Sean Gentille: The “slammed window” analogy is going to be popular in Pittsburgh tonight, and that’s understandable. Falling behind in the Eastern Conference arms race, then trying to fix two years’ worth of cap mismanagement in three days only to add a player as across-the-board ineffective and uneconomical as Granlund is bound to freak some folks out. It should.
See,
Sidney Crosby and
Evgeni Malkin are only going to get so many bites at the apple. The odds that they’re as good, and as healthy, as they’ve been this season again are … slim. Plus, years of going for it under Jim Rutherford, then overpaying supporting casts under Ron Hextall, have shrunk the margins. Still, even after the trade-a-palooza of the last week, it felt like the Penguins still had a path to relevance in the East.
They were in on
Jakob Chychrun. He wouldn’t have fixed their bottom-six problem, but he’d have given them a second legit No. 1 defenseman to pair with
Kris Letang. And Chychrun is 24. Adding one of the Canucks’ big-ticket forwards —
J.T. Miller or
Brock Boeser — would’ve been less helpful. They’re good, but overpaid. Bit of a tougher sell than Chychrun, but win-now teams have to make tough calls.
And if that failed, hey, they’d at least gotten out from under
Kasperi Kapanen’s contract for next season. Sitting out a season as a buyer — ridiculous as it would’ve seemed, and antithetical as it would’ve been to the approach of the organization from 2005-2021 — could’ve at least been sellable.
Instead, they locked themselves into a player who seems designed in a lab to fix literally none of their problems. Granlund is 31. He’s small. His point production is poor. His effects at five-on-five are worse. He makes $5 million. He makes that amount for two seasons after this one.
Poof goes the cap space for this season. Poof goes the flexibility for next. Now, Hextall’s Penguins are — as ever — locked into a payroll sheet with irreplaceable pieces at the top, immovable pieces in the middle and irrelevant pieces at the bottom. They’re worse today than they were yesterday, and they’ll probably be worse tomorrow. That’s it. Maybe the window slammed. Maybe it gently shut.
Or maybe we should move on to another analogy: the boiling frog.
Penguins: F
Predators: A+
Dom Luszczyszyn: It’s never a good thing when the trending topic on Twitter after a trade is immediately #FireTeamGM, but Penguins fans have every right to be angry with Hextall’s latest deal.
As the rest of the Eastern Conference tries to one-up the other in an epic arms race, the Penguins answered with a Nerf gun. A super soaker. A slingshot. Nothing that will actually matter when it comes time to face one of the actual beasts of the East, a battle the Penguins were not equipped for before the trade and remain ill-equipped for after.
Granlund used to be a fantastic player and it’s possible he can deliver in a lesser role as the team’s third-line center. Possible, but not very likely. His recent results have been so woeful that it’s mind-boggling that
he was the target.
At five-on-five, Granlund has scored 1.33 points per 60 this year. That’s bad enough, but it’s not like that’s a massive departure from his scoring the last few years: 1.57, 1.58, 1.38. Over the last three years, he ranks 256th among forwards sandwiched between
Kyle Palmieri and
Sammy Blais. Not great company.
Unfortunately, that’s not the worst part. There’s the other issue that at five-on-five the
Predators only earned 45 percent of the expected and actual goals this year with Granlund on the ice. Both are among the team’s worst marks and that’s despite spending most of his minutes with
Filip Forsberg,
Matt Duchene and
Nino Niederreiter. All three did much better without him. The issues with Granlund are primarily on defence where the Predators allow 3.28 expected goals against per 60 with him on the ice, 0.44 worse relative to teammates and one of the worst marks in the entire league. Offensively the team scores 0.49 fewer goals per 60 with Granlund on the ice. At both ends, he’s been a wreck.
Unfortunately, that’s also not the worst part.
The worst part is that this isn’t a one-year mistake: it’s one that will linger for two more seasons after this. Granlund, 31, likely only gets worse from here on out. That the Predators were able to somehow get a second for a deeply negative value asset is an absolute coup, a masterclass from David Poile’s farewell tour. That’s nothing but an absolute win for them.
For the Penguins, it’s an absolutely baffling decision to spend what little space they have on their roster for an old and inefficient player. it’s not just a loss. It’s not just a bad grade. It could be the final nail in the coffin in whatever last chance Pittsburgh had to make a run in the Crosby, Malkin, Letang era.
Penguins: D-
Predators: A+
Hell yeah.
