NHL trade grades: Hurricanes get Brent Burns – a Tony DeAngelo replacement – from Sharks

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NHL trade grades: Hurricanes get Brent Burns - a Tony DeAngelo replacement - from Sharks

The trade

Getting Hurricanes: defender Brent Burns and forward Lane Pederson.

get sharks: Forward Steven Lorentz, potential goalie Eetu Makiniemi and a conditional third-round pick in 2023. Sharks retain 33 percent of Burns’ contract.


Sean Gentille: This feels like a perfect fit for the Hurricanes. They needed someone to replace Tony DeAngelo on the right side of their defense. Brent Burns at a discount – for a $5.36M hit over the next three seasons? Yep, this will work.

Burns is not the player he was. There’s nothing wrong with that; At his peak, he was perhaps a unique player in the NHL. What he is at 37 is a defender still capable of giving you about 0.6 points a game. Last season at San Jose, he had 10 goals and 44 assists.

That’s close to DeAngelo’s offensive production without some of the on-ice warts and a much shorter engagement. Again he is imprisoned for three years. Carolina’s other options, after wisely bringing DeAngelo to the Flyers, would throw huge money and huge years at inferior players. They found someone better in less time – and given what they want to achieve in the next few years, it makes all the sense in the world.

And the sharks? They slashed a cap – in the form of one of their few tradable bug types – and added a pickaxe, marginal goalie, and backup forward. It’s a bummer from the return, but new GM Mike Grier made an early, hard decision out of goal. Grier has a tough road ahead of him. Burns will count $2.64 against the San Jose cap for the next three seasons.

Carolina: A
San Jose: C+

Dom Luszczyszyn: You have to like what the hurricanes did here. Carolina fired Tony DeAngelo for three draft picks and then threw together some spares to acquire Brent Burns from the San Jose Sharks, with San Jose retaining 33 percent of the contract. With DeAngelo signing for $5 million, Carolina is paying an additional $360,000 for what is arguably a superior player — one who can better emulate what Dougie Hamilton used to bring to the power play. Burns can still shoot and put up decent numbers to drive offense off the blue line.

Obviously, Burns is a long way from the player he used to be at 37, but he should be able to develop in Carolina’s system. His biggest advantage over DeAngelo is a better ability to endure tough minutes. Burns doesn’t exactly thrive there, but he doesn’t falter completely either, and that’s a plus point in the exchange.

It’s a pretty poor return for the Sharks, especially when the team retains 33 percent, but it puts Burns off the books for three years. I’m not sure why that mattered for a rebuild team, but hey – at least they got a conditional third and a few guys from it. Steven Lorentz is a good striker in the bottom six, but you’d expect San Jose to go a little more the other way.

Carolina: A
San Jose: C

Shayna Goldman: This deal makes a lot of sense for the Hurricanes. Carolina managed to flip Tony DeAngelo’s signing rights and replace his offensive production with Brent Burns for the next three years with a reduced cap hit.

There’s no question that Burns has trended downward over the years, but now he’s in a much better position to succeed with the Hurricanes. This team doesn’t need him to absorb the toughest minutes like he’s had to do in San Jose for a while; You have Jaccob Slavin and Brett Pesce leading the way on that front. Basically, they don’t need to burden him in their own zone and contribute to the offensive of the team with even strength and the power play. The frequent-shooting defender should be able to tick those boxes on a win-now team rather than a declining Sharks roster.

Sharks general manager Mike Grier hasn’t had an easy time in San Jose given the cap situation, but he’s starting his tenure with some impactful moves. They’re still on the hook for 33 percent of Burns’ salary and adding some future assets that should help her rebuild, but the rate of return still feels underwhelming. The real win for them is opening them up some leeway to give them flexibility, and perhaps this is an early lesson for Grier not to make the previous regime’s mistake of signing players for massive contracts well in excess of the beyond a player’s heyday.

Carolina: A-
San Jose: C

(Photo by Brent Burns: Stan Szeto / USA Today)

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