It’s been a little over a month since the trade with Edmonton sent Tristan Jarry for Brett Kulak, Stuart Skinner and a second round pick. To add a little more commentary on what was touched on earlier on this website today, the trade has been aging better by the day for the Penguins. What started out as a nice escape to clear the troubling contract of Jarry (who went back to the IR soon after the trade) turned out to enhance the Pens quite nicely so far on the ice.
There’s the future second round pick, which has no short-term relevance besides beefing up the reserves. Kulak’s addition to Pittsburgh has finally provided them with a second top-four caliber left-side defenseman and served to make Kris Letang look the best he has looked in…quite a while. Much has been made of Letang’s decline — and to be fair, time waits for no one and the 38-year old has looked every bit of his age recently. Then again, last season Letang’s most common defense partner was Matt Grzelyck, this season it was Ryan Shea prior to Kulak joining the team. It’s about 14 months overdue, but finally Pittsburgh has a partner for Letang with an above-average defensive impact, so it’s probably no wonder that the results the Pens have seen on the ice out of Letang have drastically improved once the blueline was addressed.
That alone would probably make the Edmonton trade enough of a success, but the headline-grabbing focus is naturally going to be on the goalie-for-goalie swap. It’s not every day in the NHL these days that you see two teams exchange starting goalies for one another. Skinner can a polarizing figure, although so far the Pens have to be thrilled. Skinner has five quality starts out of eight per hockey-reference, so far easily out-pacing Jarry’s one quality start for Edmonton. Jarry does have that IR stint working against him there, but as Beau Bennett taught us the best ability is availability and that’s another point in favor of the deal working out favorably.
Skinner can tend to ride extreme highs and lows, right now he’s caught a groove with a 4-1-0 record since the Christmas break that features a .941 save% and only allowing seven goals in those five games. In that stretch, the Penguins have commanding wins over three division rivals (Philadelphia last night, New Jersey last week, Carolina back on 12/30). In all of those games Skinner was not only one of their best players on the ice, he was a driving factor in every victory.
Trades often live on in relitigation for months and years afterwards so it surely is early to plan a parade or anything, but what a short-term boost that deal has provided for the Penguins to this point. The Oilers, despite Jarry’s injury, are 9-5-2 since the deal in their own right, so they’re probably not too mad about how things have gone lately either — since in an indirect way the move served to open a path for Connor Ingram’s return to the NHL where he has looked fairly sharp.
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Speaking of decisions paying instant dividends, Kyle Dubas has to feel assured about locking Blake Lizotte up for three more seasons earlier this week, not that he likely had many doubts about it in the first place. The length of the term isn’t back-breaking but it’s still a sizeable and notable one for a 28-year old with fourth line upside. It’s well-worth the commitment when a player is as capable as Lizotte to make an imprint on a game like he did last night against Philadelphia.
Lizotte scored a goal that ended up standing as the game winner and later threw a massive clean hit that triggered a response fight where he handled himself nicely (albeit, against a non-fighter in Matvei Michkov).
The supporting cast players for the Pens has been a massive issue dating back to the start of this decade. In 2021, perhaps Pittsburgh’s last best season where they won their division, Pittsburgh saw a +18 mark in goals for vs goals against at 5v5 when neither Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin were on the ice. By 2022-23, the first time they missed the playoffs, the Ron Hextall built team had slumped to -24 in that same category.
This season, the Pens are back strongly in the playoff hunt over halfway through the season and thanks to players like Lizotte and his frequent fourth linemates of Noel Acciari and Connor Dewar who have been on the ice for more goals for than against. When a team’s fourth line is not getting outscored despite the harsh defensive starts, that’s a good sign that they are going to be doing at least alright. Overall in the 5v5 category the Pens still have some work to do to with the performance of their mid-lines (players like Ben Kindel, Justin Brazeau, Kevin Hayes, Rutger McGroarty and Ville Koivunen have all been out-scored at 5v5) but so far they’ve definitely found something to work with and some major improvements from their depth, to which Lizotte will continue to be a key piece for the foreseeable future.
In previous early years of Dubas’s stint with Pittsburgh, a veteran on an expiring contract like Lizotte would have been traded away by the deadline. Whether this re-signing indicates a significant step into a phase of retaining key contributors or is a one-off remains to be seen, though it certainly is a strong piece of evidence that the Penguins are looking to hold what they can instead of defaulting into strictly selling off all parts when the time comes.
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Furthering the theme of improving the current roster, the acquisition of Egor Chinakhov has shown promise as an upgrade as well. Chinakhov’s stat-line with Pittsburgh isn’t overwhelming (three goals and an assist in eight games), his impact has been notable with his speed, shot and even a contribution of a shootout goal. Chinakhov is still something of a reclamation project coming off his stint in Columbus (he only manufactured three goals in 29 games at the start of the season with the Blue Jackets) yet there’s been encouraging early returns with the change of scenery.
In some ways, Dubas and the Pens have to hope this could be a case of “you get what you pay for” when comparing Chinakhov to a similar last year acquisition of Philip Tomasino. Chinakhov cost a fair bit more (a second+third round pick, compared to just a fourth rounder for Tomasino) and that is due to having a little bit more to work with. Last night’s short-side goal on the rush demonstrates an example – Chinakhov has the tools to generate game-breaking ability. Whether or not he has the consistency will be a lingering open question for a while. Finishing ability like this is worth the price, now it’s just about seeing how often he can deliver.
Fit in the frame of the big picture, it might also be pointed out that the move from adding second round picks — which Pittsburgh did under Dubas in every year in a stretch for the 2024-29 drafts (besides jockeying for draft positioning in 2025) — into now sending out a second round pick to bring in an NHL caliber player is some evidence of a sea change in the current organizational strategy. Whether it was trading away Jake Guentzel, Conor Timmins, Anthony Beauvillier, Luke Schenn, Tristan Jarry and Reilly Smith or taking on the bad contracts of Kevin Hayes and Matt Dumba, the Penguins operated for a couple years in a way of strictly accumulating second round picks. Now, in one instance at least, the worm turned the other way and Dubas acted on previously stated intentions to turn a pick into a current contributor.
The takeaway at this point shouldn’t be a drastic shift into an expectation of full-on spending, though it does seem notable that the tide could be starting to change in this regard depending on the inputs of the team. In the end, Dubas might get the best of both worlds where his ample cap space allows him to scour the league for future 22-25 year old players with potential while retaining more draft capital than just about everyone else in the league to use to select more than his fair share for the future too.
Because, ultimately, responding to the team’s inputs has been Dubas’s role in the past few years. He threw some caution to add/retain players like Erik Karlsson, Ryan Graves and Tristan Jarry in year one, when that didn’t work out in the standings, management shifted gears accordingly to pare down on players like Guentzel and Marcus Pettersson who needed new and expensive contracts, without dealing away quality performers like Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell who didn’t. The Pens got younger and suffered a bit to take lumps in losing key contributors without immediate replacement. Now that the team is in the hunt, it makes the situation appropriate for the manager to make moves that dovetail as good for the present while being good for the future, a fitting category for all three of the team’s transactions of the last month.
