{"id":58393,"date":"2025-07-12T01:58:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T01:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/58393\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T01:58:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T01:58:09","slug":"erik-karlsson-open-to-being-traded-to-a-handful-of-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/58393\/","title":{"rendered":"Erik Karlsson Open To Being Traded To A Handful Of Teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the Penguins known to be sellers this summer, there has been plenty of speculation about the future of some of their veterans.\u00a0 While wingers Bryan Rust<\/a><\/strong> and Rickard Rakell<\/a><\/strong> have been generating a lot of attention, one other veteran that seemingly could be in play is blueliner Erik Karlsson<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old has two years left on his contract with the Penguins responsible for $10MM of his $11.5MM cap charge and San Jose covering the remainder.\u00a0 Notably, a $5MM signing bonus this summer has already been paid, meaning his total cash compensation remaining is $11.5MM over the final two years combined, $1.5MM of which again is covered by the Sharks.<\/p>\n

While Karlsson has a no-move clause, Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic recently reported in his latest podcast (audio link<\/a>) that he is willing to be moved.\u00a0 However, he adds that there are only a few teams the veteran is willing to move to; Johnston didn\u2019t identify any of the potential landing spots Karlsson would be amenable to going to.<\/p>\n

While Karlsson hasn\u2019t been able to come close to the 101 points he put up just two seasons ago, he\u2019s still an above-average offensive blueliner, notching 56 and 53 points over the last two years while logging over 23 minutes a night.\u00a0 While he\u2019s never been elite on the defensive side of things, he\u2019s still a legitimate impact player.<\/p>\n

To that end, Johnston notes that Pittsburgh isn\u2019t viewing Karlsson as merely a cap dump.\u00a0 If he is to be moved, GM Kyle Dubas will be expecting a positive-value return and in the current environment, he has a good chance to land that.\u00a0 The UFA market for blueliners is largely dried up now while more than one-third of the league has the cap space to take on the remainder of his contract outright without salary retention.\u00a0 Meanwhile, if Pittsburgh were to retain some money or take players back, several more teams could get into the mix as well.<\/p>\n

Depending on which teams Karlsson is willing to move to, Pittsburgh actually might have more realistic options than San Jose did two summers ago when very few teams had the ability to add the bulk of his contract.\u00a0 Despite the drop in production, that should have Dubas in decent shape in terms of trying to build some sort of market for his defender\u2019s services, especially if there are suitors that value the cap hit being higher than the remaining cash outlay.<\/p>\n

But, even in a salary cap environment that\u2019s set to jump again considerably next summer, moving Karlsson for even close to full value will be a challenge.\u00a0 That said, the Penguins didn\u2019t pay close to full value for him two summers ago when he was coming off his third Norris Trophy win.\u00a0 So, while Pittsburgh is in decent shape to get something of value for Karlsson, it\u2019s unlikely they\u2019ll get a key element to their rebuild in a package.\u00a0 And with Karlsson holding the cards with a full veto if he doesn\u2019t want to go to a specific team, the Penguins could yet lose some leverage in discussions.<\/p>\n

While it might make sense to wait for an in-season move if injuries strike, the summer is generally considered an easier time to make bigger moves work on the salary cap side.\u00a0 With that in mind, Karlsson is a player to keep an eye on in the coming weeks with teams still looking to add to their rosters in a market where demand greatly outweighs supply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the Penguins known to be sellers this summer, there has been plenty of speculation about the future…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":58394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[42526,293,1334,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-58393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-erik-karlsson","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114837789603082857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}