In-season pickups could provide blueprint for Penguins’ roster retooling
Share this post:
As general manager Jim Rutherford prepares to perform offseason roster surgery designed to bring the Pittsburgh Penguins back to championship-caliber prominence, he has at least one thing going for him.
He’s in the middle of a pretty decent run at the trade table.
Defensemen Marcus Pettersson and Erik Gudbranson and forwards Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann were acquired via in-season trade. All four look to be part of the solution rather than the problem.
All four players are 27 or younger. None of the four could accurately be described as extraordinarily fast, but all are mobile for their size. The deals could provide a solid blueprint for the team’s retooling efforts moving forward.
Sprong forward
The Daniel Sprong saga, which dominated headlines during the early part of the season, ended when the scoring winger was sent to Anaheim for Pettersson on Dec. 3.
Sprong was decent for the Ducks. He had to battle for his lineup spot at times, missing a few games as a healthy scratch, but he totaled 14 goals in 47 games.
Pettersson was outstanding for the Penguins. A smooth skater with a long reach, he racked up 19 points in 57 games and was a plus-13.
“He’s an excellent hockey player. It was a treat playing with him,” defense partner Gudbranson said. “For a kid that age to have the poise with the puck that he does offensively and defensively, he defends really hard. He’s a physical kid. It was a pleasure playing with him.”
Florida man
When Rutherford finally rid himself of the scourge of Derick Brassard, sending the 31-year-old center to Florida along with Riley Sheahan and two draft picks in a February deal, the return was as good as anyone could have expected.
McCann gave the Penguins a 22-year-old option on the wing in the top six, scoring 11 goals in 32 games. Bjugstad effectively filled the third-line center hole left by the defection of Nick Bonino, scoring nine times in 32 games.
“Being able to come to this team that’s been in contention for 13 years straight, it was exciting for me,” Bjugstad said. “Really good group of guys to jump into. Fun locker room. It hasn’t really hit me that the season’s over. It seems like it just kind of started when I got here.”
After leaving the Penguins, Sheahan was a useful piece for the Panthers, recording 10 points in 33 games in a bottom-six role.
Brassard was again mostly underwhelming. He had one goal in 10 games with Florida and four goals in 20 games after being moved to Colorado at the trade deadline. He missed the last three games of the Avalanche’s first-round upset of Calgary with an illness.
Blue-line turnaround
When the Penguins acquired Gudbranson from Vancouver for Tanner Pearson at the trade deadline, the move was mostly met with scorn. Gudbranson, who had a league-worst minus-27 rating at the time, was painted as a lumbering oaf.
After joining the Penguins, he was anything but. Once thought of as a possession drain, Gudbranson’s shot-attempt stats were among the best on the team. He also was a plus-7 in the regular season and, with an even rating in four games against the New York Islanders, was the only defenseman on the team not in the red in the playoffs.
“I think I was able to find some confidence, get back to playing the simple game I was used to playing so well,” Gudbranson said. “There’s a lot of good hockey players in this room. You have to raise your game to play with them. I was able to find that pretty quickly here.”
The change of scenery, incidentally, also did Pearson a world of good. After scoring nine goals in 44 games with the Penguins, he scored nine times in 19 games with the Canucks.