The trade deadline this year was full of huge trades and awesome surprises. After the fact one NHL insider revealed a couple more trades that nearly happened.
NHL Insider Reveals Kings Had Interest In Penguins Forward At Deadline
One player that many expected to be moved this year was Penguins winger
Reilly Smith. The veteran has over 800 games of NHL experience, including a Stanley Cup championship he earned with Vegas Last season. Elliotte Freidman revealed after the deadline that there was some interest in him. He specifically mentioned the LA Kings, but noted that the team did not have enough cap room to make the deal work.
"There was a lot of competition for Toffoli. There were a lot of rumours about LA LA was also interested in
Reilly Smith; they just didn't have any room to do anything."
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That being said, this does not mean that the two teams still can't come to an agreement with the player in the future. After all, the Penguins future is very uncertain right now, especially with the way the team is trending and the shift in tone coming from Kyle Dubas.
Dubas Hints At Upcoming Rebuild For Pittsburgh Penguins
One word that NHL general managers hate to use is, "rebuild." It is like a curse that only teams in the most grim of situations use regularly. While Penguins general manager Kyle Dubas has not explicitly used the term, he did hint that the team could be heading in that direction in his latest media availability.
Kyle Dubas: "In my role, there's going to be a lot of times where you have to do things that people will question; that people will think are unpopular... But the goal, the job, has to be all the time about winning in the long run."
Words like these will likely scare many Penguins fans. After all,
Sidney Crosby is entering the final year of his contract next season. Should the team struggle again, there is a very real chance he could play his last game for the team next season. It is even possible that Dubas could look to fully embrace the rebuild over the summer, dealing the captain before next season even starts. While that decision will be very difficult, smaller moves such as dealing
Reilly Smith will hurt a lot less.
Per @FriedgeHNIC on his podcast, the LA Kings were a team that had interest in
Reilly Smith. File that one away for the summertime.
Troubled times are ahead for the Penguins. Luckily, fans have multiple Stanley Cup championships to remember as the team enters its next era.
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The Penguins nearly traded another top player at the Deadline!ADS
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