Winners and Losers from Penguins-Canucks Marcus Pettersson Trade

The Vancouver Canucks made two major trades on Friday night, with the second of those moves seeing them acquire defenseman Marcus Pettersson and forward Drew O’Connor from the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for Danton Heinen, Vincent Desharnais, prospect Melvin Fernstrom and a conditional 2025 first-round draft pick.

It helps the Canucks improve their defense, while also cornering the market on players named Pettersson.

For the Penguins, it is another big step in their re-tooling as they look to rebuild an aging roster.

Let’s take a look at some of the winners and losers from the trade.

Kyle Dubas has not been perfect in his first two years running the Penguins, but his best moves have seemingly been those with an eye geared toward the future.

This is one of those moves.

He knew Pettersson and O’Connor were pending unrestricted free agents, he knew they probably did not fit in with their long-term outlook, and he managed to not only get back another first-round pick, but also a solid prospect and two veteran players in Heinen and Desharnais that also might have their own trade value to be flipped.

The Penguins now have 29 draft picks over the next three years, including four first-round picks, four second-round picks and seven third-round picks. Those picks give the Penguins a lot of long-term flexibility, allowing them to either add more prospects to a farm system that needs to be rebuilt or trade those picks for younger NHL players.

If he had to move both players, this would probably be as good of a return as he could have hoped.

Pettersson and O’Connor are going to help the Canucks in the short term, but giving up a first-round pick and a good prospect for them is a steep price. When you combine that price with Dallas having to give up first- and fourth-round picks for Mikael Granlund and Cody Ceci it is looking to be a seller’s market at the moment.

The biggest reason for that is there are still so many teams that think they are still in it and do not want to commit to selling. Fewer sellers, more buyers, and more teams that are not quite sure what they are supposed to be doing could lead to some higher prices to pay.

Having said that, even if you conclude that Vancouver may have had to overpay to make this move, its defense did still get better. And that is still worth something.

Pettersson is not going to score a lot of points, but he is a rock-solid defender who will be an upgrade defensively and is also a very capable puck-mover and play-driver. When he is on the ice good things are generally happening for the Penguins, as they typically out chanced their opponents. His 55.6 expected goal share is 30th in the NHL out of 228 defenders with at least 200 minutes of 5-on-5 ice time this season.

Pettersson was the one defenseman the Penguins could consistently rely on in the defensive zone this season, and the chaos constantly happening around him may have helped overshadow that.

He is also a big winner because he is getting an opportunity to go from a team whose playoff hopes for this season are slipping away, to a team that is still very much in the Western Conference race.

It is probably a secondary concern for the Penguins at the moment given how much they are looking toward seasons beyond this one, but their defense is going to get significantly worse without Pettersson in the lineup.

It could also be especially bad news Erik Karlsson.

Pettersson and Karlsson have spent more than 464 minutes together this season, and there were some definite splits in their play with and without each other.

For example — when Karlsson and Pettersson have been on the ice together the Penguins have a 55.6 percent expected goal share.

When Pettersson has been on the ice without Karlsson, it is still over 53.4 percent.

When Karlsson is on the ice without Pettersson, it drops down to 45.1 percent.

Maybe the Penguins are okay with that because of what it might mean for the draft position.

But if they are trying to build Karlsson’s value back up to maybe trade him at some point over the next year or two not having a reliable partner next to him might not help that a lot.

Either way, the Penguins defense in the short term is not as good as it was at the start of the day on Friday.