RUMOUR: Erik Karlsson an Oiler?
By Phil Gretzky
The biggest win for San Jose in this trade is getting rid of Erik Karlsson’s contract which they needed to do for sure. He’s wasting his talents playing on a rebuilding team and is clearly unhappy as he has publicly said he didn’t sign up to play on a rebuilding team.
Although Brett Pesce isn’t on the same level as Erik Karlsson offensively, personally I’m in doubt that Erik Karlsson can duplicate his season going forward anyway (more on that later). However, Pesce is a decent replacement for Karlsson. He just set a career high with 30 points, and he’s only 28 and thus his contract will age better, even if San Jose can manage to re-sign him and will have to give him a raise, it’ll be worth it because they’ll be out from under the thumb of Karlsson and his $11.5 million cap hit. Pesce is signed at $4.025 million for next season. Even if they paid him $6 million a season on his next contract, they’ll still end up in a much better situation roster and cap wise going forward.
San Jose also gets another first round pick from the Oilers, which although it will probably be a later round one, is still very valuable to a rebuilding team – or they can use it in trade if they want to get a warm body back, so they have options.
GM Mike Grier has publicly said he won’t retain 50% of Karlsson’s cap hit, but 25% is much more manageable, and with Carolina retaining another 25%, that makes the cap hit more manageable for every team involved.
Perhaps getting Edmonton’s first rounder will lessen the sting of giving up their second and third rounders in 2024 – and they can afford to part with the second rounder anyway since they will have New Jersey’s second rounder in either 2024 or 2025 depending on how the conditions of the Timo Meier trade go, so they can afford to part with their own and will still have their own high first round pick, which will probably be top five in the league next season and will be very valuable to them.
They also get Cody Ceci, who can play the right side on either the first or second pairing and will give the Sharks the opportunity to improve their team or get more draft capital – maybe they dangle Ceci and the Oiler’s first rounder to a team with cap space to see if they can get rid of Marc Edward-Vlasic’s contract (assuming he waives his NTC in his contract, of course) as well or perhaps they just keep Ceci and try to move out, say, Matt Benning who is much cheaper and thus much easier to move out.
The point is that Pesce will be the obvious replacement for Erik Karlsson, but the acquisition of Ceci gives the Sharks options they never had before, something that Grier and head coach David Quinn will no doubt discuss and see what they would want to do with the player.