{"id":497136,"date":"2026-02-24T21:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T21:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/497136\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T21:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T21:43:10","slug":"penguins-acquire-samuel-girard-from-avalanche-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/497136\/","title":{"rendered":"Penguins Acquire Samuel Girard From Avalanche \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Penguins acquired left-shot blue-liner Samuel Girard<\/a>\u00a0and a 2028 second-round pick from the Avalanche in exchange for defenseman\u00a0Brett Kulak<\/a>, both teams announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Girard has been in the rumor mill for what seems like years. Colorado hoped to make him a future top-four anchor behind\u00a0Cale Makar<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Devon Toews<\/a> \u2013 he actually predates both of them and was the Avs\u2019 longest-tenured defenseman \u2013 when they acquired him from the Predators in 2017. After the puck-mover impressed and sniffed 20 minutes per game of ice time in his first full season in Colorado, the Avs inked him to a seven-year, $35MM extension.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Some warned the commitment was premature. Now, in the penultimate season of the contract, they\u2019d be right, at least based on his recent play. Girard\u2019s performance back in the pandemic-shortened 2021 campaign made it look like he\u2019d be the final piece of a true three-headed monster behind Makar and Toews, rattling off 32 points and a +15 rating in 58 games. His trajectory has been largely downhill from there. His minutes were steadily reduced from the 23-plus minutes he logged that year, his playoff performances were negligible, and he never churned out the same level of two-way play. He\u2019s topped 30 points just once since then and has had negative relative Corsi impacts three times in the last five seasons at 5-on-5.<\/p>\n

Still, Girard remained Colorado\u2019s clear-cut No. 2 left-shot option behind Toews, especially after the Avs jettisoned\u00a0Bowen Byram<\/a> at the 2024 trade deadline. Then came this season. Girard sustained an upper-body injury in Colorado\u2019s second game of the season that left him on the shelf for a month. During that time, veteran righty\u00a0Brent Burns<\/a>\u00a0got the bump up to second-pairing minutes with\u00a0Josh Manson<\/a>\u00a0moving to his offside in lieu of Girard. That duo, with over 2,200 combined games of NHL experience, has put up fantastic results \u2013 even posting better possession numbers than Makar and Toews have with a 56.8 xGF%, per MoneyPuck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That pushed Girard down to a third-pairing role along with Sam Malinski<\/a>, averaging only 17:41 of ice time per game. Even there, Malinski\u2019s 25-point, +30 breakout through 55 games had rendered Girard as something of an expensive depth redundancy, especially with Malinski now extended through 2029-30 and Girard costing $5MM against the cap.<\/p>\n

That cap impact, in a season where the Avs are the top Cup favorites by a significant margin, is why general manager Chris McFarland was willing to offload a second-round pick to get out of the last year and a half of his deal \u2013 especially if they\u2019re receiving a much cheaper third-pairing option in Kulak in return, who\u2019s having a strong season. Swapping out Girard for the pending UFA Kulak, who costs only $2.75MM, now leaves the Avs with a projected $10.82MM in cap space on deadline day, per PuckPedia<\/a>. They\u2019ve also given themselves $13MM even in cap space for next season, up from just $8MM to fill seven spots before the deal.<\/p>\n

Kulak\u2019s time in Pittsburgh ends after 25 games. It\u2019s his second time being traded this season, having been acquired from the Oilers in December as part of the\u00a0Tristan Jarry<\/a>\/Stuart Skinner<\/a>\u00a0swap. During that time, he\u2019d gotten a bump in minutes alongside\u00a0Kris Letang<\/a>\u00a0in top-four deployment and showed he was up to the task. He\u2019s having a tough season offensively, even by his limited standards as a shutdown bottom-four piece, but managed seven points with a +2 rating while playing almost exclusively with Letang. That duo controlled 52.2% of expected goals as well, per MoneyPuck.<\/p>\n

Given how both players grade out this season, it\u2019s likely a lateral move at worst for both clubs. It\u2019s a bit more of a long-term focused move for the Pens, though. They have little to no long-term security in their top four. Parker Wotherspoon<\/a> has impressed this season, elevated as a top-pairing shutdown partner for\u00a0Erik Karlsson<\/a>, although he\u2019s been a career third-pairing option and, at age 28, the prospects for regression next season are bright. Ryan Shea<\/a>\u00a0is, like Kulak, a pending UFA. Their veteran depth options are uninspiring, and it\u2019s questionable if 2022 first-rounder\u00a0Owen Pickering<\/a>\u00a0will be ready to log NHL minutes next season.<\/p>\n

They now have a year and change of a 27-year-old Girard, plus the ability to discuss an extension with him starting July 1. He immediately becomes their most offensively dynamic threat on the left side and becomes the youngest name in Pittsburgh\u2019s aging top-four group. They\u2019re banking on Girard, who has 12 points in 40 outings this season, to return to his 30-plus point form back in expanded minutes, but considering he\u2019s averaged over 20 minutes per game for his career, it\u2019ll be a familiar situation for him.<\/p>\n

Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet<\/a> was first to report the trade.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Steven Bisig-Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins acquired left-shot blue-liner Samuel Girard\u00a0and a 2028 second-round pick from the Avalanche in exchange for defenseman\u00a0Brett…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[23986,49,48,758,4247,753,18017,82,4584],"class_list":["post-497136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-brett-kulak","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-newsstand","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-samuel-girard","tag-sports","tag-transactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}