The Brassard Trade 37 Months and a Day Later

I have to admit this, one of my favorite posts to read is when our friend Rick Buker catches us up on what the former Pittsburgh Penguins are doing, every 5 or 6 weeks or so – Thanks Rick!

Why is this important? Well, this morning I was interested in looking ahead this season as to who beside our favorite flightless fowl still had games to play against the Buffalo Sabres and the New Jersey Devils; sort of trying to gauge who could represent the most trouble for our hometown heroes. The site I chose to look up the remaining schedules of the MassMutual’s cellar dwellers always has interesting tidbits circling its homepage to help a visitor to the page lose him or herself down the rabbit hole. The eye catcher that seduced me this bleary-eyed AM was a list of players who recently made there NHL debut. Lo and behold, to my surprise was one Filip Gustavsson.

For those of you who may have forgotten, Gustavsson was our Penguins 2nd round draft pick in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft. Gustavsson had a rather stellar career in the Swedish Junior Super Elite leagues and was a kid yours truly was watching and anticipating the opportunity to see don the black-and-gold. Unfortunately, said draft pick was dealt to the Ottawa Senators in the ill-fated Derick Brassard fiasco.

Despite the fact our Penguins were playing strong, Sidney Crosby, and Evgeni Malkin were healthy, and 3rd line Center Riley Sheehan was growing into what looked like the solid 3rd line Center the team needed when Nick Bonino fled for greener (word choice carefully chosen) pastures, then GM Jim Rutherford opted to give away the house for a veteran Center.

Now in fairness, even though I vehemently wrote my objections to the thought of screwing up the team chemistry, Brassard was the darling of that deadline. Many talking heads were pushing for someone to deal for the Center. Me I was praying for divine intervention to keep Rutherford for making any big-name trades. Or if he must deal with Ottawa to demand Jean-Gabriel Pageau. (Look back on these boards and you will see.)

Unfortunately, Rutherford did not heed my advice, nor were my orisons fruitful. On February 23, 2018, Ian Cole, Gustavsson, a 1st Round Pick in the 2018 Draft and a 3rd Round Pick in the 2019 Draft were shipped up to Ottawa for Brassard, Vincent Dunn, and Ottawa’s 3rd Round Pick in the 2018 Draft. Brassard never meshed with any combination on the Penguins and the team was unceremoniously dumped from the playoffs by a Washington Capitals team that up until that point would fall over backwards to hand the Penguins victories; the black-and-gold was so deep inside their psyche.

Cole wound up getting into the 3rd round of the playoffs with the Colorado Avalanche a couple of times but Gustavsson found the going tough for several seasons with Ottawa, toiling in their farm system. Now, finally (finally? He is only 22), Gustavsson has made his way into the NHL and has gleaned his first NHL victory as well as a Shoot Out loss on an Ottawa team that quite frankly stinks. The kid has posted a 0.977 Save Percentage (Sv%) along the way.

With the 1st round pick the Senators nabbed off Rutherford, they selected Defensemen (Right-Handed) Jacob Bernard-Docker. Bernard-Docker is in North Dakota playing College hockey. In the three season he has spent in the NCAA he has 93 Games Played (GP), scored 15 Goals (G), 44 Assists (A), 36 Penalty Minutes (PIM), and is a + 34. The Senators packaged the 3rd Round Pick with their 3rd Round Pick in a deal with the Carolina Hurricanes to move up a couple of spaces in the draft and add Mads Søgaard a Danish Goalie who is on loan to the Esbjerg Energy of the Danish league this season and has a 0.922 Sv%. For the previous 2 seasons Søgaard played for Medicine Hat in the WHL, posting a record of 40-21-6 with a Sv% of 0.915% and 7 Shut Outs.

Dunn never made it up to the NHL let alone for the Penguins. The Penguins packaged the 3rd Round Pick they received with another pick to move up a couple of spaces to draft Filip Hållander. Hållander was recently dispatched to the Toronto Maple Leafs this past off season with Evan Rodrigues, David Warsofsky and the teams 1st Round Pick (15th Over All) for Kasperi Kapanen, Pontus Aburg and Jesper Lingren. Aberg played in the KHL this past season scoring 10 G with 13 A in 49 GP for Traktor Chelyabinsk. Lindgren had 1 G and 17 A in 25 GP for MODO of the HockeyAllsvenskan and was a -2 so far in 2021 and looks like he may be reporting to the Wilkes – Barre Scranton Penguins to play there.

Derick Brassard, he scored 12 G and had 11 A in 54 GP and was -5 in Pittsburgh but was traded to the Florida Panthers for Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann. Bjugstad was sent to the Minnesota Wild in a salary dump and McCann has had his ups and downs since coming.

McCann and Kapanen were looking good with Malkin before the big Center went down with a lower body injury. If Gustavsson continues to play like he has in his first couple of outings, then McCann and Kapanen have got to keep putting up numbers even without Malkin.

Sorry Rutherford, this trade still looks really bad for you.

Odds and Sods

The New Jersey Devils helped us out last night by knocking off the Philadelphia Flyers 4 – 3.

Speaking of Rick Buker, as I was at the top of this post, he recently wrote a piece on what he would have done this past off-season if he were GM and mentioned that I had been working on a similar piece on what our Penguins would be looking like if I were the GM. My thoughts went back to 2017-2018 but I hadn’t posted it yet waiting for a good transition to it. I followed my posts and replies from the past to see what the team would look like now. I think this particular rant can serve as a pretty good segue to that series. If you tune in, you will get to see who I would have used that 1st Round Pick Ottawa got and it wouldn’t have been Bernard-Docker.

Next Up the bottom of the division, the Buffalo Sabres, tonight at PPG Paints Arena at 8pm, not the usual 7pm. Yours truly should be there in attendance (Thanks Carri!)

Go Pens