The Erik Karlsson trade is complete: What the Penguins are sending to San Jose

With that piece of business now official, the Karlsson trade is in the books with the Penguins ultimately trading Nathan Legare, Jeff Petry, Casey DeSmith, Mikael Granlund, Jan Ruuta and the No. 14 overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft for Karlsson.

Knowing for certain what the pick is, my opinion on the trade remains unchanged. I still think it was good and the right move (and I still think it can and will work out), and the Penguins did not really give up anything of significant value. That first-round pick was always going to be the most valuable asset they traded, but I think we can all agree it probably turned out to be a little more valuable than we thought it would be.

Ideally, the Penguins would have made the playoffs, maybe won a round, and sent a pick somewhere in the 20s the other way.

Obviously, that did not happen.

So now that we officially know the pick, let's analyze what exactly the Penguins are giving up and the type of player or prospect they might be sending to San Jose.

First, here is simply a list of every player that has been taken No. 14 overall since the 2005 NHL Draft ranked in order of total games played in the NHL to this point.

Simply based on the recent history of that pick in the salary cap era, San Jose SHOULD get an NHL player out of it.

How good of an NHL player that turns out to be is obviously something that remains to be seen and has a pretty wide range of options.

The one name that obviously stands out here the most is Charlie McAvoy going to Boston.

He is the one player on this list that I think you can confidently say is a star, and somebody that might meaningfully impact the long-term outlook of a team and a potential rebuild. He is a No. 1 defenseman and a consistent Norris Trophy contender.

Kevin Shattenkirk, Jaden Schwartz and Jake DeBrusk have had nice careers as either a No. 2-3 defenseman (Shattenkirk) or productive middle-six forwards (Schwartz-DeBrusk), but none of them are franchise changers. They are just good, solid players.

But after even that group, is there anybody there that really moves the needle much for you?

Michael Grabner had a couple of big seasons and Joel Farabee has shown some flashes in Philadelphia, but pretty much all of those guys are the type of run-of-the-mill NHLer you can find pretty easily.

I do think just limiting this to only players chosen at exactly that spot can be a little misleading. Just because that particular team took that particular player at that spot does not mean that was a consensus pick that every team would have taken. It is not just about that player, but the other players you would have had available to you. So I also expanded this and looked at every player taken between No. 14 and No. 20 in each of these drafts just to expand the talent pool that is typically available in that range and at that pick.

That opens up the pool to 127 players in that time period.

To this point 109 of them played in at least one NHL game, a success rate of around 85 percent.

But only 84 of them played at least 100 games in the NHL, a success rate that drops down to around 66 percent.

To add another layer to it, here are the top-25 most productive players out of that sampling of players simply in terms of points per game.

There are a handful of bonafide stars there, including Karlsson, McAvoy, Kyle Connor, Mathew Barzal, J.T. Miller, Vladimir Tarasenko, and a handful of outstanding top-line players (Rober Thomas, Dylan Larkin, Alex Tuch, Teuvo Teravainen, Cole Caufield, Chris Kreider, and Tomas Hertl).

Andrei Vasilevskiy is the best of the goalies and the only one taken in that range that has appeared in at least 100 games.

But even with that, there are only 16 players out of that group that have averaged even 50 points per 82 games during their NHL careers.

Add in Vasilevskiy and that is still only about a 12 percent chance of landing a legitimate and consistent top-line player or star.

I am fine with those odds, and if San Jose is able to find somebody in that spot that can make an impact, I tip my cap to them. History says it is simply not likely and they are more likely to end up with Zemgus Girgensons or Michael Grabner. Which is fine. It is just not going to meaningfully impact anything.

The reality is that Karlsson, even at the current stage of his career, is likely to produce more for the Penguins over the next two or three years than any player picked in the No. 14 spot ever will in their respective NHL career.

It is simply not a pick you start a rebuild with, and I am fine with the Penguins taking one more big swing to get a future Hall of Famer.

Now they know for certain they have their 2025 first-round pick, which can either be used as trade bait at some point between now and the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline, or that they can hold on to in the event it ends up being even better or higher than the 2024 first-round pick. That is, unfortunately, a very real possibility.

Either way, the Erik Karlsson trade is now complete. I am still fine with it.