Kyle Dubas operates on his own timeline for making trades, often culminating deals out of nowhere and sending out players in surprising ways and with trade partners that were unexpected. That almost colors recent reports that Stuart Skinner\u2019s name is in the trade rumors. Other teams might be a little looser with information and the media could be finding out details from the other side of things (the media sure is in the dark in Pittsburgh until moves happen!) but it almost seems like if it\u2019s out there, it doesn\u2019t happen with Dubas. Then when it\u2019s least expected, boom, big moves happen.<\/p>\n
So everything can be taken with a grain of salt these days, yet it probably means something that Skinner\u2019s name is somewhat out there in the NHL rumor mill, albeit it seems to be emanating from the singular source of Frank Seravalli at this point.<\/p>\n
Skinner is an impending unrestricted free agent. Given the timing that Brett Kulak \u2014 the other player (also a free agent this summer) involved in the Tristan Jarry deal was traded earlier this week \u2014 the grand plan to accumulate more assets from that Jarry deal could be coming into light.<\/p>\n
On the ice, Skinner did not start the Penguins\u2019 first game after the break last night. That went to Arturs Silovs, who has now given up two or fewer goals in six of his last eight starts. Pittsburgh also has wonderkid Sergei Murashov waiting in the AHL. Murashov made the AHL All-Star team and has a .924 save% in 28 games with Wilkes-Barre this season. Sooner than later, in one form or another, the Pens are going to need to move on from one of the current NHL goaltenders to open up a spot for Murashov with the way that is trending.<\/p>\n
Whether or not now is the right time remains to be seen and will be the major question for Dubas to weigh. Goalies don\u2019t tend to carry a ton of value on the trade market, which has always been an oddity given the major importance of the position. Skinner still has a checkered reputation on top of that which could add more reluctance for a suitor to be looking for \u201cthe right price\u201d instead of showing a ton of interest. Dealing Skinner would also mean chugging along to the playoffs with a 24-year old Silovs and a 21-year old Murashov, unless another goalie was coming back in any potential Skinner trade.<\/p>\n
To this point much of Dubas\u2019s strategy has been to trade away veterans when their contracts are close to expiring, doing so recently with Jake Guentzel, Marcus Pettersson, Drew O\u2019Connor, Lars Eller, Anthony Beauvillier and recently Kulak. Giving out contract extensions to players in that circumstance, like for Blake Lizotte earlier this winter, has been more of the exception than the rule. In the grand scheme of things Dubas will have to decide if it\u2019s better for his team to keep an experienced goalie like Skinner (who has 50 career NHL playoff games under his belt, even if not all of that experience has been individually successful) or flip him out to even further extend the list of assets that stem from the Jarry trade.<\/p>\n
Seeing some smoke in trade rumors doesn\u2019t necessarily indicate a fire, though at this point on the heels of the Kulak trade it\u2019s only natural to wonder what the immediate future could hold for Skinner, the other player involved in that trade. The NHL trade deadline is coming up quickly, one week from today on the afternoon of Friday March 6th. By then Dubas will have set his course for the rest of the season, what those plans with Skinner are going to be will certainly be near the top of the list for areas to watch as the week goes along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyle Dubas operates on his own timeline for making trades, often culminating deals out of nowhere and sending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5,122,3328,159,5190,5189,4,5541],"class_list":["post-475273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-islanders","tag-hockey","tag-islanders","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-islanders","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkislanders","tag-nhl","tag-rumors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116143297870606530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}