My take on the trade

Team: 2022-23 Pittsburgh Penguins

Initial Creation Date: Mar. 1, 2023

Published: Mar. 2, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

I think people on Twitter are over reacting -shocker. I think this for 3 main reasons:

•It’s not Jakub Chychrun. People had their hearts set on him - me included. If the trade was gonna be anyone besides him (or someone on his level who we didn’t expect) people were going to be underwhelmed because their expectations were so high.

•It’s a Hextall trade. People are so pissed at this guy (rightfully so) - that they are expecting and even in a weird way want his moves to be bad (they want to hate his moves because they hate him). When in reality, his two trade deadline moves (carter and rakell) have both been big successes. (Carter was very good season he was acquired, the extension was a mistake).

• they see “smart Twitter man and his red chart say bad” tweets and they want to join the angry mob. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the “old man gets mad at clouds” guy who hates analytics. I respect analytics. But they are not the end all be all, and I think for pens fans to look at one red chart of a player who they haven’t watched for more than 30 seconds this season and say with 100% certainty that player sucks is completely unfair to the player. I’ll remind you that Carter and rakell both had “red bad charts” when they came over, and both were very successful (again with carter Im talking about the year he was acquired)

With this being said, I’m not saying the trade was perfect. It was far from that. Was it the move I would have made? No. But I think granlund could have been a solid addition with retention. Imagine trading out Blueger and acquiring granlund (with retained salary to almost cancel Blueger) for just a slight difference in picks: maybe gaining a third and giving away a 2nd and a 4th, or whatever it would be - that would be quite an upgrade for a small price to pay.

On an aside, if you look at the micro stats along with some film of granlund, it is clear to see that he is an excellent passer and distributor of the puck. It is his greatest strength. There are 2 takeaways from this:
•if he is played on the third line, perhaps he can be the player to unlock Heinens full ability, who has been a very streaky goalscorer in his pens tenure.
•if not Heinen, I think it would be a savvy move for GMRH to go out and get a Vatrano or Kubalik type 3rd line goal scorer to play with them. Maybe we have to ship out a couple picks along with brock mcginn? Idk about the details, but that could work. The bigger option would be going out and getting brock boesser, while shipping out pettersson/Dumo. That would leave our 3rd line pretty star studded, and I think you all remember what happened when we last put a star American sniper winger on our third line ;)

Final note: I think Dumo has played his best hockey of the season lately, and his improved play makes it less of a necessity to upgrade him.