Once a Kings Fan Too
Joined: Jun. 2018
Posts: 40,370
Likes: 25,281
Karlsson-to-Pittsburgh trades are hard due to the lack of high-quality prosects in your farm system. You can't trade the just-selected Brayden Yager and due to his struggles last season, Poulin is no more than a B prospect at this point, so the only appealing assets you have are Joseph and Owen Pickering. It will take at least one of them plus a first and a second just to get Karlsson. Then, to have one or two teams retain 50% ($23 million!!) on him is going to cost the other A prospect plus another first, in all likelihood (or maybe two seconds and two prospects if split between San Jose and Anaheim, for example). Finally, you want to fold in heavy-cap-hit Jeff Petry or outright-cap-dump Mikael Granlund into the deal, which isn't a benefit to San Jose OR a third team, and then there's the problem of Petry's NTC.
I'm not saying that it's not going to happen; just that it's going to be very, very difficult AND complicated. For example, if I were the Anaheim GM and taking on 20% ($2.3 million x 4 = $9.2 million!!), I wouldn't take less than a second plus either Tristan Broz or Joel Blomqvist. Karlsson will probably cost you Pickering, a first and a second and then another second (or the equivalent) for another 20% retention. Say I'm being optimistic on Karlsson's value and toss Granlund and Petry into the overall mix. That's still more than you've got here.
All I can say is Good Luck.