their blue line. And those three guys are all under contract for at least four more years (including 2023-24).
According to , the top eight (8) AAV contracts among Penguins forwards are to players who are over 30 as well.
Pittsburgh is going to need to restock their NHL roster at some point. Now, they have two picks — their own second and fourth rounders — before the sixth round in the 2024 NHL Draft.
Considering the circumstances, this is a solid rebuild-accelerating move by San Jose. As of now, the only NHL veteran forwards they have on their roster beyond next season are Tomas Hertl and Logan Couture. And their entire blue line is cleaned out over the next three years (though has eight defensemen listed on their NHL roster at this point — hello surplus!). And the Sharks have two picks in the first, second and fourth rounds of the 2024 NHL Draft now.
Montreal’s a mess. But they were able to clear out some mediocre contracts in this deal. Eric Engels did a nice job of explaining the deal from the Habs’ point of view here:
Here’s why the Canadiens are making this trade:
— Eric Engels (@EricEngels)
Today is the fifth anniversary of the passing of Stan Mikita. He remains the all-time leader in almost every statistical category in Blackhawks franchise history. But, more than his remarkable numbers, Stosh represented the organization with unparalleled class. So let’s take a moment to pay respect to the greatest to ever wear the Indian head sweater.
On Monday morning, the Rockford IceHogs announced forward Luke Philp underwent successful surgery on Saturday to repair his right Achilles tendon. He will be out for approximately six months. This is a tough blow for a guy who worked hard for an opportunity last season. He has just this one season remaining on his contract with the Blackhawks.
USA Hockey put a wrap on their World Junior Summer Showcase on Monday morning with a nice video showing some behind-the-scenes action. The Blackhawks’ four prospects represented in the games, each making a case for a spot on the roster in December. It was a nice tryout process for the players; it was a great way to make us want hockey to return asap.
Another World Junior Summer Showcase is in the books!
We'll see you in December for . | — USA Hockey (@usahockey)
We’ve talked a lot about the Blackhawks’ focus on adding speed, speed and more speed since Kyle Davidson took over as the general manager in Chicago. This piece from Allan Mitchell at is a really good dive into the value the league is placing on skating, and how that specific skill is valued around the league.
Mitchell has some terrific quotes from the two top prospect analysts on the staff at The Athletic — Corey Pronman and Scott Wheeler — whose opinions and evaluations I value a great deal. He also notes regarding how they qualify their analysis of skating. But this quote from one scout stood out, because we’ve seen guys who can skate but… don’t do much else (cough, Viktor Stalberg, cough):
“It is so, so tricky. Particularly when you’re evaluating players that are not near their physical maturity or 🐈fitness peak. Or, in the case of players who have trained incorrectly for the biomechanics of hockey and/or have had limited skating-specific on-ice training. That’s the long way of saying it’s not like hockey sense or creativity, which you basically either have or don’t. It has a much wider variance of development.
“You can be a beautiful skater but if your vision goes to hell once you get to speed, or you can’t handle a puck when moving — it doesn’t matter a⛎ lick. So you have to be able to more than just move, gotta be able to do what you do best while you’re moving.”
New for Why skating ability has such an impac💞t on NHL Draft scouting and success
— Lowetide (@Lowetide)
Finally, the White Sox are an absolute mess right now. Trainwreck. And a report on Sunday night made everything that looks ugly on the surface look so much worse below the surface…
Tab Bamford has been writing about the Chicago Blackhawks for almost two decades. He joined Bleacher Nation as the lead Blackhawks writer in May 2022. Tab is a member of the and is the author of three books about the Blackhawks: (Triumph Books),"100 T🧸hings Blackhawks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Diꦐe" (Triumph Books) and "Chicago Blackhawks: An Illustrated Timeline" (Reedyℱ Press, 2021). Find him on Twitter/X/Instagram/Threads at @The1Tab
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