How the Pens can hit the jackpot by targeting these Vegas assets

Ever since joining the league as an expansion franchise in 2017, the Vegas Golden Knights have been a contender since day one. Their aggressive management has put them in a position where they will threaten for the cup on a regular basis. There are some moves the Penguins can make that would help them.
Vegas Golden Knights v Pittsburgh Penguins
Vegas Golden Knights v Pittsburgh Penguins | Justin Berl/GettyImages

Vegas and Pittsburgh will always be linked because the most prominent pick the Knights made in their expansion draft was snatching Marc-Andre Fleury from Pittsburgh. I still have fever dreams thinking about how Fleury won a Vezina in Vegas and the Pens have still not found a consistent netminder.

But that is enough complaining about the past, as Thomas Jefferson said, "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." Vegas is a polarizing team; either you love them or you absolutely hate them, and many fall into the latter category. What is undeniable is that they are very aggressive, and they always seem to extract the best out of players who other teams have rejected.

Erik Karlsson

This just feels like a guy Vegas would acquire and immediately turn into a Norris candidate. It is no secret that Karlsson's time in Pittsburgh has not been great, and it is not entirely his fault. The Penguins have no other competent defenders around him (except Grzelcyk, but who knows if he is coming back), and he is asked to do way too much.

When Karlsson was at the height of his powers in Ottawa and San Jose, he was not asked to be a shut-down defender; it has never been his strength, and now that he is asked to play that role, it has gone sideways. In Vegas, he would not be asked to do much defensively and instead focus on offense. For Vegas, if they have one weakness is that on their powerplay they lack a blueliner with a cannon and Karlsson would provide that.

This is a Hail Mary-type trade to get Karlsson off the books, but like I said, this feels like a Vegas-type trade. Whitecloud is a solid defender, brings basically nothing offensively, but the Penguins need a legitimate defensive defensman who can hopefully limit the amount of rubber Jarry and the other goaltenders see.

Vegas' backup goalie, Ilya Samsonov, is a UFA this summer so that the Penguins could try and trade Ned for a day two pick. The logic for this trade is to open up the backup slot for Joel Blomqvist and let Sergei Murashov be the primary AHL goaltender.

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