San Jose Sharks exec talks Erik Karlsson trade to Pittsburgh Penguins

SAN JOSE – Speculation continued for months earlier this year as to how the San Jose Sharks were going to trade Erik Karlsson and get decent value in return without retaining a huge amount of money.

Finally, when the three-team trade was finalized on Aug. 6 and Karlsson became a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Sharks had kept only $1.5 million of the three-time Norris Trophy winner’s $11.5 million salary cap hit on their books through the end of the 2026-2027 season.

In the offseason, Sharks president Jonathan Becher said general manager Mike Grier spoke to either him or owner Hasso Plattner nearly every other day over an approximately eight-week period about where the trade process stood.

“There were occasional GMs that lobbed lowball offers at us,” Sharks president Jonathan Becher said recently, but that in the end, “there were three, sometimes four teams that were in the neighborhood of a reasonable deal, and eventually we got one done that makes sense.”

Karlsson and the Penguins play the Sharks tonight and while one can quibble about the return — Mikael Granlund, Mike Hoffman, Jan Rutta, and a first-round draft pick from Pittsburgh — the key component to the trade from San Jose’s perspective was creating an extra $10 million in cap space for both the 2025-26 and 2026-27 seasons.

But Becher said the trade didn’t happen the way it did just because Plattner wanted to save money. At the time, Karlsson was owed over $35 million.

“I don’t think that was Hasso’s decision,” Becher said. “I think that’s the three of us that came to the conclusion that of the balance of things we can do, this is the best way to handle this situation. To make that Hasso’s decision is a little bit of a simplification.”

So does the Karlsson trade provide a blueprint for how the Sharks will approach any future trades of players on costly, long-term contracts?

Not necessarily, Becher said.

“I think in general, no GM, no president no owner wants to retain a bunch of money. That’s just not the right thing to do, in general, to pay someone not to play for you,” he said. “Having said that, in every situation you do a little bit of a calculus for this particular player for this market that exists right now.

“Last offseason was a market that we haven’t seen in a long time. The salary cap only went up by $1 million. There were more free agents out in the market than there had been in the past. So you can’t make a blanket decision which is, ‘I’ll retain a lot.’ You have to understand what else is going on and who might be able to use that person’s service. Karlsson’s not useful to many teams, (but) he’s useful for other teams. Then you make the decision, for this person, maybe we can retain up to ‘X’ but only if we get this much draft capital or these kinds of prospects.”

The NHL salary cap is projected to rise from $83.5 million to between $87-$88 million next season when the players will have paid back the owners in full the roughly $1.5 billion escrow debt they incurred in the 2019-20 season.

“So maybe you even have to retain less, or not anything, or if you’re a team doing a trade because now people have more capital to use,” Becher said. “That’s what makes this business interesting.”

Just like he did for Karlsson and Brent Burns, who both sought trades to win-now teams with the Sharks still rebuilding, Grier said at the start of training camp that he would listen if a veteran like Logan Couture or Tomas Hertl came to him looking to move to more of a playoff-contending team.

Grier has said he’s not looking to trade either Couture, 34, or Hertl, 29, and neither centerman has said they want to be traded. But like Karlsson, those players could also be nearing the stages of their respective careers where being a part of a long rebuild would lack appeal.

“If I thought it was going to be a five-, six-, seven-year rebuild, then obviously things would change,” Couture told NHL.com in August. “But I think Mike has done a good job of retooling (with) some really good (draft) picks. It’s tough to predict what happens a couple of years from now, but I’m excited about this season. I want to turn this thing around here in San Jose.”