FLEECE WATCH: Grading The Penguins' Trade Deadline HAULS

Ranking every Pens trade on a scale of FLEECES.

Mar 08, 2025

Most people will tell you that “grading” trade deadline deals right after they happen is tricky. Often, we won’t know who “won” a trade until years later, plus in many cases, when a team is clearly buying and one is clearly selling, it’s very normal for both teams to be happy with the outcome of a trade.

Those people are COWARDS. This is the internet, and here, we’re not interested in BOTH TEAMS getting some wimpy little TRADE PARTICIPATION TROPHY. We’re only interested in two things: Who FLEECED who? And how big of a HAUL did the FLEECER get?

I took a look at the Pens’ trades and non-trades from Deadline Day and rated them all on a scale of 0 to 5 “Fleeces,” measuring just how fleecey the fleece was.

Penguins Get: C Tommy Novak, D Luke Schenn
Predators Get: LW Michael Bunting, 2026 4th round pick

Penguins Get: 2026 2nd round pick, 2027 4th round pick
Jets Get: D Luke Schenn

I thought Michael Bunting would stick with the Pens until the 2026 deadline and get flipped for a 2nd round pick — the standard rate for a pretty good rental winger. Instead, the Pens made this weird, out-of-nowhere trade with 30th place Nashville, which basically amounted to swapping Bunting for middle-6 center Tommy Novak and gaining a 2nd round pick out of thin air.

Novak is a 27-year-old center who’s been in the 40+ point range the past two seasons but is on pace for closer to 30 this year, likely because of a drop in power play time with Nashville signing 17 power play specialists last offseason. I don’t think he’ll be a part of the Pens’ long-term future, but if he can be a good, solid, standard 3rd line center next year (and occassionally fill in on the top two lines when Crosby or Malkin are out), I think he’ll have way more value at the trade deadline than Bunting would have.

Look at the centers this year: Scott Laughton (27 points in 60 games) netted a 1st rounder from Toronto, and Yanni Gourde (18 points in 37 games) was part of a deal for multiple first from Tampa. Every team in the league needs centers at the deadline, and it’s very easy to imagine similar interest in Novak a year from now. I think there’s a real chance he nets a 1st or the prospect equivalent, and the Pens end up essentially turning Bunting into a 2nd and a 1st, instead of just the standard 2nd he probably would’ve gotten at next year’s deadline.

Why didn’t Nashville just trade Schenn to the Jets for a 2nd themselves? Would the Pens have turned down Novak for Bunting? I doubt it.

GRADE: 4 Fleeces

Penguins Get: 2025 2nd round pick

Capitals Get: LW Anthony Beauvillier

Rental wingers are the most dime-a-dozen commodity at the trade deadline. I thought for sure, based on precedent, Beauvillier was headed somewhere for a 4th or maybe a 3rd in some throwaway trade we wouldn’t hear about until like 3:50 pm. Instead, the first place Caps acquired him early on deadline day for a 2nd — the same price as the much-more-coveted Brandon Tanev, and a bigger return than Andrei Kuzmenko (3rd), Mark Jankowski (5th), and Daniel Sprong (7th.)

Granted, the Caps’ pick will be at the end of the 2nd round, and if the 2025 draft is as weak as some pundits have been saying, it’s possible this 2nd isn’t much more valuable than a standard 3rd or 4th in any other year. But even still, no one predicted this guy netting a 2nd when the Pens signed him this offseason coming off a five goal season. His flexibility to play up & down the lineup and his miniscule cap hit made him a pretty attractive option in the end.

GRADE: 4 Fleeces

Penguins Get: 2027 3rd round pick, Chase Stillman, Max Graham
Devils Get: C Cody Glass, LW Jonathan Gruden

This came out of nowhere. Glass, a former 6th overall pick, hasn’t been terrible in Pittsburgh this year, but he’s sitting on 4 goals and is a restricted free agent next year; the Pens weren’t going to qualify him. Gruden is a fringe NHLer, but is already 24 and projects more as a fourth liner, if anything.

Stillman is a former 1st rounder who’s gone extremely cold in the AHL this year. He ranked as the Devils’ 13th prospect in Scott Wheeler’s writeup from January. Graham is an unsigned 5th round pick who’s putting up a point a game in the WHL at age 20. I don’t know if either one’s on any kind of NHL track, but they’re 21 and 20, respectively, so they’re more in the “lottery ticket” vein than “throw-ins because a team had to get rid of some players under contract.”

Still, if you view the overall transaction as the Pens gaining a 3rd and 6th just to take Cody Glass’ cap hit for a year, then getting another 3rd and two fringe prospects to regift that contract, again, it’s a case of Dubas manifesting assets out of thin air. My man’s been reading The Secret.

GRADE: 3.5 Fleeces

Penguins Get: D Conor Timmins, C Connor Dewar

Maple Leafs Get: 2025 5th round pick

This was a bizarre deal that didn’t make much sense to me at first. Timmins is a veteran third-pairing RD, and Dewar is a 25-year-old defensive fourth liner who hasn’t scored in 31 NHL games this year. Both are restricted free agents after the year. The trade saved Toronto ~$2 million in cap space through the end of the year.

I think, ultimately, the Pens did this so they’ve have enough NHL bodies to finish out the year without having to call up too many AHL players and derail Wilkes-Barre’s playoff run. Maybe they bring back Timmins next year for depth, but I doubt they qualify either player. A 5th round pick isn’t worth much, and the Pens have a billion picks, but I’m surprised they had to throw in anything when they were already doing Toronto a bit of a favor by taking the salaries.

But, still, if it lets the Pens’ Wilkes-Barre group grow together longer, and helps the NHL team rack up some boring losses down the stretch without the team completely meltdown-imploding, I guess it has some value.

GRADE: 0.5 Fleeces

Penguins don’t trade D Matt Grzelcyk

Once everyone saw Beauvillier and Schenn go for 2nd round picks, many of us thought for sure Matt Grzelcyk was out the door next. Why not take advantage of this inflated market and so many teams looking to add D? Instead, the Pens held on to Grzelcyk through the deadline, which makes me think contenders just didn’t have much interest in adding a 5’11” guy to their backend, even for depth purposes.

Grzelcyk has been fine on the Pens’ power play this year, but he’d still be an odd fit on a contender; it’s tough to hide any defensemen in the playoffs, and his offensive payoff isn’t so great that it’d be worth dressing him and needing to shelter his pair in the postseason when one errant shift here or there could swing a series.

That said, he’s still probably better than most teams’ #7-9 defensemen, and I thought he’d be worth a 3rd or 4th even before the market went nutso. Ah well.

GRADE: -1 Fleece

Penguins don’t trade LW Rickard Rakell

I’m worried about the Pens not trading Rakell. Not because I think Dubas overvalued him and turned down some awesome deal that will be suddenly off the table this Summer and make him regret it. I’m worried because I think the fact he didn’t trade him means Rakell doesn’t have as much trade value as we were all drooling about after witnessing the Brock Nelson and Yanni Gourde / Oliver Bjorkstrand deals.

I still think there will be a market for Rakell this Summer, but I don’t think any team is gonna go crazy to acquire him. This offseason, Mitch Marner, Brock Boeser, Nikolaj Ehlers, John Tavares, Brad Marchand, Brock Nelson, Claude Giroux, Sam Bennett, Ryan Donato, and more are UFAs. Young forwards like J.J. Peterka, Trevor Zegras, Marco Rossi, and others might be available in a trade. Rakell will not be many teams’ “Plan A” at forward this offseason.

Rakell does still have trade value, though. With the cap going up and so many teams looking to improve, guys like Brock Boeser are going to sign some crazy-seeming 7 year x $8.5 million deals, which will make Rakell’s 3 years x $5 mil pretty desirable, even at his age. Teams who miss out on the top free agents, or who don’t want to commit to inflated long-term contracts, or who sign a big free agent and want to keep adding could all circle back to Rakell. It also helps the Penguins that a lot of teams aiming to improve next year — Chicago, Anaheim, Buffalo, Ottawa, Detroit, Montreal, San Jose, etc. — are teams flush in picks and prospects who might not be as hesitant to deal them for a veteran addition like Rakell, even when they’re not under “deadline” style pressure.

All that said, though, I don’t see any of those teams giving up a 1st and a great prospect for Rakell. There’s just too many options on the market. Would you do it? If you’re a GM, who would you rather give up a “haul” for, the 23-year-old Peterka, or the 32-year-old Rakell coming off his best season since 2018?

I still think they’ll trade Rakell this Summer. I hope they do, in fact. But I think our dreams of a Brock Nelson style HAUL coming back were a bit delusional.