Ben Shelley: Sharks should trade Brent Burns or Erik Karlsson if opportunity arises

No teams are gonna trade for those contracts unless those players go on LTIR with the intention to retire. Burns I would say might be able to be traded if San Jose retains 50%, but no one is touching EKs contract.

Doughty was the #1 defenseman on a playoff team and I doubt teams would even take his contract without the Kings retaining a good chunk of it.

San Jose is a prime example of a team whose competitive window has expired and should be in 100% rebuild mode.

They should give away EK to anyone that will take him.

But he is a 40 point defenseman making 11.5 million dollars and he can't play a shred of defense anymore. He also still strangely enough believes he is as good as 2015 Erik Karlsson.

Who could have possibly forseen that the EK contract wouldn't age well?

There is no way to trade that contract. SJ is just gonna have to live with it or eventually buy it out.

There is no realistic scenario that either gets traded, especially if the terms of the deal are the retention of salary. Thanks to COVID, we are going to see an essentially flat cap for the next 3 seasons; a far different expectation the League and GMs had when they anticipated a huge increase in revenue from the new TV deals. You would have dead cap space equivalent to a Brady Tkachuk contract, which is not how a team betters itself when also trying to re-invigorate the fan base that has dwindled over the past 4 years. The Minnesota Wild are about to see what happens when they lose the equivalent of Connor McDavid for the next 3 years due to the buyouts of Suter and Parise.
Moving Burns to Power Forward, his natural position, is the correct move. That fills the void left by Kane and allows for D Men to play where that is their natural position. It allows the team to adopt an 11-7 lineup where Burns could play D when other D Men are in the box and be an off wing shooter on the PP, similar to Ovi, Stamkos, Kucherov etc.

There is no realistic scenario that either gets traded, especially if the terms of the deal are the retention of salary. Thanks to COVID, we are going to see an essentially flat cap for the next 3 seasons; a far different expectation the League and GMs had when they anticipated a huge increase in revenue from the new TV deals. You would have dead cap space equivalent to a Brady Tkachuk contract, which is not how a team betters itself when also trying to re-invigorate the fan base that has dwindled over the past 4 years. The Minnesota Wild are about to see what happens when they lose the equivalent of Connor McDavid for the next 3 years due to the buyouts of Suter and Parise.
Moving Burns to Power Forward, his natural position, is the correct move. That fills the void left by Kane and allows for D Men to play where that is their natural position. It allows the team to adopt an 11-7 lineup where Burns could play D when other D Men are in the box and be an off wing shooter on the PP, similar to Ovi, Stamkos, Kucherov etc.
- hockeygm

Trying Burns at forward is not a bad idea. It's worth trying. It's not like it's unprecedented.