V̅DCCI On A Big Day

I found this Stuart Skinner facial expression funny and appropriate today for a number of reasons. I'll get to the reason for the title in a second, but the biggest reason was because the man making the facial expression was traded in what was being described as a "blockbuster" trade by pundits hours before an actual blockbuster trade happened. Perhaps we should stop throwing around hyperbole? At this point, everyone is asking why this trade was made, but I think we need to look deeper than the key pieces of the deal. There's one player involved who could be the lynchpin for a better season for another player and his new team if he's played correctly.

Yes, Quinn Hughes is now part of the Minnesota Wild after the Vancouver Canucks opted not to wait to see if the trade offers would get any better, but that's not the trade I want to look at today despite how intriguing that may be. Instead, I'm curious about the earlier trade that happened between the Edmonton Oilers and the Pittsburgh Penguins where goaltender Stuart Skinner, defenceman Brett Kulak, and a 2029 second-round pick were traded in exchange for goaltender Tristan Jarry and mostly-AHL forward Sam Poulin.

It might come as a surprise to most that the Penguins would trade Jarry at this point in the season when it seems he's having his best campaign in some time, but Jarry has never been a poor performer in the regular season behind the Penguins' lineup. Just once in the last seven seasons has he finished a season with a record below .500, so he's been good enough to help the Penguins fight for a playoff spot. That goal hasn't always been reached, but Jarry gave the Penguins middle-of-the-pack goaltending whenever he was in the crease.

The catch, for me, was that the Penguins still have the remainder of this season and two more seasons where they were paying Tristan Jarry $5.375 million annually for a goaltender who hasn't won a Stanley Cup playoff game since 2021. That should be concerning to anyone who wants to see Sidney Crosby hoist the Stanley Cup one more time before he retires, but Jarry has never been known to steal games at any point either. He's had some good games in his career, but I can't recall anyone saying a team got "goalied" by Jarry.

Between inconsistent play and injuries, a lot of people struggled with the how Kyle Dubas paid Jarry more than $5 million per season when he was re-signed in 2023. At 28, he hadn't really shown a knack for winning big games, but, again, he was good enough to help the Penguins reach their goal of competing for a Stanley Cup. Not lost on anyone is the fact that this season, with Jarry now 30 years-old, was looking like another opportunity for the Penguins to take a shot.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, perhaps Kyle Dubas finally stumbled upon that reality when Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman reached out last week about Jarry's availability. With the Oilers having cap space issues already, they needed to open some space, so flipping Stuart Skinner back to Pittsburgh was something that had to be done no matter who wanted to keep him. The other piece, however, is the player that intrigues me the most for what he might be able to do beside a player like Kris Letang or Erik Karlsson based on his history.

Karlsson is having his best season in years on both sides of the puck, and part of that reason is due to his defensive partner in Parker Wotherspoon. Every advanced statistical measure has Karlsson excelling with Wotherspoon beside him, handling the load of the defensive responsibilities while Karlsson pushes the play. That's not to say that Karlsson isn't having a strong defensive season, but it allows Karlsson to do what he does best more often in pushing the offence from the blue line. The end result is Karlsson is thriving again.

Kris Letang, meanwhile, has logged most of his ice time with Ryan Shea who, at times, looks out of place beside Letang. Their advanced metrics - Corsi-For percentage and Shots-For percentage - are both below 50% despite their expected-goals being above 50%. While the Penguins are finishing their offensive plays with Letang and Shea together, this seems unsustainable if Letang and Shea are deployed against better defensive opposition or with players who are less offensively-inclined. Something has to change on this pairing.

That's where Brett Kulak's acquisition is, on paper, the most important piece of this trade. You can see in the 2024 analysis done by The Oil Rig that Kulak was invaluable to the Oilers regardless of which side of the ice he played. Kulak made his defensive partner better - specifically Darnell Nurse - when played away from the likes of McDavid and Draisaitl. Kulak can play both sides of the ice, and he appears to be a more experienced version of Parker Wotherspoon.

Kulak, this season, had been paired mostly with Ty Emberson where he hasn't seen the same advanced statistical success, but there's a significant difference between Emberson's play and Nurse's play. That's where acquiring Kulak might benefit Letang and the Penguins if head coach Dan Muse decided to pair the playoff-tested Kulak with the free-wheeling Kris Letang. The proof may be in the 181 games playing beside oft-described "defensive liability" Evan Bouchard where Kulak and Bouchard had a CF% of 56.81 and an xG% of 55.45 while just having 35 offensive zone starts. They were good together.

I'll be very intrigued to see how Muse employs Kulak in Pittsburgh, so highlighting this trade as a goalie-for-goalie swap, while factual, might hide the underlying acquisition that Dubas sought. If the blue line gets better with a defence-first defender, the goaltending should improve as well. The opposite can be said in Edmonton where we'll have to watch to see if Emberson's number start to fall without Kulak beside him. If they do, Jarry may not be the answer after all.

I don't do a lot of advanced statistical analysis on this blog because I'm not all that convinced that stats are the be-all and end-all in hockey. I do like to watch trends, though, so asking the questions as to why Brett Kulak was included in this deal was one that required a little more digging. After all, good defensive players are harder to identify because there aren't many statistics that support what they do, but Kulak's comparisons with respect to who he plays beside tell a story that says Brett Kulak makes true offensive defenders better.

As for the title of the article, you may need to brush up on your Roman numerals because today is article #6701 - V̅DCCI in ancient Rome - on this blog. It's a big day whenever I pass by a new checkpoint, and it makes me laugh that I've had 6700 thoughts about hockey that I've published here. That's a baffling number to me.

Where does this ride stop? I have no idea, but post #6800 is not even on the horizon. Let's just take it one day at a time for now.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!