Brett Kulak got a call to see the coach and GM, and he knew what it meant.

Kulak and family packed up and moved from Edmonton to Pittsburgh in December. And now, the moving vans are rolling again, this time from Pittsburgh to Denver.

The Pittsburgh Penguins traded Kulak on Tuesday to the Colorado Avalanche, to Kulak’s great surprise and, it seems, some disappointment, too.

“I was (surprised), yeah, to be honest. Mentally, I was pretty surprised to be moved again, just the way the team was rolling,” Kulak told Colorado reporters. “And it’s a good team there. And I thought, at least, I would probably finish out the year there–that is where my mind was at. But you know this game and this league, it’ll surprise you when you least expect it.”

Pregame – Kulak (Feb. 25) https://t.co/8N1cFY2oc2

— Dan Kingerski (@TheDanKingerski) February 26, 2026

Sure, players make fabulous money not available to most people, and sure, playing in the Premier League in the world is a privilege for which many players would trade nearly anything, but that doesn’t make it easy on the players in the game.

The Kulak family includes a couple of small children. They decided to make Pittsburgh home, and despite his pending free agency and being 32 years old, Kulak seemed to be expecting more.

“We actually just made up our minds after the trade from Edmonton. We’re like, ‘Alright, let’s move our life there and settle in,’ and not kind of just live in interim times, I guess. But yeah, so we were totally settled in there,” Kulak said. “We found a place, and we had all our stuff there. It was getting nice, and then the trade happened, you know. We’ll just go through the same steps again and get ourselves settled in as quick as possible in Denver.”

He formed a solid, well-balanced pairing with Kris Letang that elevated the blue line.

“You know, (I) go to Pittsburgh, it’s a fresh start for me. It felt like it was sort of looking that way, anyway. So that was exciting,” said Kulak. “And to go to (the Penguins) and everyone’s hungry to prove themselves. Guys are at different stages of their careers, guys have won, guys who are trying to get their foot in the door make a name for themselves. And we had a really good team there, too. So that was a lot of fun to be a part of.”

But now Kulak is in Denver with his hockey bag, but his family is dealing with the fallout, and, as Kulak put it, “left to pick up the pieces.”

Trade?

The results of the trade will begin to play out on the Penguins’ ice Thursday when the team hosts the New Jersey Devils, and the immediately received trade piece, defenseman Sam Girard, will hit the ice on the second pairing with Kris Letang.

Looking toward the Penguins’ future, the 27-year-old Girard has more years to give, and the Penguins, both general manager Kyle Dubas and coach Dan Muse, indicated they believe Girard is a better defenseman than for which he’s given credit. Dubas also expressed confidence that the Penguins’ player development team and coaching staff would get Girard to his fullest game.

But Kulak was correct. The team was playing well, and part of that was Kulak’s chemistry with Letang and his ability to counterbalance Letang with a steady defensive game.

Girard is a defenseman who can escape trouble by dodging forecheckers and making a good first pass out of the zone. However, at 5-foot-10, 170 pounds, defending in the hard areas in intense games can be a problem.

Did the Penguins get the better defenseman in the deal?

A second-round draft pick would not be a sufficient spackle to paper over any regressions. After an offseason of Dubas moves that looked like mistakes or headscratchers that broke hard in Dubas’s favor, the trade presents a significant risk to that hotstreak.

The team will be missing Sidney Crosby for the next month, and presumably, Dubas knew Crosby’s prognosis as both were members of Team Canada, and Crosby knew within hours after the injury occurred.

An optimal defense would seem to be absolutely necessary more than ever.

Banking on Girard is indeed a risk. Girard’s skillset would seem to overlap with Letang’s, and the Penguins now have a need for the things Kulak brought.

Kulak made only $2.75 million and did not figure to break the bank this summer. He had already begun to put down roots in Pittsburgh, and the little verbal slip that he thought he would be with the Penguins for “at least” the rest of the season gave away his thought process and availability.

Girard is under team control for one more year before the Penguins have to make a decision on his $5 million salary and offer a new contract.

If Girard works out, he would be a bridge to the next era. A puck-moving offensive defenseman after Erik Karlsson’s contract expires next summer, and Letang’s expires in two years.

But it’s no guarantee to work out that easily.

Dubas’s run of recent success in the face of conventional wisdom and analysis earns plenty of space, and insulates labeling this trade a mistake. But it is a risk.

Categorized:PHN Blog