Kyle Dubas alluded to the possibility of a quiet NHL trade deadline day for the Penguins when he spoke on the team’s weekly radio show Wednesday. And that’s what happened.
The Penguins explored various trades, from taking on salary in three-team deals to acquire assets to improving the team in other aspects, but the only trade that came to fruition Friday was sending a third-round pick to Detroit for Elmer Soderblom, a projected bottom-six winger.
“I think everyone would be more excited if there was a lot more movement, especially the folks assembled here today and the fans,” Dubas said when he spoke after the deadline. “But I can only speak from our perspective, we tried to get the players in earlier, because the types of players that we’re trading for and have traded for throughout the year are either guys that are going to be here a while, or maybe wasn’t going perfectly where they were. So the more runway you have to get them up and running, rather than put them into the blender right now, coming in, playing back-to-back games on the weekend and so forth, could be a lot.”
The Penguins made a splash by moving Tristan Jarry and Sam Poulin for Stuart Skinner, Sam Girard and two second-round picks, then traded Danton Heinen, a third- and fourth-round pick for Egor Chinakhov, then sent Valtteri Puustinen and a seventh-rounder out for Ilya Solovyov, a total that would have been a pretty solid deadline haul.
Could they have added more today? Sure. But when one looks at the current roster when healthy, it’s pretty hard to identify glaring holes or trades that could be made that wouldn’t have disrupted the chemistry and a lot of the good that’s been done to this point.