In a quick development over night Florida shocked the league this morning by moving the best defender in the world. Erik Karlsson two time Norris winner and perennial contender has been shipped back home to the Ottawa Senators. When GM Niehenke was approached about the deal he had the following to to say, “You know I’m honestly myself still a bit in shock. This deal kind of came out of nowhere and was done within a few PMs. It is rare coming along those situations yet alone with someone the tier Karlsson is in.” The trade saw Erik Karlsson, Trevor Lewis, and one million traded in return for Roman Josi and Ryan O’Reilly.

 

When asked about his motivation for the deal Adrian stated, “I actually tried for years to get Ryan O’Reilly in other leagues. We thought he added a dynamic upfront we lacked. When we looked at our charts and tables we realized our top-end defense is a point of strength. This is the same thing that allowed for the Hanifan trade earlier in the year. We feel while Josi is obviously no Karlsson he is still a top 15 defender and the impact lost on the back-end would be made up at forward with RoR.”

 

In a smaller deal to follow Florida moved one and half million for the services of Dennis Seidenberg. While not yet official it looks like the potential roster going forward may look as follows:

 

Ryan O’Reilly (PP1, PK2) – Evgeni Malkin (PP1) – Jack Eichel (PP1)

Jonathan Drouin (PP2) – Aleksander Barkov (PP2, PK1) – William Nylander (PP2)

Milan Lucic – Brian Boyle (PK2) – Leo Komarov (PK1)

Milan Lucic – Evgeni Malkin – Jack Eichel

 

Roman Josi (PP1, PK2) – Drew Doughty (PP1, PK1)

Rasmus Ristolainen (PP2, PK2) – Radko Gudas (PP2, PK1)

Dennis Seidenberg – Derek Forbort

Colin Miller

 

Jimmy Howard

Jonathan Quick