RUMOUR: Erik Karlsson an Oiler?

I was recently watching this YouTube video and on the spur of the moment found a great blog topic to do. Is there a plausible trade of Erik Karlsson to the Oilers? Yes, a plausible one – but whether it actually happens is another story.

If you’ve watched the video already, you’d know the Hurricanes are reportedly dealing Brett Pesce to San Jose in some sort of trade involving Erik Karlsson, but there’s going to be a third team involved. Could that team be the Oilers? That’s the million dollar question.

Here’s how I see this playing out:

Let’s see what the benefits of this are for all three teams.

The Hurricanes just signed the man in the picture, Dmitry Orlov, in free agency for $7.75 million a year for two years. Would GM Don Waddell have done that if he didn’t want Orlov playing a role in the ‘Canes top four D for the next two years?  I doubt it. No GM is stupid enough to sign a guy to that AAV and go into the season with the intention of playing him on the third pairing. It would be a terrible use of cap space and probably get him fired.

This has now rendered Brett Pesce redundant, which is why he is one of the biggest trade chips this offseason.

Since San Jose is rebuilding and will have high first round picks for the next few years, I highly doubt they’d want to part with their first round pick, but IMO they would definitely part with their second and third round picks if it meant they could finally unload Erik Karlsson to a better team and fulfill his wish.

With the Oilers chipping in Brett Kulak to the ‘Canes, they get a player who although he is not the same player type and won’t put up as much offence, I believe the ‘Canes have the luxury of swapping a puck mover for a stay at home guy because Kulak will be playing next to Brady Skjei, a guy who broke out in a big way for the ‘Canes as he scored 18 goals for them this year and 38 points in 81 games. In other words, they have their puck mover on the second pairing.

In Brett Kulak, they get a guy who’s too expensive in Edmonton for where he’s playing now, but won’t be in Carolina where he’ll be playing in the top four as he likely would’ve been in Edmonton had they not traded for Mattias Ekholm at the last trade deadline. It’s better for the player too because he gets to play a bigger role and more minutes in the top four, something he won’t get in Edmonton because he’s blocked on both the left and right side on the second pairing. Not to mention they save $1.275 million against the cap in Kulak vs. Pesce and Kulak is signed for another two seasons past the next one whereas Pesce’s contract is up after this season.

The draft capital from San Jose certainly doesn’t hurt, either – and those picks will be higher picks in the second and third rounds which will be great for them, not to mention having the Oiler’s third round pick in exchange for keeping 25% of the Erik Karlsson cap hit. This would effectively give Carolina three second picks in the next draft – they have their own and Philadelphia’s (Tony Deangelo trade) and now they’ll have San Jose’s too. In 2025 they’ll have three picks in the third round – their own, San Jose’s, and Edmonton’s. That’s a nice haul of draft picks.

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.

And now we save the best for last.

What the Oilers get in this situation is obvious – Karlsson himself, and at a heavily discounted rate too. With both Carolina and San Jose sharing the burden of Karlsson’s monster cap hit, the Oilers will only be paying Karlsson $5.75 million a season. The beauty of this is by moving out Kulak and Ceci, the Oilers would actually see $6 million of cap space exiting their books, which means that this trade, despite the huge cap hit acquired, would still see them save $250,000 in cap space. That’s less of a cap savings then Carolina or San Jose are seeing, but that’s fine, $250,000 is still fine when dealing with a contract of this magnitude.

Erik Karlsson would then replace Ceci in the lineup next to Darnell Nurse, which on paper at least would create a great 1-2 punch on offence at the top of the D corps.

Kulak won’t be a great loss as he’s way too expensive for the third pairing and chances are will probably be replaced on the third pairing by Philip Broberg anyway so why not just do it now? I like him as a player but not as a cap hit. He needs to go, and needed to go IMO before Kailer Yamamoto, but that ship has sailed already of course.

Karlsson is the reigning Vezina trophy winner, and such players are usually not available.

There’s a good chance this pushes the Oilers over the top and they win a Cup. Personally I’d love to see Pietrangelo and Karlsson go head to head in the next Oilers-Vegas playoff series, whenever it happens. It would probably make that series one of the most entertaining the NHL had to offer.

Erik Karlsson then gets his wish and goes to a Cup contender.