The Penguins have tooled up for a playoff run, while their Crosby-Malkin-Letang window is still open, by acquiring Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann from the Florida Panthers. They sent Derick Brassard and Riley Sheahan to Florida, as well as a second and two fourth-round picks.
Of interest to me is that Nick Bjugstad is included in that trade. When the Canucks-Luongo relationship was unraveling over two or three seasons like a slow-motion car crash, and he pined for a return to the Panthers organization (his wife is from there and reportedly never took to the monotonous Vancouver climate), rumours were that the one player the Canucks kept asking for was Nick Bjugstad, a big hulking right-shot centre in the U.S. college system at the time, and the Panthers kept shutting that down, he was one of their jewel prospects.
Since then, Mr. Bjugstad has suffered injuries/concussions, had a couple good/great NHL seasons, but other disappointing ones. Also, while he was a hot ticket in an age when dinosaur-mentality teams like the Bruins ruled the Earth, when anything but the most egregious holding or stick fouls were considered ‘defensive hockey’, a 6'6" centre was a hot ticket, but in the ‘new NHL’, where skating relentlessly is the order of the day, maybe he’s not such a precious asset.
Jared McCann is also noteworthy, on his third team at 22 years old. His 19 year-old season, one year after being drafted, he could have been sent back down to his OHL team for a final junior season, as is common for any but the most talented players picked in the Top 10 or so of any draft, but the Canucks chose to hang on to him and play him in the NHL. Whispers were that he and fellow Canuck first-rounder Jake Virtanen both had issues surrounding their attitude and work habits and preparation, and the concern was that they might coast through a final year in Junior on their talent, that the organizations they were on in Junior might not be the best environment to progress, to ‘learn to be a pro’.
Whether that was successful is debatable, both didn’t have a great rookie year, were healthy scratches at some point, and the usually soft-spoken Daniel Sedin memorably made a sortie in the media against some members of his team’s complacency, about its work habits and effort during games being unacceptable, that most believe was intended at least in part for the rookies McCann and Virtanen. Jared McCann was dealt to the Panthers that off-season.
Derick Brassard is also a bit of an enigma, talented centre drafted 6th overall in 2006, he’s now on his fifth team in the NHL. When he landed in Ottawa, there was a bit of media focus on how circumstances had made it so he was traded out of Columbus and NYR, but he’d now landed at home, he was overjoyed to play in/across the river from his hometown. He didn’t last two full seasons as a Senator. This is the fourth time he’s been traded, although to be fair, the word out of the Columbus organization was that, as trade deadline rumours heat up and Mr. Brassard nears unrestricted free agency, they’d have him back on the Blue Jackets, which is usually a good sign.
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