Pittsburgh Should be All in on Matt Duchene
Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports
Nick Kypreos is an analyst on Sportsnet, and he reported the Pittsburgh Penguins are interested in Matt Duchene, who is only 26 years old. He has 15 goals and 17 assists this season with the Colorado Avalanche, which is the worst team in the NHL right now.
According to Kypreos, general manager Joe Sakic wants three pieces in return: a draft pick, a prospect, and a defenseman. So he mentioned Derrick Pouliot's name as a part of the package. Kypreos also mentioned Marc-Andre Fleury because of Semyon Varlamov being injured for the rest of the season, despite having two years left on his contract.
Fleury is getting paid $5.75 million for the next two seasons in his contract, and Duchene is getting paid $6 million for the next two seasons in his contract.
If this is all Colorado wants in return, I would do this in two seconds and Pittsburgh should be all in on this. I understand Pittsburgh doesn't need another young goal scorer, but they are basically being handed a gift and they shouldn't pass on it.
Fleury will get to play daily in Colorado because it is Matt Murray's net now in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh would also trade Fleury because of expansion draft reasons. Pouliot is basically a turnover machine. Giving up a draft pick would also be no big deal because if they gave up one of this year's draft picks, they would still have seven of them.
Maybe they would also trade either a Scott Wilson, Eric Fehr, Oskar Sundqvist, Dominik Simon, Tom Kuhnhackl, or a Carl Hagelin to make the trade look more reasonable for Colorado's sake.
The odds are only one of those players would probably be dealt. It has also come to a point where some fans don't want to see Fleury in net anymore and they would rather see Tristan Jarry at this point.
What does this trade also does is get Sidney Crosby another solid linemate. Duchene, Crosby, and Hornqvist can all play on the first line. Malkim, Rust, and Sheary could play the second line. The HBK line would be the third line, and the fourth line would be Kunitz, Cullen, and Fehr.
The only con is there wouldn't be enough pucks to go around for all the top players, but adding a goal scorer for basically nothing is worth it for them.
