Often times, trades can only truly be evaluated with the benefit of hindsight. When the San Jose Sharks acquired Erik Karlsson in 2018, it was considered a huge blow to the Ottawa Senators’ credibility and a major win for San Jose. The Senators gave away one of the best defenseman in the league – a two-time Norris Trophy winner coming off his fifth consecutive 60-plus point campaign – and while the return featured a number of parts, initially a lot of people felt the Senators didn’t get enough.
And yet, the trade turned out to be a huge win for the Senators. Karlsson has unfortunately dealt with injury issues and this season he’s been lackluster offensively with a goal and five points in 16 games. The eight-year, $92 million contract the Sharks signed him to after the trade is looking brutal and so are the Sharks, who are well on their way to missing the playoffs for a second straight season.
Meanwhile, the Sharks collapse in 2019-20 played right into the Senators’ hands, who controlled the Sharks’ 2020 first-round pick. Suddenly what was assumed to be a pick in the 20s or worse when the trade was made turned out to be the third selection overall. The Senators used that pick on Tim Stutzle, who has five goals and 14 points in 22 games as a rookie and could be a foundational piece for the Senators going forward. On top of that, Ottawa got Josh Norris in that trade, who is also having a solid rookie season with four goals and 13 points in 25 contests and Chris Tierney, who has been a decent top-six forward in Ottawa. It’s still too early to close the book on the Karlsson trade, but it’s certainly looking a lot better for the Senators that it did back when the trade happened in 2018.
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As a minor aside, it would be the second time the Senators won a Karlsson trade. Ottawa traded up to the 15th overall pick back in 2008 to draft him. They sent the 2008 18th overall pick (Chet Pickard) and 2009 70th overall pick (Taylor Beck) to Nashville in what became an incredibly one-sided trade. Of course, you can be lenient on a team that lost a draft pick for draft picks trade given the amount of unknowns in such a deal and the reality is that the Predators, which already had two promising young defensemen in Ryan Suter and Shea Weber, might have decided against adding to an area of strength by drafting Karlsson with that 15th pick had they kept it. Still, it’s fun to wonder what might have been had the Predators featured Suter, Weber, and Karlsson together in their 20s. Not to mention Roman Josi, who Nashville took with the 38th pick in 2008 (though again, to be fair, if the Predators had selected Karlsson with the 15th pick, would they have taken yet another defenseman with the 38th selection?). Just to drive home this What If? scenario: In 2015, when Karlsson won the Norris Trophy for the first time, Weber, Josi, and Suter all finished in the top-10 of voting as well.
Of course, at this point things would be very different for the Predators anyways, which brings things back to today and Karlsson’s struggles. Even in 2018-19 and 2019-20 when Karlsson was limited to 53 and 56 games respectively do to injuries, he was still a regular contributor when he was on the ice. He reached the 40-point milestone in both of those campaigns, but his current point-per-game pace of 0.31 is the worst of his career. He’s still logging big minutes, including plenty of power-play ice time, but he’s arguably not the same player he once was. Injuries have seem to have taken their toll on him and while many players aren’t past their prime at the age of 30, in Karlsson’s case his best offensive seasons might be behind him.
That’s not to say that his performance so far this season is the new normal though. I do expect him to get better as the campaign goes on, but with 36 games left in the Sharks’ campaign, I’d pencil Karlsson in for 10-15 points rather than the 25-30 points he would have gotten when he was at his height.
Here’s another example of an older trade that’s only now starting to come into focus: In 2016, the St. Louis Blues dealt Brian Elliott to Calgary in exchange for a 2016 second-round pick and a 2018 conditional third rounder. That condition was never met, so it basically turned into a one-for-one deal, but the player St. Louis drafted with that pick was Jordan Kyrou, who has taken a huge step forward this season with eight goals and 20 points in 23 games. He’s been a driving force of the Blues’ offense and one of the reasons they’ve been able to stay competitive despite their injury woes.
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At the time parting ways with Elliott had to be tough for St. Louis. He had a 2.07 GAA and .930 save percentage in 42 games in 2015-16 and at the age of 30, it was reasonable to believe that he had a fair amount of good hockey left in him. However, he only had one year left on his contract and Jake Allen was on the rise, so the Blues decided it was better to get something from Elliott in a trade now rather than risk losing him as a free agent in a year because of their cap restraints. That proved to be absolutely the right call in the end. While Allen struggled as the Blues starter, Elliott’s absence did open the door to Jordan Binnington’s rise. At the same time, St. Louis got a draft pick out of it that has turned into a young forward who can help their team for years to come.
At the other end of the equation, Brian Elliott had one solid, but not spectacular season with the Flames and after Calgary got swept in the first round of the 2017 playoffs, the Flames opted to go with the tandem of Mike Smith and David Rittich for 2017-18 while Elliott signed with the Philadelphia Flyers. That’s not to say that the Flames were wrong to make the trade in the first place. Adding a starting goaltender for a second-round pick is a gamble worth making, it’s just to say that under the circumstances, the move paid off for the Blues and it illustrates why it can be better, even for competitive teams, to trade away upcoming UFAs for picks/prospects rather than allow them to play out the last year of their contract and then walk away without a return. It’s a way to give your franchise the best chance possible to stay perpetually competitive or at the very least, make rebuilds softer when they do need to happen.
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