What We Learned: Sharks have incredible options on defense

The idea for the San Jose Sharks in acquiring Erik Karlsson was a relatively simple one: When you have the chance to go out and get one of the best players on the planet, you do it.

It didn’t matter that they already had another elite defenseman, albeit one coming off a bit of a down season and way past the wrong side of 30. It didn’t matter that their No. 2 defenseman on that side of the ice, Justin Braun, is also a very good shutdown guy. When you can get an Erik Karlsson, you move heaven and earth to get him, and if you can do it at a bargain-basement price, well, you save on the moving costs.

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Obviously teams with two true, elite No. 1 defensemen are almost unheard of and those that carry two guys of that caliber tend to be incredibly good. The mid-2000s Anaheim and more recent Tampa teams are two pretty good examples of this, but you have to say that those clubs did and do all they can to control the ice for the vast majority of the game specifically because they had or have those two players, in addition to other top talent.

On the one hand, then, you can argue that Peter DeBoer might have the easiest job in the league: You put Karlsson out there for one shift, put Burns out for the next, maybe go back to Karlsson again, then let Braun get a shift as needed.

(I’ve mentioned it before, but the only person this trade really isn’t that good for is Braun, who’s going to go from playing 21-plus minutes last season to, probably, something in the neighborhood of 16 or 17. He might not see it as all that fair considering his own quality, but when the team can slot Karlsson and Burns ahead of you, there’s not a lot of argument to be made.)

But is DeBoer’s job really easy? Even leaving aside the “talent management” thing where you have to keep everyone happy with power play minutes and all that stuff, actually making the on-the-fly decisions about how you play everyone probably isn’t as easy as it seems.

Do you, for instance, give Karlsson the easier minutes against middling competition while playing him with, say, the Kane-Thornton-Pavelski line? That gives the group someone to carry the puck out of their own end as needed, and puts all those guys in a position to create offense, and do it in a different way from what they’re used to.

Burns is a trigger man who shoots the puck a crazy amount, and while that helps get him a bunch of goals when his shooting percentage doesn’t drop through the floor, it also turns the forwards in front of him into a kind of mop-up crew; when you’re shooting from the blue line you’re hoping to either score or create havoc with a rebound. Pavelski and Kane are good at dealing with that, and Thornton is good at settling things down to control the play if you regain possession. They also largely didn’t play against top talent last season, so giving Karlsson a bit more flexibility there so he doesn’t have to be a shutdown guy goes a long way.

That gives you the ability to use Burns as more of your hammer playing tougher minutes behind Meier-Couture-Hertl. That group can still create a lot of offense but you can count on them to do a lot more of the heavy lifting against the top talent in the Pacific which, you can say what you want about that division, but it has a lot of good top lines.

And moving Braun away from the shutdown pair with Marc-Edouard Vlasic (another high-end defender) might give him a better chance to push play against the bottom of other teams’ lineups. Which, hey, that probably makes him one of the best, ahem, “third-pairing” defenders in the league.

The thing is that neither of Karlsson nor Burns would do poorly being the shutdown guy or the offense-driver guy or certainly a hybrid of the two. They’re going to play a combined 50 minutes a night anyway so they’ll see plenty of just about everyone in the lineup, and when DeBoer wants to line-match in critical situations, he has that phenomenal flexibility.

The real question is what DeBoer does with the guys on the left side of the ice. Vlasic, as mentioned, is the traditional shutdown guy and there’s no need to shake that up. Brenden Dillon and Joakim Ryan are probably going to find themselves playing plenty of time with an all-world defender one way or another.

But one thing DeBoer might like to explore at 5-on-5 specifically is not really having set pairing partners for either Karlsson or Burns at all. Again, if they’re going to play 25 minutes a night each anyway, they’re going to play against everyone, so the only thing one might really be concerned with is that Vlasic is the one going over the boards any time the other team’s top line is there. Burns, Karlsson, or Braun, it probably doesn’t matter who he’s paired with as long as it’s against those first units. Obviously you’d prefer Burns or Karlsson but Braun has shown he’s not bad at shutting down opposing attacks, so it’s not a bad fallback position if the first two are unavailable.

And probably they will be unavailable from time to time. If, for instance, they are not both out there for the top power play unit, I would suggest that’s a bit of malpractice. Karlsson is basically a fourth forward out there anyway in terms of his ability to see the ice in the attacking zone and make plays happen, so a) you don’t need to marry yourself to 4F/1D power plays, and b) Burns can still be your hammer on the point if that’s what you want to do. Which, ehh, I could leave or take the strategy because I’d rather have guys shooting close to the net, but it’s worked before and it can certainly work again.

On the PK, neither Karlsson nor Burns were their teams’ first choice last season. Vlasic and Braun were the guys for San Jose, of course, while Cody Ceci and just about anyone who wasn’t Karlsson were the top unit in Ottawa. Now the Sharks will basically have to use one or both of them on the second unit, which isn’t a bad idea because they can potentially create a lot of offense going the other way, but also if you want to make Braun basically shutdown-only and ensure Karlsson or Burns (but probably Karlsson) is getting minutes almost exclusively at 5-on-5 or the power play, that’s probably a good strategy.

The point, though, is that when you’re looking at options like this, it’s an embarrassment of riches. There are dozens of alignments from which DeBoer can choose, and basically none of them are bad. That’s what happens when you have two of the five or six best defensemen in the world playing on the same side of the ice for 25 minutes a night.

And that’s why this was one of the shrewdest trades in recent NHL history.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: They’re moving Andrew Cogliano away from Ryan Kesler and Jacob Silfverberg, and he’ll be playing with Carter Rowney and Brian Gibbons instead. Bit of a downgrade.

Arizona Coyotes: Bergevin wins the trade!!!

Boston Bruins: Lots of intelligence and counterintelligence coming out these days about Patrice Bergeron maybe or maybe not being hurt and able to even skate right now. Fun stuff unless you’re the Bruins in which case it is not fun.

Buffalo Sabres: Losing to the Maples Leafs is probably gonna be a common theme for a lot of the league this year. Don’t take it too hard.

Calgary Flames: As with an increasing number of third jerseys league-wide these days, the Flames’ “new” third should just be their primary. Thanks.

Carolina Hurricanes: Gotta respect the hustle on Sebastian Aho. Just being like, “Yeah I wanna get 100 points.” He had 65 in 78 games at 20 years old on a team that didn’t have as much talent as it does now. I’m not saying he’s gonna come close but he might come close to coming close.

Chicago: Henri Jokiharju is gonna inspire me to make a lot of “the kids could call you Harju” references this season. That’s one of many.

Colorado Avalanche: I’m not sure I would call Nathan MacKinnon one of the five best players in the league based on one season of him being one of the three or four best. But he has that talent level for sure.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Don’t think I’m gonna be able to handle how grim this stuff is all year.

Dallas Stars: When you just don’t have a lot going on.

Detroit Red Wings: I love to get an elite teenaged talent and grill him after a poor preseason game.

Edmonton Oilers: Yeah that’s what the Oilers were missing last year: Aggression. Hahahahaha come on man.

Florida Panthers: What in the world is going on?

Los Angeles Kings: Hmm, I don’t know, would you say this Russian player is, ahh, just to pick a word at random, “enigmatic?”

Minnesota Wild: It’s the preseason for goalies too:

Montreal Canadiens: This is not the kind of hype, even a little bit, that leads to young talent getting traded out of Montreal for no real reason.

Nashville Predators: The Preds are all back together and still figuring it out. Alright cool whatever.

New Jersey Devils: This feels just about right for Miles Wood, who I truly don’t rate.

New York Islanders: One-word reaction to this headline: YIKES.

New York Rangers: Dave no! Don’t be like this!

Ottawa Senators: This is like a parody of what a cash-poor, cheap sports franchise would do. What an organization.

Philadelphia Flyers: The Flyers’ new mascot should 10000 percent be a big hoagie just so everyone has to say “hoagie” in the Philly accent.

Pittsburgh Penguins: I don’t wanna spoil anything here but the best fit for Jack Johnson is “not signed to a long-term deal.”

San Jose Sharks: Many blessings to this beautiful team. That’s a sick third.

St. Louis Blues: Not-basing projections for a team on preseason performance? Huh. Alright I guess!

Tampa Bay Lightning: Tampa claimed a small, skilled forward off waivers? Get outta here!

Toronto Maple Leafs: I think the step Auston Matthews is about to take this year could be absolutely gigantic. His quality should be terrifying for other teams.

Vancouver Canucks: Hmm, well, I have bad news…

Vegas Golden Knights: Don’t do this to dogs. They do not like it.

Washington Capitals: When do you think everyone collectively realizes this Caps group isn’t built to really compete for another Cup? Christmas at the absolute earliest but I’ll go with mid-January.

Winnipeg Jets: It’s wild that everyone’s like, “Ah yeah, if Patrik Laine doesn’t score 50 we’re gonna be real disappointed.” Imagine having that much talent. Good lord.

Gold Star Award

Congrats to all the guys who are fringe NHLers but playing well enough in the preseason to earn a longer look and some bigger paychecks for a while. Get your money fellas.

Minus of the Weekend

One of the headlines I saw in putting together all those nice links for you this week is “Lucic hopes his hands have returned in time for Edmonton Oilers season” and it’s like, uhh, don’t they say your hands are the LAST thing to go before you’re totally done in the NHL? Milan, this is bad news my man!

Play of the Weekend

That Tkachuk pick is already paying off folks!!

Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week

User “Eagle Peninsula” is getting out in front of it.

Signoff

A “Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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